Fallen From The Heavens

"There are things in these waters that don't sing… they wait." – Kazin

Three more days passed beneath the crushing silence of the Abyss.

Rain and Oni no longer needed words.

Their training had taken on a rhythm beyond thought—an instinctual flow born of the Siren's influence and the agony it had cost them to claim it. They moved like current and tide, never colliding, always complementing. They could spar blindfolded now, not because they had memorized patterns, but because they could feel each other's intentions ripple through the water between them.

Kazin had tested them with illusions twisted from their nightmares: warped familiars, drowning doppelgängers, even younger versions of themselves screaming in mirrored anguish. Each time, the flow between them held firm. Rain's sword danced with lethal grace, and Oni—more than casting spells—channeled the echoes of the Siren. Sometimes a note would hang in the air like a pressure drop, and other times the silence itself would become a scream.

But today, Kazin no longer tested them.

He stood silent, his dark robe still soaked at the edges, as though even the Abyss could not leech the shadows from him.

"You've taken the first step," he said, kneeling before the black pool that marked the next descent. "The Sirens were the illusion of desire. Seduction through distortion. But what waits below…"

He trailed off, dipping a pale hand into the black water.

"…is not so kind."

Rain stepped forward, his sword—Vermillion—still sheathed but pulsing faintly with a dark blue hue. Oni stood beside him, bare-chested, the Mark of the Beast on his chest now altered. The once-feral emblem had thinned and curved, resembling waves or tendrils—fluid, hypnotic. Faint hums now followed him when he moved, like the echo of something deep and ancient responding to him.

"Tell us," Rain said. "What are we walking into?"

Kazin didn't look at them. His voice sounded… distant.

"The Sea Serpent doesn't sing. It doesn't deceive. It waits."

He turned his gaze to them, and for the first time since their training began, his expression showed unease—not fear, not weakness—but respect for what lay beneath.

"It is patience incarnate. A creature of mass, of age, of territory. It does not need tricks because it is certainty. That thing has slumbered for longer than any kingdom has stood, and when it wakes, the Abyss rearranges around it."

Oni's hand slowly curled, not into a fist—but into a claw, mimicking the beast he was preparing to face. "So it's not a test of will like the Sirens?"

"No," Kazin said. "It is a test of endurance. Of instinct. It will not try to break your mind. It will try to swallow you whole."

Rain glanced at Oni, and for a moment, he could feel a different kind of tension forming—one that wasn't fear or hesitation. It was readiness. The kind that wasn't spoken about but burned in the marrow of those who had already walked through madness and came out changed.

"How do we find it?" Rain asked.

"You don't," Kazin whispered, withdrawing his hand. "You go deep enough… and it finds you."

[The Descent]

The black pool before them was not like the others.

It was perfectly still.

Not a ripple, not a shimmer—just darkness so dense it made the water above seem like light. Rain touched the surface with the tip of his boot—and felt it pull slightly, as if the water had weight behind it. Oni knelt beside the edge and stared down. No reflection. Only the illusion of a void.

They entered together.

No spells. No bubbles. Just lungs full of stolen air and hearts that beat in rhythm.

As they submerged, Rain's senses dulled immediately. The cold wasn't sharp—it was slow, the kind that seeped into your bones and forgot how to leave. The descent was vertical, like being swallowed by a throat that never ended.

After what felt like hours, the world shifted.

Light.

Barely visible at first, but it bled into being like the sun behind a thundercloud—faint bioluminescence pulsing along the jagged ridges of black coral and translucent vines swaying in impossible directions. Creatures flitted in and out of the gloom, all eyeless, all silent. Some swam like ink, spreading themselves into darkness. Others were skeletal outlines that didn't move unless you blinked.

Rain and Oni didn't speak.

They simply descended.

When they touched what passed for ground, it wasn't sand—it was teeth.

Thousands of calcified fragments littered the ocean floor, as if every predator that ever tried to swim here had lost something vital.

In the distance, a chasm opened like a mouth split in stone—jagged, uneven, lined with glowing barnacles that pulsed faintly, as if breathing.

Oni pressed a palm to the floor, channeling the Siren's vibration. A tone resonated. Low, guttural.

A moment later, the ocean shifted.

The pressure changed. The world grew colder.

From the far end of the abyss, a shape moved.

No—unfolded.

Kazin's voice echoed in their minds now, carried by a spell planted before the descent:

"It is larger than fear. Larger than hope. The Sea Serpent is the environment. You are not entering its domain—you are being ingested. If you forget that, even for a second, you will not return."

The first thing they saw was not a head.

It was a shadow, stretching across the far wall of the trench—its body coiling between rock formations like a glacier with intent. Spines like obsidian jutted from its back, and its scales shimmered with what looked like trapped stars.

Then came the eye.

A single, silver orb the size of a house… and it didn't blink.

It simply watched.

Rain and Oni stood their ground.

The flow between them didn't waver.

Not even as the Sea Serpent turned.

Not even as it began to move toward them.

Not even as the water trembled with the weight of inevitability.

The descent began without words.

After three days of silence, of rhythmic breath and harmony of motion, there was no need to speak. Kazin stood above the pool of spiraling black water—the same abyss they'd once feared. Now, it was a gateway. He said nothing as Oni stepped forward first, his bare feet meeting the edge where the tides pulsed unnaturally inward. Rain followed close behind, sword across his back, eyes reflecting no doubt—only purpose.

"This current is not of water," Kazin finally said, his voice low like a warning spoken by the deep itself. "It's memory. This part of the Abyss holds time differently. The Sea Serpent's domain is not just under the ocean… it is beneath thought. Beneath what you believe you are."

Rain glanced to Oni. But Oni didn't return the look. His gaze was fixed into the dark spiral. The mark on his chest—once the shape of wings and void—now shimmered with trailing lines, like sound turned into script. The Siren had given him more than power. It had changed his nature.

"Once you cross," Kazin continued, "your thoughts may echo back to you—twisted, repeated, drowned. If you lose your sense of self… you will drown, even if you breathe."

Oni stepped forward.

The surface accepted him—not like water but like silk pulled open by will. No splash. No resistance. Just gone.

Rain followed a heartbeat later.

The passage twisted immediately. Not physically. Mentally. Rain opened his eyes underwater—but there was no water. Just pressure. A vast weight of something other, crushing against his skin but never quite breaking it. The first breath he took was like pulling cool smoke through his lungs, and it smelled not of salt—but of forgotten days. He coughed once, but didn't stop moving.

Shapes spiraled around them—giant coils of reef and bone, moving as if alive, yet so ancient they seemed carved by time itself.

Oni swam—or rather moved—through the current like it obeyed him. His arms barely made strokes; the water seemed to part for him. Rain struggled slightly, every motion requiring conscious thought, until he adjusted his grip on Vermillion, Eater of All, and spoke a single word.

"Cyan."

The blade shimmered, then extended like a spear—its color blending to mimic the light around him. Instantly, the pressure lifted slightly from his limbs. He cut through the deep like a missile, gliding to Oni's side.

Their eyes met.

Rain felt something… hum between them. The rhythm again. Not the Siren's melody, but the echo of it. The flow between them hadn't faded. Even in this alien place, it guided them.

It carried them lower.

And lower.

Until the water turned black.

Then—sound.

Not a roar.

Not a scream.

Something deeper.

A heartbeat.

It pulsed through the trenches. Through their bones. Through the stone walls that surrounded this temple of darkness.

Kazin's voice echoed in their minds, though it was no spell.

"The Sea Serpent was not born of ocean, but of shame. Of rage. It is not a guardian like the Sirens—it is a prison."

"What does that mean?" Rain had asked, before they'd jumped.

Kazin's eyes hadn't blinked when he answered:

"It means—it's angry. And it has every reason to be."

They reached the seafloor.

But it was no floor.

It was a mouth.

The land was made of scales, enormous and overlapping. Seaweed grew between them like black moss, swaying not with current—but breath. The entire world pulsed beneath them, alive.

Rain dared not touch the ground.

Oni floated just above it, hand to his chest, where the Siren's mark flickered once—then faded. Rain watched as Oni closed his eyes… and sang.

But this time, the song wasn't beautiful.

It was raw. Broken. Like a scream filtered through tears.

The world responded.

A single scale shifted beneath them—and a geyser of water shot upward, forcing Rain back. The ground cracked—or uncoiled—and something massive stirred below.

Oni gritted his teeth. His chest burned. The Siren's song wasn't enough here. This wasn't a place of beauty or allure. This was a graveyard. A prison. And something beneath the waves had heard them enter.

The Sea Serpent had woken.

Rain drew Vermillion. "Purple."

The blade shimmered, burning with strength and sharpness. Its glow barely lit the abyss around them. Oni drifted beside him, eyes locked on the coils now shifting in the distance.

Then… silence.

And from that silence—the first strike.

A tendril thicker than a tree shot from the dark, bone-lined and serrated. Rain parried it mid-air, but the force still spun him backward in a whirl of pressure. Another tendril came for Oni, but this time Oni extended both palms—and sang low, like a growl with rhythm.

The tendril froze for a second—just long enough for Rain to slice it off.

Black ichor exploded into the water, staining it like ink.

The ground quaked.

And from the trench rose the head.

Its face wasn't a face. It was a mask of bone and kelp, with six luminous eyes blinking out of sync, and jaws that opened not vertically, but like a flower blooming from within.

The Sea Serpent hissed—but the sound didn't come from its mouth.

It came from within them.

Rain flinched.

A vision struck him.

He was drowning—not in water, but in memory. Hands around his throat. A father's voice, twisted with hate. Rain, sobbing, younger, smaller, forgotten—

He blinked it away.

Oni roared beside him—his own memory flashing, though Rain didn't see it. Only the aftermath. Oni's eyes glowed white. He surged forward, hands like claws, and sang again—this time a rhythm that felt like war drums underwater.

The Serpent bucked.

Its body rose—hundreds of meters long, spiraling like a cyclone of scale and ancient fury. Its maw opened, releasing a scream that bent the ocean itself—currents reversing, light flickering, bones from long-dead creatures rising from the trench floor like puppets.

Rain gritted his teeth.

"Black."

The blade twisted.

Magic surged into it.

He shouted as Oni charged—no coordination now. Just desperation. Their flow, for the first time since the Siren's defeat, faltered.

They were outmatched.

The sea had calmed—but it was a lie.

A massive, yawning hush rippled across the abyss like breath held too long. Oni stood alone at the edge of a jagged coral ridge, his body trembling—not from fear, but from the echo of something ancient brushing his soul.

Behind him, Rain surfaced, gasping hard, the glow of Vermillion dimmed to a dull red. His skin was pale. His left arm was nearly useless from the Serpent's venom. They had landed a hit on it—a deep cut across one of its secondary heads—but the creature had vanished into the gloom once more, dragging half the terrain with it like the ocean itself obeyed its will.

Oni's chest still burned where the Mark twisted and pulsed—now coiling with new pressure.

The Sea Serpent wasn't just physical.

It was memory.

It was pressure.

"Do you feel it?" Kazin's voice echoed, distorted by distance and the strange gravity of the deep. "It's not just water. This domain is full of centuries… generations of death. Let it press you down. Let it show you who you are."

Oni's eyes narrowed. Rain dragged himself to his feet, mouth full of blood and salt.

"We can't keep reacting," Rain said, teeth clenched. "We're giving it too much space. Too much fear."

Oni turned—something in him had changed. The Siren's song still lingered within his mind, not as music now… but instinct. A flowing rhythm. A current.

He didn't respond with words. He opened his mouth and exhaled vibration.

The walls of the abyss trembled.

Far below them, the Sea Serpent stirred.

The creature didn't swim toward them—it coalesced.

The water itself seemed to unravel, and from that unraveling, its heads emerged: one long and plated in obsidian scales, another pale and bone-white like a decayed eel, a third burning with bioluminescent glyphs that pulsed like a ritual in motion.

Each head was a different manifestation of pain. Of hunger. Of drowned memory.

And then it spoke—not in language, but in a trembling pressure that cracked coral and shattered every smaller life nearby.

Rain's body seized.

Oni dropped to one knee.

"You trespass in my grave."

The Serpent's mind did not belong to one beast. It was a chorus of minds, collected from every prey it had consumed over the centuries. Thoughts long dead lived on inside its voices.

Rain could hear the screams of warriors who had failed. Of children who had been taken during storms. Of beasts broken by crushing depth.

"Focus," Oni growled, his voice warped with Siren resonance.

Rain snapped out of it. His sword flared blue—a rare combination of sharpness and weight. He didn't think. He moved.

They charged.

The battle that followed was not battle. It was cataclysm.

The Serpent struck with the force of a collapsing ocean trench. Its tail alone broke the sea floor into shrapnel. Rain was thrown into a wall of jagged rock—his shoulder split open like paper. Blood clouded the water in thick, beautiful ribbons.

Oni moved low, fast, twisting between spiraling bites. He hurled the Siren's power outward—sending harmonic pulses through the serpent's skulls—but it wasn't enough.

One head broke free of the rhythm.

It clamped down—on Oni's left arm.

CRACK.

The sound echoed like thunder inside Rain's skull.

Oni didn't scream. He twisted into it. His own broken bone tore through skin as he jammed his still-working hand forward and sang directly into the creature's eye.

A vibrating, resonant note.

The head recoiled—imploding from within. A geyser of blood and salt shot through the water.

One head down.

Two remained.

But the Serpent was evolving—regenerating, twisting, mutating. From the stump of the destroyed head, another began to grow.

Rain came in from above, Vermillion now seething with green and orange—size and weight. One mighty slash broke the seabed in half. The shockwave drove the second head back—but not far enough.

It lunged—and this time, Rain couldn't dodge.

The teeth pierced his chest.

Straight through.

Oni screamed—but it was too late.

Rain's body twisted on the fang like a ragdoll. Blood spilled in bursts, then was carried upward by currents too strong to fight.

Rain didn't move.

The light in his sword blinked out.

Oni's body folded in on itself for a breathless moment, crushed by grief, disbelief, rage.

Then came the sound.

A low, unearthly wail. The Siren's call… but inverted. Corrupted. It came from Oni's throat—but it was not Oni.

It was the Mark.

The Sea Serpent tried to move—but the water around it congealed. It couldn't swim.

The abyss itself bent.

Oni's broken arm twisted back into place with a sickening pop as the Mark pulsed, lines of black fire rippling across his skin.

He moved forward, eyes hollow, voice like stone grinding against metal.

And he sang.

The seabed cracked. The creature's three heads began to thrash violently, trying to flee—but its body wouldn't obey.

Oni drove his hand into its eye socket—deeper, deeper, deeper—

Until he found the soul.

He pulled.

The Sea Serpent shrieked, not from pain—but from loss.

Its power flooded Oni's Mark. The abyss went silent.

Oni stood, now glowing too—his body coursing with dark purple flame. The Sea Serpent's Mark burned on his ribs, encased in scales. Behind him, the severed carcass of the Serpent twisted, convulsing, and then went still.

They stared at each other.

No words.

Only knowing.

Kazin arrived not long after—his illusionary form flickering in the depths. He surveyed the corpse, then looked at Rain's glowing form.

"You died," Kazin said. "And came back stronger."

Rain said nothing.

Kazin then turned to Oni. "You claimed the Serpent. And you didn't drown in it."

Oni's eyes burned in the dim light.

"It will take time to control," Kazin said. "But you've earned it."

Oni closed his eyes—and felt the Serpent inside him: the memory of pressure, of evolution through suffering.

Of silence.

He knew now what it meant to be submerged and unafraid.

But they were not ready yet.

Rain's new strength had to be tested. Oni's command of the Sea Serpent's power had only begun. And ahead of them waited the most ancient and intelligent of the Abyss's guardians:

Tidus.

But not yet.

Now… they had time to breathe.

To prepare.

And to honor the grave they had turned into triumph.