The moment the Abyssal Thresher's shockwave shattered the warden's bone cathedral, K'thal's body changed.
One second, he was gripping my wrist, his claws retracted just enough not to draw blood—the next, his skin rippled, his form dissolving into liquid shadow before my eyes. His bones cracked, his spine elongating as his limbs fused into something sleek, something predatory. Coral fragments from his shattered mask swirled around him like a storm of dying stars as his body reshaped itself—
—into a shark.
Not just any shark.
A monster of the deep, ten feet of muscle and razor-edged fins, his skin not black but void-dark, the same eerie cobalt of the Thresher's eyes gleaming along his underbelly. And yet—his eyes. Still *his*. Still mercury-bright, still burning with that same fierce protectiveness.
His true form was a masterpiece of Neridian evolution – a sleek, predatory silhouette with obsidian-dark skin that absorbed light until only the glowing blue circuit-like patterns along his flanks remained visible. When he moved, water didn't resist – it *parted* for him like a lover's sigh.
"Hold on," his voice resonated directly into my mind as his powerful tail coiled beneath us
Then he moved.
Not swimming.
Flying.
The water parted for him like air for a jet, his massive tail driving forward with such force that Cho and I were yanked along in his wake, the sheer speed pressing us flat against his dorsal fin. The ocean blurred around us, trenches and reefs and shipwrecks whipping past in streaks of shadow and bioluminescence.
The parasite at my neck screamed in exhilaration, translating the sensation into a single, euphoric burst
HUNT. FLIGHT. FREEDOM.
K'thal banked hard, plunging into a narrow crevasse hidden between two jagged rock spires. The moment we crossed the threshold, the water pressure *shifted*, the crushing weight of the abyss lifting like a curtain.
We were inside.
His lair.
K'thal's First Sight
The first time I saw her, she was glowing.
Idiot surface-dweller.
The first time I truly saw her, I nearly lost a hand.
I'd been tracking the human diver for hours – that stubborn glow of hers painting a target across half the trench. Reckless. Suicidal. Exactly the kind of surface-dweller the warden would swallow whole.
I watched from the trench shadows as her bioluminescence pulsed—pink and reckless—through the Leviathan's hunting grounds. She moved like she owned the abyss, all sharp kicks and flashing goggles, her CHIP's mechanical scan-lights cutting through the dark like a beacon.
Prey.
I should've left her.
But then the Leviathan stirred.
Her light caught on its teeth as it turned—a flash of silver, a flicker of fear across her face.
And something in my chest burned.
I moved before I thought. Water screamed around me as I shifted mid-charge, claws extended. The Leviathan knew me—knew my scent, my scars—but it didn't care. Not when easier meat dangled before it.
I grabbed her wrist.
Too tight.
Her pulse thundered against my claws, her breath a stream of panicked bubbles. Up close, her glow wasn't just pink—it was *gold* at the edges, like sunlight trapped under ice.
Neridian.
The realization hit like a shockwave.
But the Leviathan was coming.
I yanked her against my chest, my coral mask sealing over her mouth just as the beast's tail whipped past. Her scream vibrated through my ribs.
Alive.
Mine to protect.
The Thresher would punish me for this.
I didn't care.
I dragged her into the current, her body pressed flush against mine. Every frantic kick of her legs, every stuttered breath through my coral's filters—alive, alive, alive.
When we breached the trench's edge, she ripped the mask off, her eyes wide with fury and something worse—trust.
Stupid girl.
Stupid, glowing, beautiful fool.
I should've let go.
Instead, I held on tighter.