Page 108 of Claimed By the Depths

Taloned fingers I swore I’d rid it of clamped around my throat, hoisting me from the ground with sickening ease. Fumbling to adjust my hold on my dagger, I kicked through the air uselessly. It tightened its grip, crushing the breath from my lungs as its mouth curled into a grotesque grin.

“No!” Leilani’s scream tore through the corridor, and she struck like a bolt of lightning.

With an expertise only she wielded, she spun her sword, slashing across its forearm. Polluted blood bloomed, and its hand instinctively vanished from my neck as it flung me to the side. Crashing into stone, I sucked in a mouthful of oxygen while she pressed forward before the being had a chance to recover.

Her steel danced through the hall in a relentless storm, each strike cracking plated flesh and driving the monster backward. Where it swung with crushing strength, she danced between every blow, cutting deeper each time it lunged toward her.

With a deadly smile, she slipped beneath a sweeping claw, pivoted around its towering frame, and drove her blade into the muscles of its back. The creature roared and spun, but she was already gone, appearing at its flank before it could finish the turn. Another cut. Then another. Inked life force splattered across the light stone as its jagged spines splintered beneath her relentless assault.

It lashed out with enough vigor to shatter pillars, but she avoided each attack.

Hand slamming into the floor where she had stood only an instant before, she vaulted over its sweeping tail. Landing lightly on one foot, she carved across its face before springing clear of its snapping maw. Every movement was effortless, every step measured, as though she’d memorized the entity’s fury before it’d even begun.

For the first time, uncertainty flickered across the monstrosity's grotesque face. Motivated by its fear, she surged forward, sword driving a flurry of precise strikes to its chest and shoulders. The Krythid stumbled back beneath the onslaught, each wound forcing it back another reluctant inch, because it wasn’t overpowering her.

It was losing.

Frantic swings vanishing, its posture settled. Sinking to the floor, the pincers that once twitched with taunts and mockery stilled. Even in the stillness, it was calculating, and when its body shifted, it became clear that the fight was far from over.

Arm sweeping across the debris-laden hall, it angled its clawed fingers in an attack. She reacted exactly as she should have, and she parried. Deflecting the blow with her raised weapon, her mocha irises glinted alongside the tainted steel, and that was exactly what it had been waiting for.

While her sword served as a shield, the creature’s tail uncoiled from its body with horrifying speed.

“Leilani!” I screamed, the warning leaving my lips a fraction of a second too late.

The barbed stinger flashed between us before piercing her stomach. A rasped cry fell from her as the Krythid withdrew with the same fluid motion, taking a step back as if the strike had been nothing more than the final move in a carefully planned hunt.

Her sword slipped from her fingers, striking the stone with a lonely clang. She looked down in disbelief before her eyes found mine, a single tear slipping down her cheeks at the building realization—the venom the monstrosity wielded would be her downfall.

Bottom lip quivering, her knees buckled before they collided with the floor. Swaying once, her body followed, but I didn’t miss the five words she uttered. “I-I love you… I-I’m s-sorry…”

Every sound around me disappeared, the creature and corridor fading. There was only her and the unbearable certainty that, despite all the power awakening within me, I had failed the one who had never failed me. I hadn’t been able to protect her. I hadn’t been able to save her.

I’d failed.

I’d failed.

A visceral scream tore free from my throat as the weaving of fate became nauseating reality. The woman I loved had been destined to fall from the beginning, another pawn in a grand scheme I loathed to be a part of. My involvement in the prophecy and the damnation of my autonomy had served as her downfall, and because of it, we wouldn’t share a future.

There would be no more sunrises with her by my side, no more joyous laughter to fill my darkened nights. All purpose and reasoning would vanish alongside her, and with them my reason to fight would plunge into an abyss filled with uncapped anger. It was an unmanageable fury that I would leverage, one I would carve through kingdoms, rulers, and gods with, for they had thieved me of the one thing I needed to keep going.

Without Leilani, there was nothing.

Blinking through the hot tears that fell steadily down my cheeks, I lifted my chin. Every ounce of wrath I harbored settled on the entity responsible for her demise as I freed both swords from their sheaths. Leaning into Jaskor’s promise and the implications of all he’d spoken, I fixated on his words.

“Only when you release that doubt will you become an unstoppable force.”

Raw indignation boiled until nothing else remained as I stepped off the ledge of sanity and detonated.

CHAPTER 54

A Sliver of Narvendor

ROHEN

With one of Caspian’s sabers in hand, I adjusted my grip on the serpentine hilt, slashing its sharpened length through the throat of one of the humanoid creatures. Its inked life force splattered across my face, blackening my freckles to match the searing ember of my rage. The momentum aided me as I reared, driving the tip of the steel into the head of the next encroaching monstrosity.

Rotting tissue and muscle squelched, mixing with the harmonious sound of dropping corpses and gurgled shrieks—the sound of Death. His shadows brushed against my calves. The light caresses he offered through the darkness he wielded lingered for a breath before plunging into every orifice of our enemies. Even with the extensions of his essence, the coaxes he gifted me served as a reminder of his presence, confirmation that he was still there, fighting alongside me with the same lethality I wielded.