A loud, cold voice cut through the moment.

"Your feet stopped."

Aurora's smile died instantly.

She whipped her head around.

Krolious the octopus man stood behind them. His tentacles writhed with agitation as he glared down at them. The bone dagger sticking out of his chest was still dripping with blood, but he didn't seem to care.

His eyes narrowed.

And then

With a disgusted grunt, he reached up with one of his tentacles… gripped the dagger… and yanked it out of his own chest.

Blood splattered across the ground.

In the same swift motion

He whipped the dagger toward Aurora and Levy.

Fast.

Too fast.

FLLLUCHHH!!!

The sound of metal slicing through flesh echoed sharp and wet in the air.

Aurora felt warm droplets spray across her face.

Her entire body went cold.

She blinked, confused and then she saw it.

Levy's body jerked violently.

A bone dagger still slick with Krolious's blood was stabbed straight through his throat.

The blade had entered from behind his neck and come out the front, its sharp white tip glistening inches from Aurora's face.

Her heart stopped.

Levy's fingers.. still touching her cheek trembled once… then fell limp.

"I… I am so… rry…" he whispered, voice choking as blood filled his throat.

His eyes lost their light.

And then.. he collapsed onto her.

"LEVY!!"

Aurora's scream tore out of her, raw and panicked.

She caught him as he fell, cradling his head in her arms. Her hands trembled violently, smearing more blood across his cheeks, her clothes, everywhere.

"No no no no no.. Levy Levy" her voice cracked as she looked at the blade lodged in his neck. "He… he's not breathing.."

She brought trembling fingers to his nose.

Nothing.

Only cold air.

Nothing warm.

No breath.

Her own breath hitched painfully.

"He… he can't die…" she whispered, voice breaking. "He can't… he can't… he can't"

Tears spilled down her cheeks, dripping onto his pale face.

She shook him gently.

"Levy… Levy please… please… look at me… hey… hey!"

But his head only slumped deeper against her arm.

"No… no… don't do this… not now… not like this" she sobbled, her voice trembling uncontrollably. "I just… I just said yes to you… we just please…"

Her hands, shaking uncontrollably, reached for the dagger.

"I can heal you," she whispered frantically. "I can heal you, I can.. I.."

She grabbed the dagger's hilt with blood-slick fingers, her entire body trembling as despair clouded her eyes.

Her lips trembled.

"It's fine… I'll fix it… I'll heal you… yes… yes… I can heal."

But she had just grabbed the dagger.. Then

BOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!

The world exploded.

The ground beneath them trembled violently.

The water around the drowned exchange roared like a monster awakening. Buildings cracked, cages rattled, dust and sea debris erupted everywhere.

And then

Suddenly

CRRRRRRUMMMMMM!!!

A blast of pure force erupted from Aurora's body, exploding outward in a surge so violent the water itself recoiled away from her. A thick, blinding pink light burst upward, expanding from her chest like a star imploding in reverse. The beam speared straight through the water above, cutting a perfect path upward as if the ocean itself surrendered before it.

Her pink eyes flashed bright, wild, almost feverish before the light swallowed her whole.

For a moment, she looked as though she were made of pure radiance.

A column of glowing pink pierced all the way toward the unseen surface above, endless, unstoppable, roaring with such power that even the surrounding seabed trembled beneath its pressure.

All around her, Atlantians and monsters alike were thrown off their feet shoved back by the invisible shockwave that blasted out from her as the beam ascended higher and higher.

The yellow-skinned man who they had just subdued was launched several meters away, tumbling across the stone floor. Even unconscious, he murmured something incoherent, his mind still trapped in Levy's illusion.. As it seems that no one or with no method he can awake from that illusion if not by himself coming out of it.

"What… what is this?!" Krolious shouted, tentacles flailing wildly as he tried to anchor himself to the floor. But even with all his strength, he skidded backward, dragged by the sheer pressure of the pink energy flooding the area.

His eyes widened fear mixing with disbelief.

This wasn't normal power. he'd ever seen something like this before

In the center of the beam

Aurora screamed.

Not from physical pain alone but something far deeper.

Her scream tore through the water like a shattered soul.

"AAARRRGHHHHHHHHHH!!"

Her voice echoed in every direction, raw and broken, as if something inside her was being ripped apart. Her body arched, trembling violently from head to toe. The light radiating from her skin pulsed bright, flickering, then bright again, like her very existence was splitting open.

Her eyes glowed so intensely they almost looked Pink-hot fire itself.

Her body was glowing pink, then shaking, then glowing more, her chest rising and falling with panicked, painful breaths. Blood dripped from her lips. Tears streamed from her glowing eyes.

It wasn't just physical agony.

This was spiritual pain.Soul pain.. Mind pain. beyond anything physical.

A pain nothing in the world could compare to.

Yet even in that torment her hand never left the handle of the bone dagger lodged in Levy's neck.

Her fingers clenched it so tightly her knuckles turned white, as if that dagger was the only thing keeping her existence together.

Krolious, still fighting the shockwave, watched in disbelief.

"Impossible… what kind of monster is this girl?!" he murmured, genuinely rattled.

But Aurora wasn't listening to anything anymore. She wasn't seeing them. She wasn't aware of the world around her.

Her entire being was focused on one thing:

Levy.

His blood still stained her hands. His body lay limp beneath her. His warmth was fading second by second.

And suddenly

her hair began to change.

At first, it was subtle.. the black at the roots flickering with faint pink strands.

Then the pink deepened, spread, and ignited like wildfire.

It crawled down her scalp in waves, turning every strand into a brilliant, vibrant pink glowing, shimmering, alive. Her once black hair became a radiant curtain of soft neon, floating weightlessly in the pink beam.

Then

the dagger in Levy's neck began to vibrate.

The blade shuddered

Harder

Harder

Until finally, it wrenched itself free of Levy's flesh and flew upward, out of her grasp, suspended in midair.

A soft, glowing pink aura wrapped around it.

And then

Something impossible began to happen.

The dagger…

began to change.

From the sides of the bone blade, two tiny white, fluffy arms pushed themselves out like a newborn chick stretching its limbs for the first time.

The center of the blade rippled, reshaping like soft clay warmed by divine light.

A small, delicate face formed.

Bright pink lips.

A tiny nose.

Glowing pink eyes blinking awake.

Soft eyebrows.

A gentle, feminine expression.

A sentient being

a creature or a child.. born from the dagger itself.

It floated there, suspended in the light like a newborn wrapped in radiance.

"M… mother…" the small blade-being whispered, looking at Aurora with wide, soft eyes full of innocence.

Its voice was tiny. Gentle. Newly born.

Filled with an instinctive connection.

It looked at its own hands, moving them slowly, trembling with the wonder of existence.

"I… I… am alive?" it whispered, stunned by its own words, as if shocked by the miracle of breathing and thinking.

Then

Its gaze drifted downward.

Down to Levy.

To the pool of blood beneath him.

To his lifeless face.

To the deep wound in his throat.

The glowing pink eyes widened in shock and horror... As if it could feel something inside itself.. From very inside of it.

In an instant, tears welled up in the tiny creature's eyes not its own emotions, but Aurora's emotions, overflowing and bleeding into this newborn existence.

It hugged itself with its little arms, trembling.

And then the tears fell.

One pink tear rolled down the blade-being's cheek

glowing like liquid sunrise.

It slid down its small chin

onto the body of the dagger.. As if totally untouched by water around it

down the edge where bone met pink light

and then

drip

The tear fell through the water.. straight toward Levy.

It landed at the center of his forehead.

For a moment

nothing happened.

The world held its breath. The beam of pink light trembled. Aurora froze, chest heaving, eyes wide and broken.

The dagger-being hovered silently, tiny body curled inward, waiting..

Then

Levy's body twitched.

Just a barely noticeable jerk. A flicker of a nerve.

A ripple of something beneath his skin.

And suddenly

A faint pink shimmer pulsed beneath his skin, almost invisible at first… but slowly growing stronger. The dead pallor of his face softened.

Color returned to his cheeks. His hollow, sunken eyes twitched as if stirred by a dream.

Then

fwsshhhhhhhhh

All the wounds on Levy's body began to close.

The deep slit in his neck sealed shut, blood pulling back into the skin as if rewinding time itself. Flesh knitted together. Muscles reformed. Skin regenerated until not even a scar remained.

His starved frame thin to the bone after six days without food filled out again. His ribs, visible only moments ago, disappeared beneath healthy skin. His cheeks regained shape. His eyes were no longer hollow pits.

Even the shredded flesh on his feet torn apart by the debris he had stepped on to reach Aurora healed fully. The sharp fragments of coral and bone were pushed out of him as the wounds sealed and closed, leaving clean, unbroken skin behind.

He looked completely recovered but still not moving.. Just silently lay there.

For a moment, the world around Aurora was nothing but blinding pink light warm, violent, overwhelming pouring out from her body as if her very soul had erupted. It hummed, vibrated, pulsed violently like a star collapsing and birthing itself all at once. The water trembled. The ground cracked. Even the air she breathed felt too heavy for her lungs.

But then

Hahhh HAAAHHH!!

A desperate gasp tore through the pink beam.

Levy's body jolted upward in Aurora's lap as if someone had yanked his spirit back from a void. His chest expanded violently, sucking in water then air then life. His hands trembled weakly, fingers curling against her clothes. His eyes, which had been empty, lifeless, cold only moments ago, flew open wide.

He was breathing.

He was alive.

He gasped hard, greedily, desperately "Hah… haaahh hahh." each breath shaking through his chest as though the act of breathing itself was a battle.

Aurora's arms, which had been cradling him gently, trembled around him.

Only then did Levy notice the sight before him.

Aurora was glowing.

Not faintly not like soft bioluminescence from sea plants but burning like a pillar of living light. A bright, vivid, impossible pink radiated from her skin, her hair, her very tears were dark pink. The world around him had been swallowed entirely by the color, turning into a shimmering tunnel of pink. It framed her like she was the center of some divine phenomenon.

And Aurora…

she wasn't just glowing.

She looked like she was hurting.

Pink tears slid silently down her cheeks in slow, luminous droplets that dissolved into the water. Her eyes, bright pink and flickering like unstable flames, darted unfocused. Even her hair normally soft and floating gently in the water was streaming upward as though caught in the middle of a storm only she could feel.

"Hey… hey… Aurora…" Levy's voice came out thin, trembling, scraped raw from suffering, yet somehow soft so soft it felt like the breath of someone who had just clawed his way back from death. His hand, warm again with the miracle of life returning to him, lifted with unsteady purpose and touched her cheek. His fingertips barely brushed her skin, cautious and reverent, like he feared she might shatter beneath his touch as if she were the most fragile, precious thing the world had ever created.

His thumb trembled against her cheekbone.

Her skin was warm.

She was real.

And the moment his touch landed on her, Aurora's entire body seemed to jolt. As if his fingers reconnected her to reality, snapping her out of the overwhelming, blinding haze of power she'd been trapped in.

That violent, towering pink beam that had been erupting upward from her ripping through water, earth, and even the sea's heavy pressure flickered violently.

Then

fwoom

It collapsed inward, shrinking into her chest in a split second before vanishing entirely.

The roaring pressure that had rattled the entire drowned exchange died instantly, leaving behind a vast, ringing silence.

Aurora gasped quietly, blinking rapidly as if waking up from the most intense nightmare of her life. The glow radiating off her skin dimmed. Her eyes bright, violently luminous pink just moments ago fluttered and softened into clearer, more human brightness. Her hair, which had been whipping wildly around her head like living ribbons of light, slowly drifted down in gentle strands, settling around her shoulders with soft weight.

She stared at Levy.

At his face.

At his eyes.

At his breath that she could feel warm on her skin.

"You… you…" Her voice broke just snapped in the middle and she grabbed his hand with both of hers, pressing it harder to her cheek. "You're alive… you're.. you're alive…"

Her pupils widened, trembling. Tears burst at the corners of her eyes in a rush, sliding down her cheeks as if her body couldn't hold back everything she had been bottling in: the panic, the terror, the loss, the grief, the relief that hit her so hard her shoulders shook.

She didn't even wipe the tears away. She just stared at him, lips parted in disbelief and joy and fear all twisted into one expression.

Levy's own breath hitched. He couldn't speak not immediately. Not when her tears were falling because of him. Not when her face looked like she had just been dragged through hell and back for his sake.

He swallowed. His lips parted. "I.."

But before his words could leave his throat

"Boss… what was that?"

A voice cut through the silence.

A blue-skinned fish-man, one of the guards, was staring with round eyes at the dissipating glow in the water, then at Aurora and Levy. He looked disturbed, confused, and very much afraid.

"What was that pink light?" he asked again, louder this time, stepping back as if expecting the ground to collapse beneath him.

The octopus man Krolious stood frozen for a long second. His face, usually twisted in lazy amusement and cruelty, had shifted into something else entirely.

Fear.

Real fear.

He had no explanation for the power he'd just sensed. Nothing he'd ever seen before

And then he looked at Levy.

Who had been dead was now breathing.

That's when the fear on his face twisted into something uglier: survival instinct.

He didn't wait.

He didn't think not even reacted.

In one fast, sharp movement, Krolious snatched a sword from the belt of the person beside him. His tentacle wrapped around the hilt with terrifying force, and with a single burst of desperate strength

He lunged.

Aimed directly at Aurora's head.

He didn't care about anything.. How, why and what.

He just felt danger. He felt something he couldn't understand. So he chose the one thing cowards always choose

Kill it before it kills you.

Levy saw it out of the corner of his eye.

His heart lurched.

A blade underwater moves differently slower to travel but heavier to stop, carrying deadly momentum. Krolious swung it with full intention to sever her skull clean in half.

"Aurora!! Save yourself!!"

Levy yelled instinctively, reaching toward her with everything he had. His voice cracked, raw with desperation. He forgot she was immortal. He forgot she could survive it. He only saw a blade coming for her face and felt sheer terror claw at him.

Aurora, hearing his panicked voice, turned her head sharply, her wet hair swinging around her shoulders. Her eyes widened

A blade. Right in front of her. Too fast. Too close.

A cold flash. A breath of nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for that metallic bite

But the pain never came.

The world stayed quiet.

And then

"It seems I am indeed very late."

A voice came

Cold, Flat and totally Emotionless. The kind of voice that didn't even rise above a whisper and yet carried enough weight to shake Aurora's spine.

A chill that felt like it could freeze the sea from the inside out rippled through her body. Even the surrounding Atlanteans stiffened and jolted backward without knowing why.

Aurora's eyes snapped open.

The blade

The blade that should have split her face

Was suspended in front of her. A hair's width from her eye. Close enough that she could see her own trembling reflection in it.

Her breath caught in her throat.

She wasn't hurt.

Slowly, she and Levy both turned moving at the same time, as if connected by instinct to find out what had stopped that sword.

And then they saw him.

A man stood behind them.

A figure that seemed to define authority simply by existing.

His attire was immaculate: a beautifully tailored noble coat of deep black and rich crimson red, lined with intricate gold patterns that curled like ancient runes. Nothing about him seemed out of place. Not a single thread dared shift without his permission.

Then their eyes traveled upward.

Long, silver hair drifted weightlessly in the water, shimmering like moonlit strands. His gaze bloody crimson icy, sharp, and utterly unreadable rested on them .. sending there danger bells to shake crazyly..

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Thanks for reading, everyone. I just wanted to ask whether you'd prefer that I explain the characters' abilities in detail right away, or if I should reveal them gradually as they appear in the story. Showing them in action might be more fun, but I'm open to what you enjoy most.

I'll be picking up the pace from here since some readers mentioned the story felt a bit slow. If anything ever gets confusing or feels incomplete, just let me know. If it can't be explained naturally within the story, I'll clarify it directly. Otherwise, I'll build it into future chapters.

Thanks again for reading. Appreciate it.

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If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.