The change came quietly.

Not with a wave crashing over the bow or a cry from the lookout, but with resistance—subtle at first, like sailing against an unseen slope. The ship continued forward, sails full, wind steady… and yet its pace began to slip.

Noel felt it through the deck before anyone said a word. The faint vibration beneath his boots deepened, not from strain, but from correction—constant, deliberate correction.

Gustave felt it too.

His hands shifted on the wheel, not sharply, but often. Small adjustments. Fractional turns. The kind only someone who had lived at sea for decades would bother making.

"That current shouldn't exist," the captain muttered.

Noel turned slightly. "Which one?"

Gustave didn't look away from the water. "All of them."

The sea ahead rolled in long, shallow swells that didn't break. They slid sideways against the hull, pressing rather than colliding, as if the water had decided forward motion was optional. The lantern reflections stretched unnaturally across the surface, then snapped back in rhythm—too regular to be chance.

The surface was breathing.

In. Out. Slow. Fast.

Elyra's mana stirred sharply beside Noel.

"This isn't localized," she said, eyes narrowing as sigils flared faintly around her boots. "No focal point. No anchor. Whatever this is, it's everywhere at once."

"So not a spell," Marcus muttered.

"No," Elyra replied. "A condition."

Noel's gaze swept the water, then the horizon, then back to the sea immediately surrounding the ship. There were no shapes beneath the surface yet. No shadows cutting through the depths. No whispers at the edge of hearing.

No song.

That absence pressed harder than noise ever had.

"They're not announcing themselves," Noel said quietly. "Which means they don't need to."

Noir's shadow tightened around his feet, ears angling flat as her eyes tracked the waterline.

'We're not drawing anything in,' she said. 'The space is shrinking around us.'

He felt it then—the way the currents intersected, not randomly, but deliberately. Pressure from the port side. Resistance ahead. A subtle drag beneath the keel.

A funnel.

The ship lurched—not violently, but enough for several sailors to brace instinctively.

Gustave exhaled slowly through his nose and adjusted the wheel again. This time, the resistance pushed back.

Harder.

The sails snapped once despite the wind remaining unchanged.

"We're losing speed," someone called out from above.

Without touching the rigging.

Gustave's jaw set.

He didn't raise his voice when he spoke, but everyone nearby heard it.

"We're being pulled into a fighting lane."

The water ahead darkened.

Not all at once, but in a slow, deliberate bloom, as if ink were spreading beneath the surface. The sea didn't churn. It displaced. A vast mass shifted below the keel, forcing water aside with patient inevitability.

No swarm followed.

Just one presence.

The ship creaked as pressure built beneath it, the hull groaning low and deep, a sound that carried through the deck like a warning bell struck underwater. Lantern reflections warped, stretching and snapping as the surface tension changed.

Marcus felt it first.

He planted his boots wider apart, jaw tightening as his shoulders rolled back instinctively.

Selene's breath slowed. Frost crawled faintly along her fingers—not in response to cold, but to sensation. Her eyes fixed on the darkening water ahead.

"Gravity's wrong," she said quietly. "It's pulling downward. Not dragging us back—pinning us."

Garron said nothing. He stepped forward instead, posture settling into something sharp and focused, like a fighter squaring up before a single opponent rather than bracing for a crowd.

Noel stood near the bow, eyes locked on the disturbance.

There was no song.

That was what made his skin crawl.

No whisper pressing at the edge of thought. No false voices. No tug at memory or doubt. Whatever was coming didn't need distraction. It wasn't trying to break formation or scatter the crew.

It was forcing an answer.

'This isn't a test of cohesion,' Noel realized.

A challenge.

The water bulged upward.

For a brief moment, the surface split—not explosively, but like something immense brushing too close to the air. A structure broke through: not flesh, not scale, but something layered and wrong. Dark segments overlapped like armor grown rather than forged, slick with seawater and faintly luminescent along their seams.

It vanished again just as quickly, sinking back beneath the surface.

The ship shuddered in its wake.

Gustave didn't swear. He didn't shout orders. He only leaned forward slightly at the helm, eyes narrowed, voice dropping to a level meant for those who understood seas that hunted back.

"That's not a hunter," he said under his breath. "That's a gatekeeper."

Noel's grip tightened on the railing.

His mind raced—not for tactics yet, not for spells—but for understanding. The scale. The restraint. The certainty.

This wasn't here to probe.

It was here to stop them.

Noel exhaled slowly, lightning stirring beneath his skin as his gaze stayed fixed on the water ahead.

'Shit,' he thought grimly. 'What the hell is that thing.'

The sea answered.

Water bulged upward ahead of the bow as if something vast were pushing against the surface from below, not rushing, not forcing—simply asserting that it was there. The ship groaned as pressure rolled beneath it, planks vibrating in a deep, uneven rhythm that traveled up through boots and bones alike.

Then the water split.

The thing emerged slowly, deliberately, as if it had all the time in the world.

It was enormous—longer than the ship was wide, its true length impossible to gauge while most of it remained submerged. What broke the surface wasn't a head, not properly. It was a mass of interlocking structures, layered plates that resembled armor grown rather than built. Dark segments overlapped and shifted against one another, each seam faintly luminescent with a cold, bioluminescent glow that pulsed in time with the surrounding currents.

No eyes were visible.

That somehow made it worse.

The moment it breached, the pressure hit.

A weight—direct and intimate—pressed down on every mind on deck. Thoughts slowed. Balance wavered. The world felt suddenly… heavier, as if gravity itself had leaned closer.

Marcus staggered half a step, teeth grinding. "That's—" He cut himself off, bracing. "That's a lot of pressure."

Selene's breath caught, frost crawling up her arm before she forced it back.

Garron planted his feet wider, muscles coiling. He didn't look away from the thing. "Fucking hell. " he muttered.

Noel felt it too—the pull, the distortion, the familiar edge of mental intrusion layered beneath raw force.

The deck creaked.

Someone screamed.

Noel turned just in time to see a sailor vault the railing, jumping, eyes glassy and unfocused as if answering a call only he could hear.

"No—!" Noel shouted.

The man didn't even hit the water.

A spike erupted upward in a blur of motion—one of many barbed structures that shot out from beneath the surface. It impaled the sailor clean through the torso and kept going, lifting him into the air as seawater cascaded down his limp body.

The pressure spiked.

Several crew members lurched instinctively toward the rail.

That was enough.

"Noir!" Noel barked.

Shadow exploded outward.

Darkness surged from beneath Noel's feet as Noir answered instantly, her power unfurling across the deck in a violent, living wave. Shadows stretched and thickened, wrapping around boots, ankles, wrists—binding crew to their own silhouettes, anchoring them to the planks like iron chains made of night.

If anyone tried to move, the shadow pulled back.

'Nobody jumps,' Noir snarled inside his head, fury burning hot. 'Not while I'm here.'

The impaled sailor was yanked back beneath the surface, vanishing in a churn of dark water and ripples.

Silence followed.

Not calm—never calm—but a breath held too long.

Noel stepped forward, Revenant Fang humming as lightning gathered along its edge, his eyes never leaving the massive shape looming ahead.

Noel moved first.

He vanished.

"Shadow Step."

His body collapsed into the darkness beneath his feet and reappeared a heartbeat later on the very edge of the creature's presence, shadow peeling away from him like torn silk. The scale of it was overwhelming up close—mass layered upon mass, armored segments shifting against each other as if the sea itself were wearing a spine.

Noel didn't stop to measure it.

"Eclipse Rend."

Shadow swallowed the light.

Revenant Fang's edge fractured into overlapping afterimages of black, a crescent of absolute void tearing outward in a sweeping arc. The wave didn't carve—it erased. Water parted without splashing. Armor-like segments dissolved mid-motion, edges vanishing as if they had never existed.

The sea screamed.

Not audibly, but through pressure—through a violent distortion that slammed against the ship and rattled every bone aboard. The monster recoiled, mass shifting as the erased section failed to reform.

It bled darkness.

Marcus had already planted his stance.

Mana surged through him, heat building—not wild, not rushed. Blue fire condensed around his forearm as molten earth answered beneath his feet.

"Molten Lance."

The spell formed with a low, violent hum—a spear of solidified magma veined with azure flame, heat so intense the air warped around it. Marcus hurled it forward with everything he had.

The lance crossed the distance in a blink.

It struck deep.

The impact wasn't explosive—it was catastrophic. Magma punched through layered armor and buried itself inside the mass beneath the surface, blue fire detonating outward from within. The water around the strike boiled violently, steam erupting as the creature convulsed.

The pressure buckled.

The pull on the ship faltered for the first time since the funnel had formed.

Noel landed lightly on the deck as the shadows snapped back into place around the crew. Lightning crawled along Revenant Fang again, sharp and eager.

He looked to his left.

Marcus was already looking at him.

No words were exchanged.

They didn't need them.

They had felt it—the resistance giving way, the way the sea had hesitated, the way the thing beneath it had reacted.

It could be hurt.

Which meant it could be beaten.

Noel turned back toward the water, eyes hard, lightning and shadow coiling together around him as the sea churned in pain and fury ahead.

"Good," he said quietly.

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