Chapter 18: Overtime

The flood had no surface. Not really. Just shifting skin, black on black, breaking into white teeth whenever it felt like biting. The slab we clung to was no bigger than a butcher’s table, cracked and bleeding from the plateau’s corpse. Every swell threatened to roll us under.

My sister’s nails dug crescents into my arm. Evelyn knelt on the far side, one hand on her knife, the other keeping us steady against the water’s spin. Her face was stone, but her breathing wasn’t. Sharp, jagged pulls. Same as mine.

The teeth weren’t gone. I heard them grinding under the flood, each churn of water another gnash. The shadow hadn’t drowned. It had spread.

“Grace.” Evelyn’s voice was a rasp. “He’s not finished.”

I knew. My chest was still wrong. Each pulse a borrowed beat, stuttering like a dying machine. Whatever Max fed into me, whatever I shoved back into him it wasn’t clean. It left residue. And it wanted out.

My sister whimpered. Her bracelet clinked against my ribs. Tiny charms, mocking in their cheer. I brushed her wet hair back and whispered lies. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

The flood disagreed. Waves reared like spines, slamming together with thunder that shook the stone. Spray salted our eyes, our tongues, our cuts. Evelyn spat blood into the water and scanned the black horizon.

“Nothing’s over until we see land.”

I almost laughed. Land. As if this place obeyed geography. The plateau bled out of existence. The horizon looped back on itself, endless and wrong. But she needed something to hold, so I nodded.

Then the water moved.

Not waves. A shift. A mass. The teeth spread wide beneath us, pressing the slab upward before circling it. The flood didn’t just want us drowned it wanted us swallowed.

Evelyn braced. “Hold tight.”

The slab tilted, cracked. I hugged my sister to my chest. The water erupted.

A spine of shadow burst upward, slick and writhing. No face this time, no crown. Just teeth, a spiral of them, snapping through spray. The shadow had shed its skin. It was hunger distilled.

It struck the slab. Stone split down the middle. We were in the water before I could scream.

Cold hit like a fist. My lungs clenched. My arms locked around my sister, kicking upward against nothing. The teeth churned beneath, dragging currents against us. Evelyn’s hand flashed beside me, her knife punching into black water as if stabbing mattered against flood itself.

We broke surface, choking, thrashing. The slab pieces drifted apart like flotsam. Evelyn clung to one, pale hair plastered to her face, eyes blazing at me. “Swim!”

As if swimming mattered here. The water had no direction, no end. Still, I kicked. My sister’s bracelet flashed each stroke. My body screamed, lungs on fire, wounds tearing wider with every pull. But forward felt better than still.

The teeth came again. A roar under the waves. A ripple surging fast. I turned just in time to see it break

Shadow jaws, big as a building, snapping up from below. Water cascaded off them, each tooth jagged as a cliff. It wasn’t Max anymore. It was everything he opened. And it was starving.

I shoved my sister sideways, screaming, “Go!”

The jaws came down where we’d been. Water detonated around us. I felt the suction drag me under, down into the spiral throat. My ears burst with pressure, lungs burning raw. I kicked, clawed, desperate, but the teeth closed in. Darkness pressed harder than stone.

Then light.

Thin. Cracked. The same fractured glow I thought I’d spent. It bled out of me in sparks, streaking across the teeth. They recoiled. The jaws shuddered, splintered, then snapped back into the flood.

I broke surface again, hacking water, barely holding my sister. Evelyn grabbed my collar, hauling us toward another drifting slab. We collapsed across it, coughing salt and blood. For a moment, the flood stilled.

Evelyn leaned close, knife shaking in her hand. “You still have it.”

I spat bile. “Barely.”

“Barely might be enough.”

Her eyes didn’t blink. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking past me, to the water that still rolled with teeth. She knew what I didn’t want to admit this wasn’t a fight we could just outlast. It was a debt. And debts don’t drown.

My sister whimpered again, clutching the bracelet tight. “Make it stop.”

I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But the wrong pulse in my chest told me the truth. It wasn’t stopping. It was circling. Waiting for me to break first.

The flood bulged again. Another spine tore up, closer this time. Teeth spiraled around it, dripping black fire. Evelyn stood, knife poised though we both knew it was a prayer more than a weapon.

“Grace,” she hissed. “If you’ve got anything left”

I did. Not enough. But maybe just enough to burn with.

I pushed my sister into Evelyn’s arms. My throat was raw when I said it. “Keep her safe.”

Evelyn’s jaw clenched. She knew what I meant. She didn’t argue. Just nodded once, sharp.

The spine lashed at us. I dove off the slab to meet it.

The water closed over me like a coffin. Teeth whirled, snapping inches from my legs. The glow inside me sparked, weak, fractured, but mine. I dragged it into my fists, into my lungs, into the scream ripping out of me.

Light poured. Not clean. Not whole. But jagged enough to hurt. It cut through the nearest teeth, searing cracks into shadow bone. The flood shuddered, screamed through the water. The jaws recoiled, thrashing.

I kept screaming, kept burning what was left of me. Every pulse stripped another piece, every flare pulling the marrow out of my bones. But the teeth faltered. They sank back into the flood, grinding in fury but not victory.

I broke surface again. My body was ash. My chest a hollow drum. I barely reached the slab before Evelyn hauled me half-dead across it. My sister clung to me, sobbing.

Alive. Still. For now.

The flood growled under us, rolling teeth along the horizon. It wasn’t gone. Not beaten. Just hurt. And hurt things don’t quit they hunt.

Evelyn leaned over me, face carved sharp in the dim. “You can’t keep doing that. It’ll kill you.”

“I know.” My voice was smoke. “That’s the point.”

Her eyes flicked, something breaking behind the stone. She didn’t argue. She just tightened her grip on the knife and looked out at the teeth gnashing in the dark.

Overtime. That’s what this was. No winners. Just who could bleed longer without sinking.

The flood laughed then. Not Max’s laugh. Deeper. Wider. A sound with no lungs behind it. The kind of laugh that belong

ed to the teeth themselves.

I shivered, holding my sister tighter.

Overtime had just begun.