When Qaritas entered the Develdion again, the world did not build a desert.
It built a sea.
Black as ink.
Storm-writhing.
Endless.
A raft bobbed beneath him—small, fragile, insulting in its weakness. Rain hammered down like thrown nails. The waves rose like walls, and each time they crashed, Qaritas's lungs filled with salt and darkness.
He drowned.
He surfaced.
He drowned again.
Over and over, dragged under by cold pressure, hauled back up by the cruel mercy of the simulation.
He clawed for breath and shouted into the storm.
"Zcain!" he roared, voice torn raw. "What do I do?!"
The wind answered with laughter that wasn't wind.
Then Zcain's voice cut through, low and firm, arriving not through air but through the thread that tied their minds.
"Sing."
Qaritas coughed water and stared into the black.
"Sing what?" he rasped. "I don't—"
"A Depth Hymn," Zcain replied. "It breaks illusion. It forces the beast to rise. It is the only path."
The sea convulsed.
Something vast shifted beneath the surface.
A shape rose like a cathedral made of black water and drowned flesh—faceless upper body smooth as polished stone, its lower form melting into the ocean until it could not be measured.
Eyes studded it like barnacles.
Too many.
Watching.
The Dreigrath.
The storm went quiet around it—not calm, but silenced, as if the sea itself had decided to stop breathing.
Qaritas's hands found a spear on the raft—dark wood, obsidian head, wicked and simple.
He tried to raise it.
The Dreigrath's presence pressed on his mind like deep water, and the world shifted—false coastlines, ghost-lights, voices calling his name in Ayla's tone.
He almost answered.
Eon spoke, unexpectedly soft.
"Do not listen."
Qaritas's breath hitched. "You're helping me?"
Eon did not laugh.
Instead, he began to sing.
Not loudly.
Not proudly.
A song that slid through the black water like a blade of sorrow.
It sounded like the end of a world… and the memory of someone loved within it.
And the words—gods, the words—were tender.
As if even the First Evil had once held something gentle and lost it.
THE DEPTH HYMN
When the first sky broke and the first sea drank light,
I found my End where the stars fell white.
Not with a blade, not with a throne,
But with a hand I could not own.
Down where the black waves cradle bones,
Down where the drowned sing in borrowed tones,
Call me by grief, call me by flame,
But do not speak my oldest name.
For I loved the silence before the scream,
I loved the ruin like a waking dream,
And in the ash of the first undone,
My heart remembered only one.
Rise, O Depth—unmask your lies,
Let false shores die in open eyes,
For song is spear and breath is blade,
And I will not be dragged afraid.
Qaritas didn't understand why it sounded like a love song.
He didn't want to.
But the rhythm shaped itself in his chest. The notes settled into his bones. He began to sing it too—hoarse, broken, but true.
The sea around the Dreigrath shuddered.
Its illusions wavered—ghosts blinking out like snuffed candles.
The creature jerked, rising higher, as if the hymn forced it to reveal itself.
A mouth opened beneath the surface—huge, dark, a whirlpool lined with teeth made of pressure and age.
Qaritas stood on the raft and launched himself.
Spear first.
Song in his throat.
Darkness in his blood.
He plunged into the Dreigrath's maw and felt the world become crushing black.
Heat.
Pressure.
Whispers.
Hands that weren't hands trying to peel his thoughts apart.
He kept singing.
Inside, he found it—a pulsing trench of stolen power, a core that throbbed like a heart made from captured storms.
He drove the spear into it.
Silently, the way Zcain had warned.
The spear bit.
The Dreigrath convulsed.
The sea screamed without sound.
Qaritas tore the spear free and struck again—once, twice, three times—each thrust guided by Eon's cold calm and Qaritas's own fury.
And as he struck, his mind betrayed him.
Ayla's face rose behind his eyes.
Her smile.
Her promise of supper.
The way she had held that dagger like a prayer.
Why didn't you stop her?
The question hit harder than the pressure.
The Dreigrath's heart-trench ruptured.
The world shattered into foam and darkness.
Qaritas exploded back to the surface of the simulation, coughing, shaking, clinging to the raft like a half-drowned animal.
The storm faded.
The sea drained away.
Victory, hollow and cold.
He lay there panting until the Develdion finally released him.
When Qaritas woke in the pod, his throat was raw from singing.
His lungs burned like he'd swallowed a forge.
Time had passed in the waking world—far more than it felt.
Nearly twelve hours.
He stumbled out, coughing water that wasn't there, and braced himself against the stone.
Zcain's voice touched his mind again, quieter now.
"You did what you must."
Qaritas tried to ask if Ayla was safe.
Zcain did not answer.
Eon stirred, impatient.
"Enough of your fear. I want to see her again."
Qaritas's blood went cold.
"What?" he rasped aloud, though no one was near.
"Xheavaend." Eon's voice sharpened. "Take me to her, or I will walk your body there myself."
A vision punched into Qaritas's mind—himself torn open from the inside, ribs peeled like doors, his own shadow-beasts eating what was left.
He staggered back, nauseated.
"Fine," Qaritas whispered. "Fine."
He found Komus.
Didn't explain everything.
Didn't have to.
Komus saw his face and stopped joking immediately.
They went to the Fourteenth Floor.
The medical ward smelled of herbs trying to fail against rot.
They reached Xheavaend's chamber.
The door opened.
Inside, she lay as before—covered in insects, breath shallow, the scent of decay clinging stubbornly to divinity. Rnarah's presence lingered in the room like a protective curse.
And they were not alone.
Tavran.
Rivax.
Dheas.
All three turned in surprise as Qaritas entered.
Qaritas barely had time to breathe.
Because Eon did not hesitate.
He surged forward and yanked Qaritas backward into his own skull like a hook in the spine.
The world went distant.
Muted.
Qaritas fell into the dark inside himself, screaming soundlessly as Eon took the body like it was always meant to be his.
Then Eon looked toward the door.
And Qaritas—trapped behind his own eyes—saw what Eon saw.
Ayla stood there.
Except it was not Ayla.
Her body was covered in eyes—hundreds of them, blinking wetly across her skin, staring in every direction at once. The air around her crawled. The shadows behind her moved like living hunger.
The door was pulled wide.
And what waited beyond it was not a room.
It was torment.
It was horror.
It was the shape of Ecayrous's attention—opening like a mouth.
Qaritas tried to scream.
Nothing came.
And somewhere deep in his skull, Eon whispered, almost tender:
"Now… we watch."
The vision did not arrive gently.
It tore open.
Qaritas felt it like a hook behind the eyes—like someone had pulled his thoughts forward and nailed them to a place that should not exist.
Stone.
Cold.
Wet.
A chamber carved from black bone and living metal, its walls breathing faintly as if the room itself were alive and suffering for it. Chains descended from the ceiling in uneven lengths, some empty, some… not.
This was not a bedchamber.
This was a court.
A place where pain was judged worthy.
Figures hung suspended in the air, bodies bent at impossible angles, silver spikes driven through flesh in ways designed not to kill—only to force endurance. Each movement caused mechanisms to respond. Each attempt to lessen suffering only made it worse.
The room listened to agony.
The floor split open in places, revealing pits where pale insects churned like boiling water. When a body fell—when it could no longer hold—there was no scream for long. Only bones remained. Clean. White. Neatly stacked by the swarm.
Servants crawled across the stone, dragging themselves forward in devotion or terror, Qaritas could not tell. It did not matter.
Ecayrous moved among them.
He was tall. Beautiful in the way rot sometimes is. His skin cracked and sloughed in places, barely holding together, yet every time he fed—every time he tore into another screaming soul—his form stitched itself back together.
Eyes first.
Always the eyes.
He ripped them free with casual precision, devouring them as if they were fruit, moaning softly when the pain reached its peak. His hands trembled afterward, skin sagging, fingers blackened—as if even his body hated what he was.
But he smiled.
Gods, he smiled.
Then—
He turned.
The vision sharpened.
Ayla stood at the threshold.
Unbound.
Unbroken.
Not yet.
Her spine was straight. Her hands steady at her sides. Her eyes—those damned, fearless eyes—took everything in without flinching.
She saw it.
All of it.
The chains.
The pits.
The bones.
The servants being reduced to meat and memory.
And she did not scream.
Ecayrous noticed her at last.
His head tilted.
Slow.
Delighted.
"There you are," he said warmly, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. "I wasn't sure you would show."
He stepped toward her.
Behind her, the chamber shifted—mechanisms awakening, chains rattling, the insects stirring as if in anticipation.
Ayla did not retreat.
Qaritas felt something snap inside his chest.
"No," he whispered.
The darkness inside him surged, pressing against his ribs, screaming to be let out. His shadow twisted violently beneath him, claws forming, shapes tearing themselves free.
Ecayrous's smile widened.
"Good," he murmured, eyes flicking past Ayla—toward Qaritas, though he could not truly see him. "You're watching."
Ayla's jaw tightened.
"Do what you came to do," she said quietly.
Ecayrous laughed.
"Oh, I intend to."
The vision cut—
—and Qaritas lost control.
Darkness erupted from him in a violent wave, shattering the space around his body. Shadows howled. Walls cracked. The air screamed as if flayed.
Eon surged forward, laughing wildly.
"Yes," the First Evil purred. "Let it burn."
Qaritas screamed her name—
—and the darkness answered.
Somewhere far away, in a chamber where mercy went to die,
Ecayrous raised his hands—
and the court prepared to receive its next offering.