Chapter 282
Darkness presses in like a weight—dense, cold, and infinite.
Then it shifts, and I fall straight into the Ether.
No wind. No gravity. Just that strange, liquid light and endless sky. The currents of power twist and shimmer around me like ribbons, and I know instantly—this is not a memory. This is not the past.
This is now.
The war is in full swing. I hover above it, bodiless but tethered, pulled by something deeper than thought. The Ether shows me what I need to see.
The ocean here isn’t calm or quiet—it’s a battlefield. The seafloor is a jagged, mountainous trench littered with the bones of old gods and crumbled cities, their broken spires jutting up like grave markers. Every ripple of the water carries thunder. Explosions ripple through the current, turning whole swaths of seabed into dust.
Massive shapes streak through the gloom—creatures made of coral and current, ancient guardians called from the depths to fight one last time. Leviathan looms in the distance, barely visible, too large to comprehend in full—a continent in motion.
The gods are fighting—ancient, radiant, unstoppable. Lightning whips across the water, not dulled but sharpened, carving through the dark like blades. Great beasts clash in the trenches and the open water above them, their bodies made of elements and fury. The sea churns like a maelstrom.
And below it all, she stands at the edge of a platform carved from obsidian and gold, anchored to the ruins of some ancient temple swallowed by time.
Electra.
Her back is straight, her silver-and-black armor streaked with blood and starlight. One hand grips the orb. The other reaches out toward a ship the size of a cathedral rising from the waters below. It’s sleeping—massive, silent, dormant. Ancient machinery lines its spine. The shape is strange at first. Not a standard hull. Not even remotely aerodynamic.
Then it begins to move.
The gears inside the ship groan and grind, and slowly, piece by piece, the thing begins to unfurl. Plates shift. Pistons hiss. Panels slide away to reveal glowing circuits of Ethertech, and then—wings.
Massive, elegant wings—like sails spun from crystal and steel—fold outward from the body of the ship, revealing its shape in full.
A manta ray.
Graceful, lethal, unmistakable.
Its wings ripple through the water like it’s breathing. It’s alive in a way that has nothing to do with wires or metal. It feels the Ether, just like she does. It listens.
Electra lifts the orb. Lightning crackles along her arms and explodes from her fingertips, spiraling into the control core at the ship’s center. The creature-ship roars to life, its eyes glowing blue-white as its fins ripple with new energy.
And I know—like you know in dreams without needing proof—these ships change form depending on who commands them. Electra’s is a manta ray because she is. Fierce. Fluid. Built to glide and devastate. These ships aren’t weapons. They’re extensions of their pilots—living machines molded by connection.
There are only a handful left. Most lost to time or buried beneath the sea.
And fewer still who can command them.
The war should be unwinnable. Leviathan is too vast, too deep, too mad. But this—this might tip the balance.
Electra’s job is to distract him. Engage, overwhelm, draw his attention long enough for the others to strike where it matters.
This has to work.
She channels her power into the orb again, and the ship pulses in response—obedient, eager. It’s not a machine anymore. It’s hers. It feeds off her magic and amplifies it, folding that raw lightning into its engines. They move as one. Mortal and machine. Ether and flesh.
The surge of energy lights up the sea, a brilliant blaze of white and gold searing through the depths, illuminating the battlefield like a second sun.
Electra rises above the chaos, the manta ray beneath her moving with impossible grace, a radiant shadow at the heart of a living storm—
And then everything shatters.
I lurch forward with a scream, yanked from the Ether like I’ve been hooked by the spine.
The lab explodes around me.
Pain slams through my skull as my body convulses. The machine tethering me to Lily detonates, bolts snapping, conduits sparking, Darklite tubing bursting in showers of hot crystal. Power—my power—lashes out without direction or limit. I can feel it tear through the walls, rip across the floor, climb the ceiling.
The pod shatters. I’m flung to the ground hard, coughing blood, my hands still crackling with raw energy. The collar is gone, fried right off my neck. The air smells like ozone and burning metal.
Lily’s body rockets across the room. She hits the far wall with a sickening crack and slumps to the floor. Unmoving.
Everything is fire and sound.
Sparks fall like burning snow. Lab equipment smolders. The ceiling creaks with fractured tension. Smoke twists in thick ribbons through the chaos, catching the red emergency lights and painting the entire room in the glow of a hell I created without meaning to.
I blink through the haze, chest heaving.
My powers… they rejected her. Rejected the procedure. Rejected everything she tried to take.
And in the process, they almost took everything else too.
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