Chapter 63 Abyss
The air inside the stateroom had become a thick, gelatinous soup of salt and oil. I lay on the cold iron floor, my cheek pressed against the vibrating metal. The Obsidian Star was no longer riding the waves; it was plunging. We were in the Abyssal Gates now, the pressurized descent making the rivets of the ship groan like a thousand tortured voices.
My lungs were full of shadows. Every time I inhaled, it felt like a colony of sea urchins was expanding in my chest, their needles coated in the black bile of the Blight. I coughed, a wet, racking sound that left a shimmering puddle of ink on the floorboards. I didn't even bother to wipe my mouth anymore. The black lines on my arms were no longer just marks; they were deep, thrumming grooves of charcoal that glowed with a sickly, faint violet light.
The door groaned open.
Klaus stood there, his frame filling the narrow entrance. He was drenched, his black leather combat gear slick and smelling of the deep ocean. His sapphire eyes were burning with a manic, desperate clarity. He looked at me, lying in the mess of my own sickness, and for a split second, the Admiral’s mask cracked. His hand twitched, reaching for me, but he stopped himself.
"We are at the threshold," he said. His voice was a low rumble, matching the vibration of the hull. "The secondary fleet is three miles behind us. The Emperor has given the order to commence the deep harvest. If we don't seal the Gate now, there won't be anything left to save."
I pushed myself up, my hands slipping on the wet iron. The charcoal silk of my dress was shredded at the hem, heavy with the weight of the water we had taken on in the hold. "And you expect me to help you? After you shattered the ears of my people? After you used my voice to pause their hearts so you could clear the way?"
Klaus walked into the room, his boots clashing against the floor. He knelt in front of me, grabbing my shoulders with a grip that was iron and ice. "I did what was necessary to keep the Obsidian Star from being ripped apart! If we sink, the resonance dies with us. Is that what you want? To die on the floor of a closet while your father turns to stone?"
"I'm already turning to stone, Klaus!" I shouted, the effort bringing a fresh spray of black fluid to my lips. I grabbed the front of his uniform, my fingers staining the silver plates with my ink. "Look at me! I am the rot! I am the thing you're trying to seal away!"
"No," he whispered, his face inches from mine. "You are the key."
He pulled me up, hauling my limp weight into his arms. I was too weak to fight him, my head falling against his shoulder. He smelled of tar, cold rain, and the sharp, medicinal tang of the winter salve he’d used to try and save me. He carried me out of the cabin and through the narrow, red-lit corridors of the ship.
We reached the Heart of the ship—the resonance chamber. It was a circular room at the very center of the hull, built around a massive, transparent sphere of reinforced glass. Inside the sphere, the dark water of the Abyss swirled, trapped by pressure and magic.
Klaus set me down on a stone pedestal in front of the glass. He turned to the control panel, his fingers flying over the brass levers.
"Look," he commanded.
I looked through the glass.
Beyond the hull of the Obsidian Star, the Abyssal Gate was visible. It wasn't a door; it was a wound in the sea floor. A massive, jagged rift that glowed with a pulsing, toxic green light. From the rift, the black bile was pouring upward in thick, volcanic clouds. It looked like the ocean was bleeding ink.
And all around the rift, my people were there.
They weren't fighting anymore. They were drifting, their bodies tangled in the black vines of the Scourge. Some were singing—a low, discordant hum that sounded like a death rattle. They were trying to soothe the wound, but their magic was only making the rot spread faster.
"They're feeding it," I whispered, my heart fracturing.
"The Emperor’s fleet will be here in less than an hour," Klaus said, his voice hard. "They will drop the siphons directly into the rift. They will harvest the raw essence, and the shockwave will collapse the entire shelf. Every siren in this trench will be buried alive."
He turned to me, grabbing my hands. His palms were freezing, but I could feel the heat of the Anchor pulsing in the air between us.
"The Salt-Kiss," he said. "The resonance we shared in the tower... it wasn't enough to clear the lungs, but it was enough to tune the frequencies. If we do it now, right here at the source, we can reverse the flow. We can pull the rot back into the rift and seal the rift with the resonance of two hearts."
I looked at the black lines on my arms. I looked at the ink on his cuff.
"The Scribe said the vessel might not survive," I reminded him.
"I don't care about the vessel," Klaus rasped.
He pulled me against him, his chest heaving. The sapphire fire in his eyes was so intense it felt like it was burning through the black pearls of my veil. He reached up and tore the veil away, letting the mesh hit the floor with a soft rattle.
"I've spent three centuries being a leash, Nerissa," he whispered. "I've been a guard for a dying empire and a butcher for a king I hate. I have nothing left to give but this."
"Klaus..."
"Do not save me again," he commanded. "If the flow starts to take you, you push it into me. Do you hear me? You push it all into the Anchor. I am the vessel. I am built for the weight."
"You'll turn to stone," I wept.
"Then I will be a monument to the only thing I ever did right," he said.
He grabbed the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair. He leaned in, his lips brushing mine. The taste was salt, ozone, and the end of all things.
"Sing, little fish," he murmured. "Sing the world to sleep."
I closed my eyes. I searched for the place inside me where the ocean lived—not the swamp, not the rot, but the deep, clear turquoise of the First Era. I found it, a tiny spark beneath the layers of ash.
I opened my mouth.