(Arc 2: The Vein War Prelude)
The shard was cold to the touch.
Malik's fingers brushed its coral surface and, for a fraction of a heartbeat, all sound vanished. The chanting cultists, Elara's approaching soldiers, even Rin's frantic breathing—gone.
The Saltspire itself paused.
Then everything screamed.
A flood of resonance detonated outward. The chamber's walls convulsed as though alive. Vein-lines carved into the ancient coral began to glow with a blinding, oceanic light. The crystalline casing around the shard cracked and splintered. The black water the cultists had summoned boiled into steam, hissing like a dying beast.
And Malik—
Malik was inside it.
His veins burned with liquid lightning. Every shard in his cloak vibrated violently, harmonizing into a single jagged note. Images flashed in his mind, too fast and too alien to hold: the Saltspire whole, spiraling into the abyss; drowned figures bowing in endless worship; a creature vast and formless moving beneath a black sea.
He staggered, but his hand didn't release the shard.
Instead, the shard sank into his palm.
It didn't attach. It didn't implant. It merged.
And the ruin woke up.
---
The Saltspire Awakens
The floor split open with a deafening crack.
Columns of water shot upward, defying gravity, swirling into walls of liquid around the chamber. They were not ordinary water—this was black resonance tide, shimmering with impossible depth. Shapes moved within it, humanoid but distorted, faces pressed against the surface like drowning victims screaming soundlessly.
The cultists fell to their knees, wailing prayers. Their leader raised both arms, his coral crown glowing brighter as he screamed in triumph.
"THE TIDE RISES! THE VEIN AWAKENS! PRAISE THE DROWNED ONE!"
Elara and her Tidewalkers stormed into the chamber just in time to see the impossible. She froze mid-step, eyes narrowing, lips curling into a snarl.
"You," she hissed, locking onto Malik. "What have you done?"
Malik stood at the center of the chaos. His silhouette was wreathed in flickering blue-black resonance, his cloak snapping in unseen currents. His pupils were rings of fractured coral light now—like a man peering through a keyhole into the abyss.
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
Because the Keeper was whispering directly into his skull.
---
The Keeper's Voice
"Three shards… three veins… the lattice hums again. Mortal thief, your hand reaches deeper than you understand. Would you drown for knowledge?"
Malik's mind fractured into layers. He saw the ruin beyond its ruin—saw it as it had been, a temple-spire devoted to the First Vein. He saw its drowning. He saw the Keeper's form filling the sea like a shadow that had no end.
And he understood one thing:
This shard didn't just hold power. It was a key.
If he completed the lattice with all seven shards, he could unlock the Salt Vein Core itself—something the Keeper couldn't fully touch, even now.
Malik's lips curved faintly despite the screaming tide.
"Yes," he murmured under his breath, answering a question only he heard.
He would drown for knowledge. He'd kill for it.
---
The Battle Erupts
Elara moved first.
"Kill him. I want the shards intact!" she barked.
Her Tidewalkers fanned out with military precision, resonance harpoons locking onto Malik's position.
But the cultists reacted too.
"No! The Thief is chosen! Protect the lattice!" the Arch-Deacon shrieked, summoning a tidal surge of black water.
The two forces clashed instantly.
Tidewalkers stabbed forward, their harpoons glowing blue with compressed resonance, impaling cultists like skewered fish.
Cultists retaliated with drowned familiars—half-formed monsters spilling from the black water. Tentacles lashed across the chamber, dragging screaming soldiers into the walls of liquid where they dissolved like salt in brine.
The ruin itself buckled, corridors collapsing as the awakened resonance twisted gravity, flooding the air with oppressive pressure.
It was chaos.
And Malik moved through it like a knife.
---
Shadow Vein Step
A Tidewalker lunged at him with a spear.
Malik's body flickered—one heartbeat present, the next slipping sideways into the resonance layer. The harpoon passed through empty air. Malik reappeared behind the soldier, his dagger already slicing through the man's throat in a single clean motion.
Another came from the left. Malik ducked low, rolling under the swing, then stepped through the floor itself, emerging an instant later behind a pair of cultists. Before they even registered him, his blade flashed twice.
The Shadow Vein Step wasn't just movement. It was cheating reality.
Every shard had amplified him, but three together made him something more than human—just enough to taste what it meant to be a predator at the edge of the Keeper's domain.
Rin watched from the periphery, horrified and awed all at once. She'd seen Malik kill before—cold, efficient, pragmatic. But this was different. He was fluid now, unpredictable, a man unbound by the same rules as the rest of them.
"Malik…" she whispered. "What are you becoming?"
---
Elara vs. Malik
Elara cut through her own soldiers and cultists alike to reach him.
When their eyes locked across the collapsing chamber, Malik saw something new in her gaze—not just fury, but a flicker of fear.
"Korēn!" she shouted over the din. "You're opening something you can't close!"
Malik tilted his head, his expression unreadable.
"And you," he replied calmly, "are too slow to matter."
She snarled.
With a twist of her wrist, Elara activated her Vein Armor. Coral plates slid into place across her body like living pieces of a shell. Her harpoon split into dual resonance blades, humming with enough power to shear through stone.
Then she lunged.
Their clash was silent but brutal. Malik slipped sideways through a wall, but Elara anticipated, striking the moment he emerged. Their weapons met in a burst of shattered resonance sparks.
She was faster than before. Stronger. She'd touched the Keeper's power too, and her control was far more disciplined than the raw surge running through Malik.
But Malik was smarter.
He feinted left, then used Shadow Vein Step mid-strike, vanishing entirely for half a second. Elara's blade hit only afterimage. Malik reappeared at her flank, his dagger slashing for her exposed ribs—
But her armor hardened instantly, resonance plating deflecting the blow. She spun with predatory grace, driving a boot into his chest that sent him skidding back.
"You've gotten reckless," she hissed. "Or maybe the shards are eating you alive."
Malik only smiled faintly, wiping blood from his lip.
"Then come and watch me rot."
---
The Arch-Deacon's Ritual
While they fought, the Arch-Deacon completed his chant.
The black water pooling beneath the ruin suddenly rose.
A single giant hand made of water and bone emerged from the floor, fingers long as masts. It gripped the chamber walls and began pulling something massive up from the depths.
Rin's scream cut through the chaos. "It's summoning something—!"
Malik's shard pulsed in answer. He knew what it was.
A Vein Warden.
Not the Keeper itself, but a fragment—a drowned guardian that existed only to erase intruders who awakened forbidden resonance.
The ruin shook violently as the creature's upper body surfaced. It had no true face, only a dripping mass of coral, teeth, and eyes that blinked in random places. Its voice was a low, wet rumble.
"INTRUDERS… DROWN."
The cultists dropped to their knees in ecstatic reverence. The Tidewalkers faltered, some panicking. Even Elara's composure cracked for half a second.
Malik didn't flinch.
Because the shard was telling him something new.
The Vein Warden was not alive in the human sense. It was a mechanism. A guard dog left by the ruin's original architects.
And like any mechanism, it could be rewired.
---
The Risk
Malik stepped back, ignoring Elara and the clashing soldiers entirely. He placed both hands on the shard embedded in his palm.
Resonance flared so violently it shattered nearby coral. His vision tunneled. The Keeper's voice hissed louder in his skull.
"Mortal thief… you dare…"
He dared.
He sent the shard's resonance directly into the Vein lattice—rewriting the command flow.
The Vein Warden froze mid-motion. Its many blinking eyes all turned toward him.
Elara shouted, realizing what he was doing. "Don't—!"
Too late.
The Warden lowered its head toward Malik. Its massive form leaned closer… and then it knelt.
The cultists wailed in confusion. The Tidewalkers stopped fighting.
For the first time in centuries, the Vein Warden obeyed a human.
---
New Predator
Malik exhaled slowly. His body felt like it was on fire from the inside, but he held control. The Warden loomed silently behind him, waiting for his will.
He turned to face both factions.
"You came for the shards," Malik said, his voice calm despite the ruin vibrating around them. "You thought the ruin would eat me. But it seems… it's mine now."
Elara's jaw tightened. Her Tidewalkers instinctively stepped back.
The cult leader screamed, tearing at his mask. "HERESY! HE IS NO CHOSEN—HE IS A THIEF! THE WARDEN MUST—"
Malik flicked his fingers.
The Warden moved.
It crushed the Arch-Deacon in a single blow, splattering him into black mist.
The cultists broke instantly, screaming in terror.
Even Elara hesitated now, calculating whether fighting here would mean her own death.
Malik tilted his head, regarding her like a predator deciding if the prey was worth eating.
"Leave," he said simply. "Or drown with them."
---
Aftermath
What followed wasn't a battle.
It was a rout.
The cultists scattered, fleeing into the deeper corridors of the ruin. Elara gave a sharp whistle, signaling her Tidewalkers to retreat—though her eyes never left Malik's. Her expression wasn't fear now, but resolve.
"This isn't over," she called back as she withdrew. "You're not the only one who can claim the lattice, Korēn."
Malik didn't answer.
Only when the ruin was silent again did he let the Warden dissolve back into the black water. His body sagged slightly, the cost of controlling it finally hitting him.
Rin ran to his side, catching his arm. "Malik, what the hell did you just do? You controlled that thing like it was—like it was yours!"
Malik looked down at his hand, where the shard's glow was fading.
"No," he said softly. "Not mine. Not yet. But closer."
He stared deeper into the ruin's pulsing core.
There were still four shards left. Four more keys.
When he had them all…
He would stop borrowing the Keeper's power. He would take it.