[Realm: Álfheimr]

[Location: Outskirts]

Water pressed in from every direction, heavily, forcing its way into his lungs and down his throat, dragging his body deeper with a weight that was no longer merely physical. It was crushing—layers upon layers of pressure folding inward, compressing bone and muscle, demanding surrender. For most, it would have meant obliteration, flesh reduced to something indistinguishable, scattered as a fine red mist in the dark.

Dante did not surrender.

His consciousness stirred, faint at first, like a small flame struggling against suffocation.

("That… that memory should stir at this moment…") The thought drifted through him without urgency, detached even as his body continued to sink. ("Tis bad comedy.")

The water swallowed the soundlessness of it.

There had been an era—so distant now it felt almost unreal—when Gods still walked openly across the realm of Uhorus. Dante had known many of them then. Not as myths. Not as distant authorities carved into scripture. He had known them as presences. As voices. As companions who bled and had conviction like him.

Arielle had been among them.

At the time, the word comrade might not have been inaccurate. They had stood beside one another, fought beside one another, spoken not as ruler and subject but as equals bound by circumstance. There had been laughter once. Arguments, too. Long discussions that stretched into dawns that never quite looked the same afterward.

That time was long past.

The water deepened into something darker, colder and more suffocating. Dante's descent slowed as the pressure increased, the abyss resisting his passage.

Deep below the surface, his fingers flexed.

Once.

Then again.

The pain was immediate and vicious, radiating from his mangled left arm in sharp, screaming waves. The limb was barely holding together, nerves flaring wildly as if protesting the insult of continued existence. He acknowledged the pain without reacting to it, allowing it to pass through him rather than consume him.

Something had changed.

("My body's almost adapted…")

The realization surfaced calmly even as his vision blurred in the depths and light became distant and distorted above him. He stared upward through the dark water, violet lenses dulled, watching the last remnants of the surface fade.

Echidna and Cerberus were waiting.

There was no doubt about that.

Echidna's influence was a suffocating presence layered atop the water, pressing inward with violent intent. The pressure was meant to injure him further, to grind him down slowly, to deny him even the illusion of reprieve. And the venom still lingered in his system, though it had weakened—its hold slipping faster than anticipated.

Faster than he had anticipated.

Dante understood his own body intimately. More than most ever could. Every limit, every threshold, every mechanism that allowed him to persist where others failed. The adaptation should have taken longer. It always did.

Yet as he sank deeper, as the abyss wrapped tighter around him, the process accelerated.

That, too, was unexpected.

Beneath the gnawing pressure and relentless pain, something else remained. A sensation faint enough to be dismissed if one were not attuned to such things. Warmth. Subtle and steady. Comforting in a way that felt deeply wrong within the cold grasp of the depths.

It did not belong here.

("Arielle's doing, then…") The conclusion came without surprise. ("Seems she retains more consciousness than I expected.")

Echidna's presence would have made him visible—her awareness brushing against Arielle's fragmented existence, allowing the Goddess to sense him through proximity alone. If Arielle had retained enough self to act, enough awareness to intervene even subtly, then she was not yet gone.

She was still alive.

Not free or whole. But alive.

And therefore, in theory, capable of being saved.

Were Dante anyone else.

The thought followed naturally, without bitterness. He possessed no elegant spellwork, no divine power, no refined miracle capable of tearing a Goddess free from the structure that bound her. He had no gift suited to mercy in this form. No ability that allowed him to preserve something delicate without destroying the larger whole.

Even if he did—

His course would not change.

("The assistance was not required, nor was it needed.")

The water churned as he continued to descend, pressure tightening around his chest. His lungs burned, then numbed.

("Should Arielle perish with Echidna, then she shall.")

There was no cruelty in the thought. No malice. Only resolve.

Tamamo would have disapproved. Dante knew that without needing to imagine her voice. She always did, when it came to this aspect of him. The refusal to compromise. The willingness to accept loss when it aligned with purpose. She would have called it unnecessary. Wasteful. Perhaps even heartless.

Her opinion mattered little.

He had once been a knight.

Not in title alone, but in belief.

A knight did not weigh sentiment against duty and choose the lighter burden. A knight did not alter the path because it was painful to walk. His goal had been forged long ago, hammered into him through blood, failure, and the slow erosion of everything that had once made hesitation possible.

That goal remained.

The water closed in tighter still, the darkness nearly complete now. Dante's body drifted, suspended between crushing force.

The water around Dante shifted.

It was an almost imperceptible change in resistance, as though the water had hesitated. His body, suspended in crushing darkness, rotated just enough for his right shoulder to draw back. The movement was slow, not the flailing of desperation but the preparation of someone who understood what was needed.

Then he punched downward.

The strike did not look dramatic. His right arm drove through the water in a compact strike, gauntlet first, every joint aligned. For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.

And then the abyss broke.

The force detonated beneath him, not as sound but as violent displacement. Water did not splash—it exploded, compressed into itself before being hurled outward in a roaring void. The pressure that had sought to crush him was suddenly inverted and redirected, transformed into propulsion so violent it felt like the world had been struck.

Dante was launched upward.

The water screamed around him as he tore through it, his body becoming a spear punching through layers of depth at impossible speed. Currents shredded apart in his wake, spiraling violently as the vacuum left behind tried—and failed—to close fast enough. His coat snapped and twisted around him, fur lining soaked and heavy, yet his posture remained composed, spine straight.

Light rushed toward him.

The surface shattered.

He erupted from the churning sea in a towering geyser of broken water, a column of white and black foam spiraling outward as his body breached into open air. Droplets hung suspended around him for a heartbeat.

He did not have time to breathe.

Cerberus was already there.

The massive hound met him midair with terrifying fluidity, its bulk twisting effortlessly. The middle head surged forward, jaws gaping wide, rows of teeth glistening.

Dante saw it coming.

More importantly, he felt it—something inside him loosening. The last remnants of venom unraveled in that instant, torn apart by an adaptation that had finally completed its work. The lingering pressure inside his veins vanished, replaced by clarity.

("There.")

He did not think it triumphantly. It was simply an observation.

As the jaws closed in, Dante's right arm moved.

His fist lashed out and connected with Cerberus' massive form just beneath the middle head, driving into dense muscle and bone with catastrophic force. The impact collapsed the air. A concussive shockwave burst outward, distorting the space around them as the air had recoiled.

Cerberus was sent flying.

The enormous body was hurled backward through the sky, limbs flailing as momentum overwhelmed even its monstrous control. Its heads howled in discord, the sound torn apart by the rushing wind as it was flung away like a projectile.

Dante remained suspended for a brief moment, weightless amid falling water.

His gaze dropped.

Below him, the water he had risen from still churned violently, the surface heaving as displaced water struggled to reclaim equilibrium. Without ceremony Dante drew his arm back again.

And punched downward.

The second strike was even more devastating.

Force poured from his fist in a wide, crushing wave, not focused into propulsion this time but unleashed indiscriminately. The air beneath him compressed and collapsed, slamming into the water below with apocalyptic intensity. The sea did not resist as it split.

Water was driven apart as though struck by an invisible blade the size of a city. The surface caved inward, then tore open, massive walls of water forced violently aside as the shockwave carved a path straight through the body of the sea. The sound that followed was deep and thunderous, a roaring collapse that swallowed all else.

The water was eviscerated.

A vast chasm opened where the ocean had been moments before, revealing torn seabed, shattered rock, and boiling mist as pressure equalized in violent surges. Waves the size of mountains reared outward from the impact zone, racing away in all directions, flattening terrain and obliterating anything foolish enough to remain in their path.

Dante fell through the empty space left behind.

His descent was controlled. He rotated midair, coat settling around him as gravity reclaimed its claim. The ruined ground rushed up to meet him—soaked and fractured but still trembling from the violence inflicted upon it.

He landed lightly.

Boots touched down with ease, knees bending just enough to absorb the impact. Water sprayed outward in shallow burst, droplets pattering against shattered ground.

Dante straightened.

Above, the parted sea began to collapse back into itself, walls of water crashing together in a deafening roar, sending fresh shockwaves rolling outward. The sky was heavy with mist

He lifted his head.

Cerberus would no doubt recover. He knew that.

But there was a more pressing issue.

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