Leaving him ruffled.
Marked.
"Clever," Thalos spat, his composure in shambles as he fought to right himself. His tail slashed at the current, fins spread wide to catch his balance.
"Inevitable," Kore corrected, and it was her turn to smile, but she turned it down. Letting it shine down on obsidian and navy scales rippling and flaking with every flex of bunching muscle. "Unstoppable."
Something swelled in Kore's chest, then.
He was coming for her.
Her monster, who, somehow, despite everything, had made her his shrine. Built an altar of his fury and called himself sanctuary.
But there was a cost.
Inky swirls of blood trailed behind him as Nyx crashed through layer after layer. Sacrificing to claim her.
As he'd done time and again.
Each impact saw Kore flinch, as if feeling the impact directly.
Enthralled, for he moved utterly without elegance, without the calculated precision living in Thalos' every wretched breath. But it was a dance of primal, desperate need.
It was then, as her attention was hooked on the abyss, that a glimmer of color kissed her peripherals.
The scattered Thalassari choir was regrouping. Their fins rumpled, their war song raised with renewed purpose. Harmonies strengthened, corridors shifting and tightening around Nyxarion's massive form.
Trying to trap.
Crush.
It didn't matter.
Another barrier shattered against his shoulder. Another gash bleeding freely into the current. But he didn't slow. Didn't hesitate.
Kore pressed her hands against the invisible wall of her prison, feeling the water tremble with each thunderous impact of his approach. Three layers remained between them.
Then two.
A flicker of motion drew Kore's attention from Nyxarion's relentless advance. Thalos had recovered, fins sleek against his body as he slashed upward through a current. No longer playing the game of precision.
"Enough," he snarled.
From the hilt clutched in his fist, a ripple of blue-white light flashed through the water. Cymareth's mother-of-pearl handle caught the light as he sang a single perfect note.
The sound pierced Kore's ears like a needle of ice.
Where the note traveled, water shimmered and hardened—an edge born of harmony itself.
Thalos sneered, mocking as he drew Cymareth. The waveblade screamed as it cleaved through the layers betweenthem. Through invisible walls of current, through the very structure of the Gauntlet itself.
"See how your beast fares against true order," Thalos hissed, the blade humming a terrible chord that made Kore's teeth ache.
One slash. Two. Three layers of spiraling current fell away under his blade's edge.
He was through.
His hand reached for her, smug triumph written across his perfect face, as Nyxarion roared from below.
