Kingdom Hearts: Consumed by Darkness

Helios swam closer, slowing down as he approached the space. The magic tickled his skin, bending time like a glass prism. "She's still here. Hidden, shielded, phased, or whatever—we're about to find out."

"Stand back," Kurai said, her tone shifting from skeptical to sharp. "You find it and show the faultline and I shatter it. Now it's time for my part."

Darkness pooled around her as she floated before the anomaly. She pressed one palm outward, tendrils of pure shadow spreading like cracks across the shimmering distortion. Her eyes narrowed, lips curling into a slight grin.

"Let's see how time magic holds against the power of darkness."

With a guttural whisper, Kurai released a surge of concentrated darkness—not raw brute force, but precise disruption. The darkness wasn't just trying to destroy it but was rather trying to disagree with the rules of reality themselves.

The wall howled.

A ripple spread across the chamber like a sonar pulse. Currents reversed. Light dimmed.

Then the illusion shattered like ice under a hammer.

Where there had been only a coral wall now twisted a corridor. Spiraling and unnatural, it led down into a trench within the trench. It had not been carved by nature, nor conjured by sane magic. The entrance churned like a whirlpool caught mid-freeze, a frozen rift smeared in darkness.

Kurai hovered, slightly winded but composed. "There it is."

Helios stared ahead, his face unreadable. "Bingo. I knew it, a temporal pocket. She's been hiding inside this sealed instant."

"This takes hiding in plain sight to a whole new level." Kurai clicked her tongue. "It's brilliant. Arrogant, but brilliant."

"It's just a trick," Helios murmured. "A useful trick nonetheless. Now we should be ready for anything. We've opened the door quite loudly, but it doesn't try to flee. That means it wants us to come to it."

"And here we are," she said flatly. "So what now?"

"We go in," Helios said. "We find her. And we see what she has in store for us. I wonder how power she's gotten."

They entered the corridor.

Immediately, the world warped. The water thickened like syrup, the sound slowed, and the pressure dropped. The tunnel pulsed as if it were alive—organic and impossible. Coral walls bent in shapes that made no sense, with angles that turned inward and backward all at once. The current didn't flow; it coiled.

It was not a space meant to exist. It was a moment locked in stasis, warped by something that defied comprehension.

"Stay sharp," Helios said. "Time might not work normally in here. It might make us more susceptible to time magic."

"Of course it does," Kurai whispered. "Well let's hurry up because I'm tired of waiting. I'd like to get my hands on that witch."

They pressed on, moving deeper through the winding corridor. Strange carvings marked the walls—symbols Helios didn't recognize. They pulsed faintly, like veins illuminated by passing thought.

"She's close," Kurai murmured. "I feel the darkness. It's fragile but at the same time also overwhelming. Almost like it's struggling to contain itself inside its vessel. Like how I was when you placed me in here."

"That's useful to know. She might be losing control of her power if we push her to use more power than she can contain," Helios said.

"True, but it is adjusting. I think we should hurry."

They emerged into a vast chamber—an imitation of Ursula's lair, but rotted, twisted. Her throne floated at its center, grown from blackened coral. Lanterns of bone swung gently in the slow current, casting deep crimson light over the walls.

And there, seated like a queen at the edge of collapse, was Ursula.

Except… not.

Her form pulsed with dark energy, bloated and shifting. Her skin writhed like something beneath it wanted out. Her eyes glowed dimly—vacant. And around her floated fragments of memories—Ariel's smile, Athena's death, Triton's fury—caught in looping shadows, like fish in nets.

She didn't move.

"She's asleep?" Kurai asked, shard already half-formed in her hands.

"No," Helios said grimly. "She might be suspended."

A ring of glyphs surrounded the throne. A stasis seal, powered by something ancient. It wasn't her spell.

"She's like a chrysalis," Helios whispered. "I think the parasite's incubating. Preparing her for something and I don't think we'll like the result."

Kurai raised a hand. "Let me end her now. We won't get a second chance."

Helios didn't answer immediately. He stared at Ursula—no, the thing that wore her form—and something in his expression changed.

"No," he said. "If we strike now, we might break the cocoon. Release it early. We need a way to trap it before it hatches."

"Then what?" Kurai snapped. "You want to wait?"

He took a cautious move forward toward the floating, half-withered figure on the throne. The glyphs around Ursula pulsed erratically now—as if reacting to their presence. The room itself seemed to groan.

But before either of them could move, the stasis glyphs screamed—an audible pitch that reverberated like twisted whale song.

"Something's wrong," Helios muttered. "It's reacting to—"

The chamber shook violently.

A jagged tear opened behind them, where the corridor once was. From it exploded two immense shapes—long, serpentine, and wreathed in writhing darkness. Flotsam and Jetsam had arrived—but they had grown even more monstrous.

Now massive as krakens, their once sleek, eel-like forms were bloated with black miasma. Their bodies pulsed with unnatural muscle, covered in jagged scars that glowed with abyssal runes. One had six glowing yellow eyes arranged in a circle; the other had a glowing crest like a blade atop its skull. Both bore the twisted mark of darkness.

And they weren't alone.

Something ancient followed in their wake—a nightmare of myth.

A third beast surged from the fissure behind them: the Zmey Vodianoy, a creature that was twelve-limbed, it had a dragonlike body coiled through the stasis dimension with crushing force. Its head resembled a wolf's, its snout long and filled with uneven fangs, and its throat crackled with static lightning. An aura of storm followed in its wake, making the stasis realm tremble.

"Of course," Helios growled. "There's a sea monster protecting her."

"The parasite learned from last time," Kurai said through clenched teeth.

The Zmey shrieked, and time itself buckled. Reality blurred. The water thickened, choking their movement. All around them, the shadows of the dimension flickered—fading into barely contained chaos.

"We can't fight this here!" Helios shouted. "The dimension is unstable. If it collapses while we're inside, we might be erased!"

Kurai launched the darkness shards at Flotsam as he lunged, splitting the eel's snout. But the wound sealed within seconds.

"Suggestions?" she barked, dodging Jetsam's spiraling tail-blade.

"I can open a rift back to the outside," Helios said, dodging a whip of lightning from the Zmey. "But I'll need a few seconds!"

Kurai moved fast, sending spears of darkness crashing into the ceiling to disorient the creatures. "Then take them."

Helios floated back, extending Equilibrium and muttering under his breath. A vortex of swirling energy spun around the tip, the spell circle forming with unsteady pulses.

The Zmey reared back, lightning crackling in its mouth.

"NOW!" Kurai screamed.

Helios threw the blade forward, ripping a gash into space with a boom of displaced water and light. A dark corridor opened—barely stable—whirling and snarling at the edges.