The forest fell silent for hours. Fironi didn't move. Just waited.
A voice slithered from the shadows. Got 17 lives. and you choose to starve arrogant brat. The demon stepped out. Skin like drowned flesh. Eyes milky as a dead fish. It raised webbed hands, knuckles swollen like waterlogged timber.
WATER STYLE: ABYSSAL RISE. The ground exploded. Not water—liquid suffocation, thick and briny, geysering upward. Rivers erupted, swallowing trees whole. Ancient trunks groaned as roots tore free.
Fironi's perch splintered beneath him. He leaped backward as piranha demons surged through the churning flood, crackling electric fins casting jagged blue light across the drowning forest. Lightning scorched the air where his heels had been a breath earlier.
No ground. No cover. Just a sinking forest-turned-ocean.
He danced across falling debris. Jump. Roll. Slide. A flash of metal glinted deep underwater—a sword. Its hilt crusted in knotted coral, blade etched with a single throbbing crimson spiral sigil. Fironi dove. Icy water swallowed him. His fingers closed around the hilt.
Power hummed up his arm, cold and eager. He breached the surface, gasping. The demon waited atop a churning whirlpool, lipless mouth stretched in triumph. Ten piranha-demons launched from the foam, jaws crackling with volatile electricity.
Fironi swung. Not skill—instinct. The blade moved faster than thought. Ten arcs of light split the gloom. Ten halves of demon-fish hit the water, sizzling as their severed corpses dissolved into acrid smoke. "Impossible," the demon choked, milky eyes widening. "That sword is…" Fironi was already behind him. Sword dripping void-blood. "You talk too much." The demon split clean down the middle.
THE AFTERMATH
Fironi crouched on the last dry rock. The water receded, leaving steaming mud and dissolving carcasses. He stared at the sword. The spiral sigil pulsed against his palm like a trapped heartbeat. Whispers slithered from the metal: kill...steal...consume… He touched the dead demon's fading core. ABSORBED IT. Water manipulation flooded his veins—a torrent of useless power without a flood to command. The sword was different. It
shivered in his grip. Hungry.
He found the clearing where he'd first woken. Chicka was gone. Only a floating share screen flickered in the air. On it, Chicka strained against a splintering crystal wall, silver hair matted with blood. Three-armed demons hammered the barrier. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface.
"CHICKA!" Fironi roared into the screen. No answer. Just guttural snarls. Chicka whirled, golden eyes wide. "Fironi?! How? I didn't see you enter the door!"Fironi glanced at the sword. Silent. Invisible to her. He lied fast: "New ability. Don't worry about it." He raised the spiral-etched blade. "Worry about him…"