William was swept up in a wave of cheers from the citizens of Atlantis gathered in the stands, his half-healed wounds pulsing with pain as he raised his hands in triumph, magnifying the already roaring applause.
The monk-like Atlantean clasped William's shoulder with a broad grin and let out a hearty laugh. "HAHAHAHA, splendid fight, lad, splendid fight! We must do it again sometime!"
Aquarius rose from his throne, joining in the applause as the golden crown atop his head gleamed with the vibrant hues of gems found only in the deepest trenches of the ocean.
It was a rare occasion for his realm to host a guest, especially one strong enough to endure the crushing pressure of the deep ocean, and he was pleased to witness such strength.
The dragoon-like Atlantean floated toward Aquarius, bowing low while pressing his fist over his heart. "Your Majesty, I am no longer worthy of my station. My performance was disgraceful, and I fear I have disappointed you."
The dragoon-like Atlantean continued his self-deprecating monologue for several minutes, prompting dark lines to appear on Aquarius' forehead.
Aquarius raised his arm high, causing the dragoon-like Atlantean to close his eyes and brace himself for the inevitable.
POW!
Aquarius' arm came crashing down, striking the armored helmet of the dragoon-like Atlantean with unexpected force, sending him plummeting to the ground and creating a face-shaped crater where he landed.
"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? ONLY I CAN DECIDE IF I AM DISAPPOINTED IN SOMEONE. YOU FOUGHT WELL... and that is all I asked of you today!"
As the Arena event concluded, Aquarius hosted a grand feast with William as the honored guest. Meanwhile, ominous shadows began to coil and writhe around the runed gate at the heart of the Bermuda Triangle. The once pristine and otherworldly surface of the gate was now almost completely consumed by a strange black ichor. The divine light radiating from the runes flickered weakly, as though being suffocated.
CRACK!
A sharp, splitting sound erupted from the gate, unleashing a wave of malevolent energy that cascaded outward. This dark force spread through the surrounding waters, corrupting marine life and transforming them into monstrous, Kaiju-like abominations.
Click... CLICK... The sound of panicked echolocational clicks echoed through the depths.
A nearby humpback whale, sensing the oncoming danger, instinctively attempted to flee. But before it could fully turn, the ominous wave enveloped it.
The whale let out an agonized, piercing cry as its body convulsed and twisted under the invasive, corrupting energy saturating the water. Its once blue skin turned to a shadowy black, while its white underside glowed with an eerie, bioluminescent purple light.
Its eyes snapped open, glowing with an intense purple hue that exuded a predatory and threatening aura. It seemed as though the creature had gained the ability to pierce through even the deepest darkness. Yet, deep within its mind, a foreign presence began to stir.
"SOOOON!"
RUMBLE!
A thunderous voice echoed through the abyss, emanating as though from the very mouth of the whale. The creature, now grotesquely transformed, resembled a massive, shark-like monstrosity. Its jaws were lined with endless rows of serrated teeth, each one gleaming with terrifying menace.
ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR!
The transformed whale opened its massive maw, revealing seemingly endless rows of teeth that shifted continuously from side to side, resembling a grinding mechanism. It unleashed a deafening roar that summoned the surrounding corrupted sea creatures, now monstrous kaiju, to assemble like loyal soldiers.
Transformed Loggerhead turtles and Parrotfish formed organized lines, accompanied by armies of fearsome shrimp with bioluminescent blades at the tips of their tails. Sharks flanked the whale as its formidable guards, their bodies altered to possess even greater bite force and fins transformed into scythe-like appendages, clearly designed for devastating speed and precision.
More and more sea creatures emerged, each twisted into monstrous versions of their former selves. At the command of the will controlling the whale, this army of corrupted sea life surged out of the murky depths, rushing forward with relentless purpose.
The guards stationed outside the dark waters were startled as they spotted the shimmering forms of dark-scaled monsters approaching. The leader of the group quickly turned and shouted, "HURRY, IGNITE THE SIGNAL AND ALERT ATLANTIS, GO NOW!"
The veteran guard issued the urgent order to the youngest Atlantean before turning back to face the advancing horde. Alongside the other guards, he raised his trident, its surface pulsating with potent runes of mysterious power, ready to confront the oncoming threat.
The young Atlantean raced toward the ancient coral tower behind him, his armor shimmering faintly under the glow of the runes lighting the ocean floor. He pressed his hand against the sigil plate embedded at the base of the structure. For a tense moment, nothing happened. Then—
FWOOM!
A spiraling burst of bright blue fire shot upward from the top of the coral tower, igniting a beacon visible for leagues in every direction. The signal flared repeatedly in quick succession, the highest level of alarm.
At the defensive line, the lead guard gripped his trident tightly. "Prepare yourselves! We hold this line until reinforcements arrive or the sea takes us!"
The monstrous whale-like entity loomed closer with each passing second. Its presence was oppressive, an embodiment of something ancient and horribly wrong. The corrupted sea creatures in its legion surged forward, a relentless dark tide.
The first wave collided.
CLANG!
Tridents clashed with blade-tipped shrimp. Bones snapped. Flesh was torn apart.
The young guard, barely of age, managed to pierce one of the smaller monstrosities, an eel-like creature with tentacle limbs and a lamprey's maw. It screeched, convulsed, and dissolved into a pool of inky black liquid. But for every creature they vanquished, three more filled its place.
A veteran guard was dragged screaming into the depths by a serpentine beast with a crystal-shelled head and translucent wings. Another fell, impaled through the abdomen by a coral-forged lance wielded by a bipedal crustacean fused with warped Atlantean armor.
"We're being overrun!" the youngest soldier shouted in despair.
"No, we hold!" roared the captain.
And then—
BOOM!
KRRAAA-KOOM!
The first wave struck like a living tsunami, colossal, writhing leviathans surging from the trench's edge, accompanied by smaller, eel-like horrors slicing through the dark with unnatural speed. Yet, the guards held their ground.
Tridents shimmered with bioluminescent runes, and arcane shields sprang to life, forming a radiant barrier of energy across the trench's mouth. The outpost commander, a battle-scarred veteran named Ornas, gestured sharply, and the formation shifted into a classic V-shape, designed to channel the enemy's momentum inward.
"Stand your ground! For Atlantis!" he bellowed.
The monsters crashed into them with the force of a hurricane, bone, ink, and tendrils churning in chaos. Initially, the guards stood firm. Spears pierced armored chitin, blasts of superheated water drove the creatures back, and mystic traps exploded in dazzling flashes of prismatic light. The trench echoed with the screams of both monsters and men.
A young guard, barely out of training, grunted as he thrust his trident into the jaw of a shark-skinned aberration. Beside him, a priest-warrior intoned a chant in Old High Atlantean, conjuring a barrier of concentrated light that obliterated three charging eel-beasts.
For several grueling minutes, the defenders outmatched their attackers. The sea became a maelstrom of courage and violence.
But then, the tide turned.
The second wave arrived.
Larger.
Cleverer.
Deadlier.
One side of the trench collapsed under the weight of a gargantuan clawed beast, dragging a segment of coral fortress down with it, burying a dozen guards beneath tons of rubble. Shadow-stitched abominations slipped past the front lines, ruthlessly cutting down mages and medics in the rear.
Ornas rallied his forces once more. "Form the Maelstrom! CHOKE the trench!" he roared, blood streaming from a wound on his temple. The guards obeyed, forming a spinning defensive pattern that disoriented the swarm and created deadly zones of counterattack. For a while, it worked. But the enemy numbers were overwhelming.
Onward they came.
A sergeant was dragged, screaming, into a fissure by spined tentacles. A heavy-armor specialist detonated himself in a final act of defiance, obliterating a dozen horrors. The priest-warrior drowned mid-chant, his lungs crushed by an invisible psychic force.
And then, only four remained.
Ornas, the mage Lira, the berserker twins Dax and Koril… and the youngest, a wide-eyed recruit named Belan, bleeding from a dozen wounds but still clutching his trident with trembling hands.
"Fall back to the core altar!" Lira shouted, limping as she conjured a spiraling shield around the group.
"No. We make our stand here," Ornas said grimly. He turned to Belan, gripping his shoulder firmly. "You hold, or you die on your feet. This is what it means to be Atlantean."
Belan nodded, fear etched across his face, but determination flickering in his eyes.
They fought on.
Lira's magic seared the water itself, boiling an entire swarm of monsters into oblivion. Dax and Koril moved like a single entity, their coral-forged axes cleaving through foes in a synchronized dance of destruction. At the chokepoint, Ornas stood alone, his eyes blazing with ancient fury, every movement precise and lethal.
Yet still, the tide pressed them back.
Koril was the first to fall, dragged down into the depths by chain-hooked abominations. Dax roared in grief and fury, slaughtering until a colossal crab-behemoth crushed his torso in a single, brutal pincer. Lira screamed as her barrier shattered, impaled by three bone spears, her final spell unraveling into nothingness.
Only Ornas and Belan remained.
"Run," Ornas commanded, his voice low and strained.
"I won't leave you—"
"RUN!"
Belan fled, hot tears streaming through the icy depths. Behind him, Ornas unleashed his final weapon, a forbidden spell carved into his very bones. The detonation of pure kinetic energy tore through the trench, momentarily halting the relentless horde and buying Belan precious seconds to escape.
But it wasn't enough.
They caught him.
He swam with all his strength, lungs burning, blood swirling in the water around him.
A shape emerged from the darkness. A voice, alien and gurgling, echoed in his mind.
"You will be our message."
He screamed as black tendrils coiled around him, dragging him deeper into the abyss. Cold, unfeeling instruments pierced his skull, and the light was wrenched from his eyes. The pain was excruciating, but then it vanished. He could no longer see, but something foreign had taken root within his mind.
Hours later, blind and trembling on the ocean floor, reinforcements found him.
When he turned to them, his empty sockets staring, he rasped, "He is coming!" before collapsing into violent convulsions, as if seized by an unseen force.
The city was engulfed in an oppressive silence.
It was not the peaceful quiet of serenity, but the grim stillness that lingers after catastrophe, a tense and uneasy pause before the inevitable outcry.
From the towering spires of the Atlantean capital, dark plumes of water spiraled upward, gouging the ocean's depths like jagged wounds. Subtle, sickening tremors coursed through the coral-built infrastructure, a relentless vibration that had endured since the signal flare had erupted.
William stood on the edge of an open platform, his gaze fixed on the glowing bioluminescent reefs stretching endlessly into the abyss. The dragoon and monk had been taken to the medical sanctum long ago. Although his own injuries had healed and his mind felt clearer, an unshakable unease lingered within him, a gnawing pressure in his chest that refused to dissipate.
The Phantom Blade: Morrigan pulsed faintly at his side, emanating an almost... eager energy.
His ears flicked as the sound of approaching footsteps shattered the fragile stillness, each step weighted with authority.
"Enjoying the calm?" came the wry voice of King Aquarius.
William turned to face the Atlantean king, now clad in sleek bronze armor forged from coral, with tendrils of deep seaweed trailing behind him like a royal mantle. His trident, no longer ceremonial, vibrated with latent power.
"Not exactly," William replied, his gaze lingering on the ominous plumes of rising smoke. "Something isn't right down there. I can feel it."
Aquarius's expression darkened. "You're not the only one."
Another set of footsteps, lighter and deliberate, echoed across the polished shellstone. The Queen of Atlantis stepped through a shimmering veil of light, her flowing robes rippling unnaturally, like ink dispersing in water. Her face was regal and composed, though her lips were pressed into a tight line.
"The Ninth Trench has collapsed," she stated without preamble. "And more will follow."
William turned fully toward them, his voice sharp. "Collapsed?"
Aquarius nodded solemnly. "Part of the trench has collapsed. Our scouts have returned with troubling news: the abyssal gate is severely damaged, teetering on the brink of total destruction. An army of bizarre, corrupted sea creatures has emerged, wreaking havoc across the region as they draw closer to Atlantis itself."
The Queen raised her hand, conjuring a hovering illusion between them, a twisting projection of the trench, ruptured and bleeding corrupted energy.
William's jaw tightened. "I fought in that trench. There were guards, people. What happened to them?"
Aquarius glanced at the Queen, who responded instead.
"Dead. Or worse." Her tone remained steady, but her eyes betrayed a grief buried under centuries of control. "One survivor. A young initiate. He was blinded. They left him alive as a message."
William's fists clenched. "Where is he?"
"Resting in the sanctum," the Queen answered. "He'll survive. But his mind has been… marked."
Aquarius's expression darkened. "We're not prepared for this. The breach wasn't supposed to open for another era. The enchantments were meant to hold."
William's gaze hardened. "What's coming through it?"
The Queen shook her head, her expression grim.
"Not what, but who, and he is an existence Atlantis has hoped never to face again."