The Abyssal Reliquary part 3 Into the dungeon

Alice and Nox left the captain’s cabin like nothing had happened.

Or at least, Alice tried to make it look that way.

The door slid open with a soft hiss, and Alice stepped through first, shoulders squared, chin lifted, Cabal already shifting across her body. The soft, intimate pseudo-suit peeled and hardened into the battle configuration she had worn on the airship earlier, black living plates sliding into place with wet, elegant precision. the surface became harder, sleeker, more predatory. Magenta veins pulsed under the plates like a second heartbeat, tracing her arms, ribs, throat, and spine. A short cape unfurled from one shoulder.

Alice felt smaller now.

Short again.

Familiar again.

But not weak.

That was the important part.

Her red skin still showed at her face, throat, and hands. Her horns still curved from her head. Her tail still moved behind her, but now it felt less like a demolition weapon attached to her ass and more like a limb she could eventually learn not to embarrass herself with. Cabal adjusted around her restored proportions with smug efficiency, the armor clinging perfectly to her frame as if this had always been the intended design.

Nox followed one step behind and slightly to the side.

Back in maid mode.

Hands folded. Face composed. Posture flawless. The shift was so clean it almost annoyed Alice. Minutes ago, Nox had been Mistress in the privacy of the cabin, firm and intimate and terrifyingly. Now she was the dutiful centaur maid again, quiet, obedient, professional, following her lady into public like nothing in the world could ruffle her.

Except Alice knew better now.

That made it worse.

That made it better.

Alice glanced back at her. “You’re really fucking good at pretending.”

Nox inclined her head. “I am not pretending.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “Bullshit.”

“In public,” Nox said calmly, “you are my mistress.”

Alice’s face went hot instantly. “Don’t say it like that.”

“As you command, my lady.”

“Oh my gods.”

Cabal gave a tiny pulse of amusement against her ribs.

Alice pointed down at her own chest. “You too. Shut the fuck up.”

I said nothing.

“You thought loudly.”

I am learning from Nox.

“Traitor.”

They reached the corridor junction leading toward the forward command deck. The airship had grown tense around them. Crew moved quickly but quietly, fastening seals, checking pressure sigils, locking down loose cargo. The ship’s polished luxury had been swallowed by dungeon procedure. Decorative lights dimmed. Warning crystals glowed amber. Somewhere deep below, the engine core rumbled in a slower rhythm, preparing for submersion into a world that was not supposed to have sky.

Jett fell into step behind Alice first.

The heavy metal bard looked like she had been waiting for a dramatic entrance and was mildly offended Alice had not provided one. Her axe guitar rested against one shoulder, strings humming with a low electric purr. She glanced over Alice’s newly restored height, then at the armor, then at the cape.

“Boss,” Jett said, grinning. “You look like a final boss who got bored and joined the party.”

Alice snorted. “Good. That’s the vibe.”

“Also, you’re shorter.”

Alice snapped her head toward her. “You got a fucking problem with short?”

Jett lifted both hands. “Nope. Short kings, short queens, short nightmares, I support the whole category.”

Melisse appeared beside Jett with that unfairly smooth gait of his, pale pink hair bouncing softly around his face, green eyes sparkling with immediate interest when he saw Alice. His gaze lingering. Everything. The returned height. The smaller frame. The way Cabal’s armor fit her now like it was proud of her.

“Oh,” Melisse said warmly. “That suits you.”

Alice squinted. “Careful.”

“I am being sincere.”

“That’s worse.”

His smile turned playful. “Would you prefer I be indecent?”

Nox’s eyes slid toward him.

Melisse’s smile brightened with the survival instincts of someone who enjoyed risk but understood consequences. “Later, perhaps.”

Alice groaned. “I’m going to drown all of you before the dungeon does.”

Jett laughed and strummed a soft chord, the sound rolling along the corridor like a heartbeat with distortion. “Team morale is excellent.”

“Team morale is fucking deranged,” Alice muttered.

They continued toward the front of the ship together, Alice at the lead, Nox behind her, Jett and Melisse falling in like the beginnings of an actual party rather than a pile of expensive bad decisions Quin had thrown at her life. The thought made Alice’s stomach tighten, but not unpleasantly. She had been worried the new arrangement would feel fake, like another one of her father’s orchestrations, but walking with them now felt strange in a different way.

Like maybe it could become real if she survived long enough.

The forward deck opened ahead of them, reinforced glass curving around the ship’s nose in a wide observation chamber. Beyond it, the whirlpool filled the world. Black water rotated below in a vast descending spiral, illuminated from within by pale blue-green light. The fortress arms had released the ship from its clamp points, and the airship now hovered directly over the portal’s throat, held in place by stabilizer runes that flickered brighter with every second.

Rezzy was already there.

Of course she was.

The tiny chaos gobo stood on the railing with no apparent concern for gravity, hands on her hips, hair still faintly singed from whatever she had done in the docking bay. She was leaning toward the silent Døll archer, who stood perfectly still with his bow folded across his back, porcelain skin reflecting the whirlpool’s glow.

“You know,” Rezzy said, squinting up at him, “you’d be way more intimidating if you said literally anything. Right now you’re giving haunted mannequin vibes.”

The Døll’s amber eye shifted toward her.

He said nothing.

Rezzy pointed at him. “See? That. That’s exactly what I mean. You’re doing the thing.”

“I am standing,” the Døll said quietly.

“You’re standing ominously.”

“I am balanced.”

“You are balanced like a depressed statue.”

Jett leaned closer to Alice and stage-whispered, “I like her style.”

Alice rubbed her temples. “I am surrounded by fucking children.”

Melisse smiled. “I’m technically over 1200 years old.”

“That makes it worse.”

Nox stepped forward slightly, her hooves silent against the deck. “Forward command is assembled.”

The Døll archer’s attention moved from Rezzy to Alice.

Then to Cabal.

His visible eye changed color, warming toward curiosity. For the first time since Alice had met him, his face shifted enough to count as expression. Not much. Just a slight widening of the eye. A subtle lift of his chin.

He was impressed.

That made Alice stand a little straighter before she could stop herself.

“Your armor,” he said softly. “It is alive.”

Alice folded her arms. “Yeah.”

Cabal went still.

Alice felt the response like a held breath under her skin.

The Døll tilted his head, studying the magenta veins, the black plates, the way the armor breathed in time with Alice but not quite in sync. “Not dungeon-born. Not machine-born. Not merely cursed.”

Alice’s eyes narrowed. “You got a point in there, boytoy?”

Rezzy snickered. “boytoy.”

The Døll ignored her. “It has presence.”

Cabal pulsed, pleased despite trying very hard not to show it.

Alice sighed. “Don’t flatter the murder suit. It’s already impossible.”

“I am not flattering it,” the Døll replied. “I am respecting it.”

That shut Alice up for half a second.

Then the Døll looked directly at her.

“My role remains tank?”

Alice blinked. “Uh.”

He glanced again at Cabal’s armored plates, then at the faint ripple of Sanguine Aegis beneath the surface. “Your defensive artifact appears significant. Your body has been altered. Your threat profile has changed.”

“Yeah,” Alice said slowly. “That’s one way to put it.”

“I can still draw aggression,” he said. “I can avoid damage. I can anchor enemy attention through motion, range, and target priority disruption. But if your armor wishes to hold the front line, my function should adjust.”

Alice opened her mouth to answer.

The ship dropped.

Not fell.

Dropped.

The stabilizer runes released with a sound like a giant lock opening, and the airship sank nose-first into the whirlpool.

The entire forward deck tilted. Rezzy whooped. Jett grabbed a railing with one hand and held her guitar with the other. Melisse caught his balance gracefully. Nox’s hand snapped to Alice’s back, steadying her without making it obvious. The Døll did not move at all, as if gravity had asked his permission and been denied.

Alice’s stomach shot into her throat.

“OH FUCK ME,” she snarled.

Then the portal took them.

The world folded into water.

For one impossible second, there was no ship, no fortress, no sky. Only pressure. Cold. Blue-black depth. A sensation like being pulled through the pupil of a god. Alice felt Cabal clamp around her body, felt Nox’s hand against her back, felt the airship’s wards flare all at once as the hull screamed under forces that had no business touching it.

Then reality snapped back.

They were underwater.

Completely.

The airship sailed through a drowned world with no sky above it, only endless dark water lit by distant artificial stars. A massive mana dome rose around the ship in a shimmering sphere, sealing the deck, the masts, the sails, and the upper structures inside a pocket of breathable air. Water rolled over the outside of the dome in slow, heavy sheets, distorting everything beyond it into rippling ghosts.

Alice stood frozen.

The Abyssal Reliquary stretched before them.

It was like looking at the corpse of a dream.

Far ahead, towers of glass and chrome rose from the abyssal floor, curved and elegant, their surfaces covered in coral, cables, and glowing bioluminescent growths. Some buildings stood upright inside faint protective bubbles. Others had cracked open, spilling light into the water like exposed organs. Walkways stretched between structures in long transparent tubes, many shattered, some still pulsing with power. Vast rings of alien machinery rotated slowly in the distance, half-buried in silt, their movements too smooth and too patient to be broken.

It had the haunted grandeur of an underwater city, but sleeker. Stranger. Less brass and rust, with a bit of divine biotech and sci-fi cathedral. White polymer bones. Blue energy veins. Floating drones drifting like jellyfish. Mechanical petals opening and closing along distant towers. Schools of luminous fish swimming through abandoned transit tunnels. Statues of beautiful artificial people stood along submerged avenues, their faces serene, their hands extended as if waiting to welcome guests who drowned centuries ago.

The airship moved through it all inside its glowing dome, sails adjusted to catch underwater mana currents instead of wind.

The water pressed around.

Rezzy stared out through the glass, mouth open.

“…Okay,” she said. “That’s fucking cool.”

Jett’s grin had faded into something more reverent. “Yeah. That’s not a dungeon entrance. That’s an album cover.”

Melisse’s expression was quieter, sadder. His green eyes reflected the blue light as he watched a cracked tower drift past, its windows full of tiny glowing silhouettes that vanished when Alice tried to focus on them.

The Døll archer stepped closer.

His cyan eye brightened.

“Just like home” he whispered.

Alice looked at him, then back out at the drowned city.

Cabal stirred beneath her skin, wary and fascinated.

Nox remained beside Alice, steady and close, though now she stood half a pace behind again. Public role restored. Maid. Guard.

The announcement crystal chimed, distorted by the water beyond the dome.

“Portal transition complete. Abyssal Reliquary entry confirmed. Mana dome stable. Hull pressure stable. External navigation compromised by signal distortion. All delving parties remain on standby.”

The ship glided deeper.

Beyond the dome, something huge moved between the towers.

Too far to identify.

Too slow to be harmless.

Alice’s claws flexed.

Cabal tightened into battle readiness.

She swallowed, then forced a grin that showed off her new fangs.

“Alright,” she muttered. “Haunted fish dungeon has style.”

Nox’s voice came calmly from beside her.

“And teeth.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Fucking figures.”

The deeper the airship glided, the more impossible the city became.

At first, Alice had thought the Abyssal Reliquary would look like some rusted old nightmare, all leaking pipes and shattered glass and barnacle-eaten metal. Something wet and rotten. Something that looked like it had been built to drown. But the city beyond the mana dome was almost worse because it had clearly been beautiful once. Not beautiful in the old-world gothic way Ikos liked to pretend it had invented, and not beautiful in the gaudy blood-and-gold way Quin’s palace strangled everything it touched. This was clean. White. Surgical. A city of pale polymer towers, seamless glass, smooth curving corridors, and minimalist architecture so precise it felt less built than grown by a machine that understood elegance better than people did.

It looked like a future that had died without realizing it.

Huge white skyscrapers rose from the abyssal floor, their surfaces still glossy beneath the spreading skin of coral and algae. Some had broad, rounded edges, stacked toward a surface that no longer mattered. Others were long and narrow, connected by transparent transit tubes that curved between buildings in impossible arcs. Most of those tubes were shattered now. Some hung open to the water like snapped veins. Others remained intact, faintly lit from within by cold blue lines, their interiors perfectly dry and waiting, as if the people who built them had only stepped out for a moment and would return once the ocean stopped being rude.

The sea had not waited.

It had entered everywhere it could.

Kelp forests grew from rooftop gardens that had once been decorative. Thick fans of red and violet coral clung to balcony rails, glowing softly in the dark water. Schools of tiny luminous fish slipped through broken windows and out again, turning empty office floors into drifting constellations. Mechanical doors opened and closed endlessly in flooded lobbies, still obeying ancient sensors, letting in water, fish, silt, and the occasional pale thing that moved too much like a person. White wall panels had cracked, exposing blue energy veins underneath, and those veins pulsed through the buildings like the city still had a heartbeat and absolutely refused to admit it was dead.

Alice pressed closer to the observation glass despite herself.

“…This place is fucked,” she said softly.

Jett, standing nearby with her guitar hanging from one shoulder, nodded with rare sincerity. “Yeah. But like… artistically fucked.”

Rezzy had both hands and her nose against the glass. “I wanna blow up one of those towers.”

“No,” Alice, Nox, and Melisse said at the exact same time.

Rezzy sighed dramatically.

The Døll archer did not join the joke. He stood motionless at the front of the deck, cyan eye bright, porcelain fingers resting lightly against the glass as if he could feel the city through it. The blue light beneath his skin pulsed in a slower rhythm now, almost matching the faint glow moving through the submerged towers.

“It is too clean,” he said quietly.

Alice glanced at him. “For a corpse?”

“For a wound,” he replied.

That shut everyone up for a moment.

The airship banked gently, the mana dome shimmering as underwater currents rolled across it in thick, visible sheets. Outside, something like a train car drifted past, its white shell cracked open, seats still bolted neatly inside. A cluster of jellyfish-like drones swarmed around it, their translucent bodies threaded with metal filaments, scanning the wreckage with beams of pale green light. One turned toward the airship as they passed. Its single lens focused on Alice through the glass.

Cabal tightened.

Alice lifted one clawed hand and gave the drone the finger.

The drone rotated away.

“Yeah,” Alice muttered. “That’s what I fucking thought.”

Ahead, the ship’s destination emerged from the blue haze.

A skyscraper.

Not the tallest in the city, but massive enough that it made the airship feel small. It rose from a circular plaza far below, its base swallowed by silt, its upper floors covered in coral blooms and swaying mats of dark kelp. The building itself was pristine white where the ocean had not claimed it, its surface broken by long vertical strips of blue light and huge panes of reinforced glass. A symbol was etched above the docking level, faded but still glowing: a stylized snake wrapped around a central eye.

The dock extended from the building like an open hand.

A long, enclosed docking bridge waited there, its outer shell cracked in places but still active. As the airship approached, the bridge woke. Blue lines flared along its edges. Mechanical clamps shifted with agonizing slowness, dislodging clouds of silt and small fish. The sealed mouth of the dock opened in segments, unfolding like the petals of some huge white machine-flower.

“Forward docking sequence engaged,” the announcement crystal chimed. “Reliquary structure contact in thirty seconds. Mana dome compression stable. Internal oxygen confirmed in receiving chamber.”

Alice blinked. “Wait. There’s still air in there?”

Melisse tilted his head, reading a small panel that had appeared near his wrist. “Apparently. Oxygen mix is stale but breathable. Low toxin markers. High mana saturation. Mild risk of hallucination.”

“Define mild,” Alice said.

Melisse smiled. “No.”

“Fucking helpful.”

Nox moved half a step closer behind Alice. “Mask seals are recommended regardless.”

Cabal responded before Alice could. The armor flowed up her neck and along her jaw, forming a sleek, organic face guard that stopped just below her eyes. A moment later, translucent black lenses slid over her vision, tinting the world in faint magenta and blue.

Alice sighed. “You love making decisions for me.”

I love keeping you alive, Cabal replied. Also, there may be loot.

The word landed inside Alice’s mind with more saliva than a thought should have.

She paused. “…Did you just drool?”

No.

“You fucking drooled.”

Anticipation is not drooling.

Alice felt something warm and eager ripple through the armor. Images flickered across their shared senses, not exactly memories, more like cravings relic cores, drowned weapons, surgical tools, armor plates, divine biotech, things Cabal could eat, learn, become.

Alice stared down at the magenta veins crawling across her gauntlet.

“Oh my gods,” she said. “You’re loot-hungry.”

Cabal pulsed with dignity. I am evolution-oriented.

“You are a loot goblin in my nervous system.”

Rezzy spun around immediately. “Did somebody say loot goblin!?”

“No,” Alice snapped.

“Yes,” Cabal said through the armor’s mouth.

Alice froze.

Everyone slowly looked at her.

Jett’s grin spread like a match catching fire. “Did your armor just snitch on you?”

Alice pointed at her own chest. “You and I are having a fucking discipline conversation later.”

Cabal hummed, entirely unrepentant. I look forward to growth.

Rezzy hopped down from the glass. “Okay, but important question. What kind of drops are we expecting? Tech loot? Water loot? Sad robot loot? Can I get a gun that shoots screaming bubbles?”

Quin had given them briefings, but standing here in front of the actual Reliquary made all of it feel thinner than paper.

Cabal practically vibrated.

The dock struck the ship with a deep metallic boom.

The entire airship shuddered.

Mechanical clamps latched onto the hull, one after another, each impact echoing through the forward deck. The mana dome compressed around the docking bridge, folding itself into a tight seal. Water was forced outward in a sudden violent rush, blasting fish, silt, and debris away from the connection point. For a few seconds, the world outside became white turbulence.

Then the bridge pressurized.

A green light flashed over the forward exit.

“Docking complete,” the announcement crystal said. “Receiving chamber atmosphere stable. Delving party cleared for initial deployment. Combat expectation: immediate to moderate. Unknown hostile presence detected beyond chamber three.”

Rezzy cracked her knuckles, sparks popping between her fingers. “Finally.”

Jett swung her axe guitar off her shoulder and gave the strings a slow, hungry strum. “I call first theme song.”

Melisse adjusted his gloves, the flirtation draining into professional focus. “Please avoid losing limbs in the first five minutes. I like to ease into workplace disasters.”

The Døll archer unfolded his bow. It opened soundlessly, white limbs separating and extending, blue light threading along its curves. “Tanking role remains unresolved.”

Alice glanced at him, then at Cabal’s armored hands, then at the sealed door ahead.

The fear from earlier still existed. Jax still existed somewhere in possibility. The panic had not vanished. It sat in her like a bruise under armor. But the dock was connected now. The dungeon was ahead. There were monsters past chamber three. XP. Loot. Danger. Things simple enough to hit.

Alice rolled her shoulders.

Cabal formed a crimson-edged blade along one forearm, its surface slick and sharp, humming with stolen traits.

“You draw attention,” Alice said to the Døll. “You don’t get hit. I hit whatever tries to ignore you. Nox keeps me from doing something stupid. Jett makes the whole room regret having ears. Rezzy…”

Rezzy grinned.

Alice sighed. “Rezzy does whatever the fuck Rezzy does.”

“Hell yeah.”

“Melisse keeps us alive.”

Melisse placed a hand over his heart. “And emotionally compromised.”

“Do not.”

He smiled. “Professionally.”

Nox stepped behind Alice, calm and ready. “Orders, my lady?”

Alice stared at the sealed receiving chamber door as it began to unlock.

White light spilled through the widening crack.

Beyond it waited a pristine corridor, bright and clean in patches, drowned and decayed in others. Coral growth crept along the floor. Blue light pulsed under cracked wall panels. Something moved at the far end, wet and angular, retreating just out of sight.

Alice’s fangs showed in a grin.

Her body felt familiar again. Her armor felt hungry. Her party stood behind her, insane and overqualified and dangerous.

“Yeah,” Alice said. “We get XP, we get loot, and we do not let the haunted fish dungeon fuck with us first.”

Cabal’s voice purred inside her skull.

And I may eat the interesting things.

Alice stepped toward the opening door.

“One interesting thing,” she muttered. “Then we negotiate.”

Cabal pulsed.

Three.

“Bitch, I swear to Dice ”

The door opened fully.

The Abyssal Reliquary breathed stale air into the ship.

And Alice led her party inside.

The first breath of the Abyssal Reliquary tasted wrong.

Not poisonous. Not immediately, anyway. Melisse’s panel would have started screaming if it were. But the air that rolled out of the receiving chamber was old in a way Alice could feel on her tongue. Dry where it should have been damp. Metallic where it should have been clean. It smelled faintly of salt, ozone, antiseptic, and flowers that had died centuries ago but whose scent had been preserved. The corridor beyond the docking seal was enormous, built for something taller than humans and more graceful than fear, a vast white artery of polished polymer and reinforced glass stretching forward into blue-lit gloom. The walls curved inward without corners, smooth and pristine in broad patches, but where the sea had broken through the perfection, life had taken root. Coral crawled along the lower walls in branching. Pale anemones pulsed in wall cracks. Bioluminescent moss grew around shattered panels, blinking softly like tiny warning lights.

Alice stepped through first, blade raised, Cabal hugging her frame in glossy black plates. Her boots clicked once against the floor, then stopped as she took in the damage ahead.

The corridor was not intact.

Large sections of the floor had collapsed into darkness, creating jagged gaps that opened into flooded maintenance levels below. Some holes were narrow enough to step over. Others yawned wide enough to swallow a truck. Through them, Alice could see lower chambers drowned in green-blue water, machinery still moving beneath the surface, slow and purposeful. Schools of tiny silver fish darted through the submerged rooms, weaving between fallen cables. Far below, something with too many thin legs crawled upside down along a ceiling.

Alice’s tail curled behind her. “Oh, fuck this hallway.”

Jett leaned in beside her and peered down. “Big room. Big holes. Weird sounds. Yeah, that’s a classic setup.”

Rezzy bounced on her heels. “Can I throw a fireball down there?”

“No,” Alice said.

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“I have learned to pre-hate your ideas.”

Rezzy beamed. “Leadership.”

The Døll archer, standing behind them with his bow partially unfolded, tilted his head and studied the gaps with mechanical calm. “The primary path is broken. Structural integrity is unstable. Weight distribution should be limited.”

Alice looked at him, then at Rezzy, then at Jett’s guitar, then at Nox’s horse half. “Great. Half of us are walking OSHA violations.”

Melisse smiled faintly, though his green eyes were already scanning the corridor for hazards. “I prefer ‘liability with medical supervision.’”

“Of course you fucking do.”

Ahead, the largest gap split the corridor almost wall to wall. The far side was maybe thirty feet away, its clean white floor sloping upward toward a sealed door with blue light pulsing around its frame. On either side of the gap, narrow ribs of wall support jutted out like broken bones, slick with algae and condensation. It was not impossible. Alice could probably make it with a running start. Probably. Cabal could assist. Her new Oni body had power packed into every limb, even compressed back into her familiar height. The thought of jumping should not have scared her.

It did anyway.

Not because of the distance.

Because below the hole, the water was dark, and the dark moved.

Alice flexed her claws. “I can make that.”

Nox did not answer.

That should have warned her.

The centaur maid stood half a step behind Alice, still and composed, then simply faded. Her outline softened, her body sinking into shadow as if the floor had become water. One second she was there. The next, she was gone, leaving only a thin ripple of darkness sliding across the white corridor tiles.

Alice blinked. “Nox?”

The shadow beneath Alice’s boots deepened.

Then Nox rose from it.

Under her.

The darkness unfolded into powerful obsidian limbs and a sleek equine back, and Alice found herself lifted in one smooth, horrifyingly practiced motion as Nox emerged directly beneath her like Alice’s shadow had decided to become a mount. Cabal reacted instantly, adjusting Alice’s balance, gripping without gripping, guiding her legs into place before she had time to flail like an idiot. One moment Alice was standing. The next she was seated in Nox’s saddle, hands automatically catching the front grip.

Her face went nuclear.

“Warn me before you fucking horse-jumpscare my crotch!”

Nox’s ears flicked back. “You would have objected.”

“I am objecting now.”

“You are seated.”

“That is not the same thing!”

Nox stepped forward to the edge of the gap, utterly unbothered. The broken corridor dropped away beneath them, blue darkness stretching far below. Alice tightened her grip despite herself, thighs pressing in against the saddle, tail curling around her own hip like it had no idea what to do with this information.

Nox turned her head slightly, just enough that her voice brushed Alice’s ear. “Hold on.”

Alice swallowed. “I thought you were public-maid-mode right now.”

“I am transporting my lady safely.”

“You are enjoying this.”

“Yes.”

Before Alice could respond, Nox moved.

She did not jump straight across.

She ran along the wall.

Alice’s stomach dropped as Nox launched sideways, hooves striking the smooth curved surface of the corridor with impossible silence. Shadow mana flared beneath each step, creating momentary footholds where none should have existed. The world tilted hard. The hole yawned beneath them, full of drowned machinery and moving dark. Alice clamped her mouth shut around a very undignified noise as Nox galloped across the vertical wall.

The crossing lasted maybe three seconds.

Nox kicked off the wall at the last moment, twisted in midair, and landed on the far side with a soft, controlled thud. Alice barely bounced in the saddle. Cabal had cushioned everything, smugly bracing her like it had known this was going to happen.

Alice sat frozen for a moment, gripping the saddle.

Then she said, very quietly, “I could have jumped that.”

Nox turned her head again.

This time, she leaned just a little closer, her voice dipping into that low private register that made Alice’s spine forget its job.

“You probably could have,” Nox whispered against her ear. “But I wanted you closer.”

Alice’s brain shorted out.

Her mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Then everything came out.

“Fuck you. Absolutely fuck you. You can’t just say shit like that while I’m on your back in a haunted fish hallway after shadow-mounting me in front of my team.”

Nox faced forward again, posture pristine. “I believe I just did.”

Alice buried her face in one hand. “I hate how much that worked.”

Behind them, Rezzy cackled.

“MY TURN!”

Alice whipped around. “Rezzy, don’t ”

Rezzy had already backed up.

There was no buildup. She just grinned, coated herself in neon chaos mana, and sprinted straight toward the gap with both arms thrown back. At the edge, she stomped down and detonated.

The explosion launched her like a cannonball.

She shot across the broken corridor trailing smoke, rainbow sparks, and manic laughter. Halfway over the gap, she spun upside down, kicked off a floating chunk of debris with another tiny explosion, and landed on the far side in a sliding crouch that left scorch marks across the pristine white floor.

“STUCK IT,” she shouted, arms raised.

A piece of ceiling tile dislodged behind her and fell into the hole.

Alice stared. “You are a fucking disease.”

Rezzy pointed finger guns at her. “A cute disease.”

Jett looked at the gap, looked down into the flooded dark below, then looked at Alice like everyone else was overcomplicating a very simple problem.

“Okay,” she said. “My turn.”

Alice immediately pointed at her. “Do not explode.”

Jett placed one hand over her heart, deeply wounded. “Boss. Please. I am a professional.”

“You’re a bard with an axe guitar and lightning problems.”

“Exactly. A professional.”

She swung the guitar down beneath her steel toe boots before Alice could argue further. The strings thrummed by themselves, building a low, growling chord that crawled through the corridor floor and made the blue lights along the walls flicker in time. Static wrapped around the instrument’s body, then flattened beneath it in a shimmering disc of sound pressure. Jett stepped on like she was mounting a skateboard, bent her knees, and grinned with all the self-preservation of someone who had never once learned from a bad idea.

“Behold,” she said, “the power of rock.”

Then she kicked off.

The guitar screamed.

It unleashed a sharp sonic burst that launched her forward, the axe guitar skimming over the gap like a hoverboard made of bad decisions and amp feedback. Her coat snapped behind her. Sparks flew from the strings. She leaned into the motion with easy, theatrical confidence, one hand raised in a lazy salute as she shot across the broken corridor and landed beside Alice, Nox, and Rezzy in a sliding spray of soundwaves that rattled the sealed door ahead.

Rezzy clapped wildly. “That was so stupid! I loved it!”

Jett hopped off the guitar and caught it by the neck, spinning it back onto her shoulder. “Thank you. I accept praise, applause, and tribute.”

Alice glared at her. “You cracked the floor.”

Across the gap, Melisse sighed. Then his expression shifted back into that effortless sweetness, and he rolled his shoulders.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose I should avoid being outdone.”

Pale pink light shimmered along his back.

Alice blinked despite herself as a pair of bat wings unfolded from him, soft and elegant, the membrane faintly translucent and tinted with a blush. They didn’t look demonic in the obvious way, not leathery and monstrous. They looked too pretty for that. Too delicate. Like pale stained-glass. Mana shimmered through the veins, and for half a second, the stale air of the Reliquary smelled faintly sweet.

Melisse stretched them with a satisfied little hum, looking extremely pleased with himself.

Alice stared. “You had wings?”

He smiled at her. “I have many delightful features you haven’t discovered yet.”

Nox’s ears flicked backward.

Alice flushed. “Do not start right now.”

“I was being educational.”

“You were being a slut.”

“Educationally.”

Rezzy leaned toward Jett and whispered loudly, “This party has so much flavor.”

Melisse prepared to leap, wings lifting, when he paused.

His eyes shifted past the gap.

The Døll archer still stood on the original side.

Perfectly still.

Bow in hand. Expression unreadable. Porcelain skin catching the blue light. He had not moved toward the jump. He had not asked for help. He had simply remained there, watching everyone else cross as if waiting for the situation to resolve itself.

Alice stared back at him.

“…Can you jump it?” she called.

The Døll tilted his head. “No.”

“Can you fly?”

“No.”

“Grapple?”

“No.”

“Teleport?”

“No.”

Rezzy cupped her hands around her mouth. “Damn. Red shirt confirmed.”

The Døll’s visible eye shifted from cyan to faint amber. “I am not wearing red.”

“That’s not what red shirt means, pretty porcelain corpse.”

“I am also not a corpse.”

“Yet,” Rezzy said cheerfully.

Alice groaned. “Rezzy.”

“What? I’m motivating him.”

“You are bullying the tank.”

“He’s a dodge tank. He can dodge my bullying.”

The Døll regarded her in silence for a long moment. Then he said, “Emotionally inaccurate.”

Jett burst out laughing.

Melisse lowered his wings slightly, frowning. “I can carry him.”

The Døll looked at him. “Your wing load capacity is insufficient for stable transport.”

Melisse blinked. “That was very polite and somehow still hurtful.”

Jett cracked her knuckles around the guitar neck. “Relax. I got him.”

Alice’s head snapped toward her. “No.”

Jett was already stepping back onto her guitar. “Yes.”

“No, Jett.”

“Boss, I am literally built for this shit.”

“You are built for noise complaints.”

“And heroism.”

“And property damage.”

“And heroism.”

Before Alice could physically dismount Nox and stop her, Jett launched back across the gap.

The first trip had been messy but controlled. This one was faster, sharper, the guitar’s sonic field overcorrecting as Jett leaned hard into the return arc. The chord she struck hit the walls like a hammer. A visible ripple distorted the air, slamming into the corridor’s curved ceiling and making several cracked panels shudder.

The Døll looked up.

“So,” he said quietly, “that may be irresponsible.”

Ceiling tiles gave way.

Not all at once. First one white slab cracked loose and dropped into the flooded dark below. Then another. Then three more, each impact splashing far beneath them in the lower levels. The corridor groaned, long and deep, not like old metal bending, but like something enormous had been disturbed in its sleep.

Alice’s stomach dropped.

“…Jett.”

Jett landed near the Døll and looked up. “Okay. That one might be on me.”

The water below went still.

Then it rose.

A shape surged up from the flooded maintenance level with impossible speed, breaking through the darkness beneath the gap like a nightmare launched from a cannon. Water exploded upward in a towering column, slamming against the underside of the corridor and blasting mist through the broken floor. The creature that followed was huge, not full Leviathan huge, but large enough to fill the gap with coiling metal and pale flesh.

It looked like something built from a serpent, and a surgical machine.

Its body was long and armored in overlapping white plates, pristine in places and rotted in others, the clean polymer shell cracked open to reveal black cabling and pulsing blue organs beneath. Coral grew along its spine in jagged branches. Mechanical fins unfolded from its sides, each one lined with tiny spinning blades. Its head was eyeless, smooth and pointed, with a circular mouth that opened into rings of glassy teeth and rotating metal cutters. Several cables trailed from the back of its skull like wet hair, sparking where they dragged across broken walls.

The cybernetic Leviathan screamed.

The sound was not animal.

It was an alarm played through a throat.

Alice’s ears rang. Cabal tightened instantly, sealing sound dampeners over her head.

The Leviathan slammed into the corridor between the two groups, its body coiling through the broken floor and blocking the gap entirely. Its tail whipped through the lower chamber, smashing machinery Alice couldn’t see. The sealed door on Alice’s side flickered blue, then red, then locked down with a heavy mechanical thud.

On the far side, emergency shutters began dropping from the ceiling.

“Jett!” Alice shouted.

Jett grabbed the Døll by the back of his collar with one hand and swung her guitar up with the other. “Working on it!”

The Døll’s bow unfolded fully, blue light threading along the limbs as he fired three arrows in rapid silence. Each shot struck the Leviathan’s face and detonated into hard-light anchors, dragging its head sideways just enough to keep the rotating mouth from shearing through the floor beneath him.

Melisse cursed softly, wings flaring as he backed away from the falling shutters.

Rezzy lit up like someone had just handed her a birthday cake full of dynamite. “CAN I THROW FIREBALLS NOW?”

Alice bared her teeth. “YES.”

Rezzy shrieked with joy and hurled a bouncing ball of neon mana straight at the Leviathan. It ricocheted off the floor, then wall, then ceiling, then slammed into one of the creature’s mechanical fins and exploded into a bloom of violet fire and green lightning. The blast tore off a chunk of white plating and sent burning fragments spinning into the flooded hole.

The Leviathan’s head snapped toward Rezzy.

“Good news,” Rezzy said. “It noticed me.”

Nox shifted beneath Alice, already moving them backward as the creature’s body crashed against their side of the gap. “My lady.”

“I see it!”

Alice’s blade extended from her forearm, edge wet and bright. Cabal’s hunger flared through her body, but under it came sharp threat assessment, marking weak points, exposed cabling, stress fractures in the creature’s armor.

The Bell of the Unanswered trait pulsed.

Every hostile presence nearby became a pressure in Alice’s awareness.

The Leviathan.

The thing in the water below.

Two smaller shapes crawling through the walls.

Maybe more.

And on the far side of the gap, emergency shutters slammed down between Jett, Melisse, the Døll, and Alice’s group.

The party split.

Again.

[SYSTEM NOTICE: PARTY SEPARATION]

Dice’s voice arrived with pure, delighted contempt.

(Wow. You split the party, reunited halfway, then split the party harder Incredible. No notes. This is performance art.)

Alice shouted, “NOW IS NOT THE FUCKING TIME!”

(It is always the time. Also, cyber Leviathan miniboss in the first hallway? Delicious pacing. Terrible survival odds, but delicious pacing.)

The Leviathan slammed its head into the floor near Alice’s side, cracking the pristine white polymer and sending coral dust flying. Its circular mouth opened, cutters whining.

Nox leapt backward, carrying Alice out of the bite radius by inches.

Alice clung to the saddle, then immediately hated that she had clung.

“I need off!”

“Not yet,” Nox said.

“I said ”

Nox launched sideways as the Leviathan’s tail burst up through another section of floor, missing them by less than a foot. Alice felt the rush of displaced air and seawater through the mana dome around the corridor, cold mist spraying across her face.

Nox’s voice stayed calm. “Mounted combat gives you reach and mobility.”

Alice snarled. “Mounted combat makes me feel like I’m in a weird fucking romance novel.”

Rezzy, already sprinting along the edge of the broken floor, shouted, “YOU ARE!”

Alice pointed her blade at her. “FOCUS!”

On the far side, through the gap above the rising shutters, Jett’s guitar screamed. Lightning crawled along the corridor as she struck a power chord, sonic force slamming into the Leviathan’s exposed flank. The Døll used the opening instantly, firing hard-light arrows into the cracks Jett made. Melisse spread his wings and rose just above the floor, green healing sigils already forming around him as debris clipped his shoulder and tore a line through his coat.

Alice saw blood.

Something in her snapped into place.

Not panic.

Not lust.

Not memory.

Combat.

“Nox,” she said, voice dropping.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Get me close.”

Nox’s ears flicked once.

Then she ran.

Straight along the broken edge of the corridor, hooves striking white polymer, shadow pooling beneath each step. Alice lowered herself over the saddle, Cabal forming stabilizing hooks around her thighs. Rezzy’s explosions lit the corridor in strobing neon. The Leviathan twisted, mouth opening, cutters shrieking as it tried to track too many targets at once.

Alice raised her crimson armblade.

Cabal pulsed.

The Leviathan’s exposed cables glowed in her vision.

“Alright,” Alice growled. “Let’s see what kind of loot robo snake drops.”

Cabal’s answer was almost reverent.

I am very hungry.

Nox carried her into striking range as the monster lunged.

Alice moved before she could think better of it.

Nox carried her into range, hooves striking the broken white floor in a blur of shadow and controlled violence, and Alice used that momentum like a launch ramp. She pushed off the saddle hard enough that Cabal had to reinforce the pressure points along her thighs, the living armor flexing, gripping, then releasing as she flew.

For one perfect second, she was weightless over the Leviathan’s open maw.

Below her, the cybernetic serpent twisted upward, its eyeless head splitting open around rings of rotating cutters and glassy teeth. Its white armor plates were cracked from Rezzy’s explosion and Jett’s sonic assault, black cables hanging exposed, blue organs pulsing beneath layers of surgical machinery and rotten coral. The thing was too big. Too fast. Too alive in all the wrong ways.

Alice saw the weak point anyway.

Cabal saw it with her.

A seam in the forehead. Not bone. Not metal. A plate junction where white polymer had been stitched to something organic underneath. A glowing line of blue pressure ran beneath it like a vein.

Alice raised her forearm blade over her head.

“Eat this, you fucking blender eel!”

She came down like a guillotine.

The crimson-edged blade punched into the Leviathan’s forehead with a wet metallic crunch, burying itself halfway to Alice’s elbow. Cabal triggered the Battle Forge shockwave at the exact moment of impact.

The corridor exploded.

Not fire. Force.

A compressed blast detonated outward from the wound, rippling through the Leviathan’s skull, cracking white plates, bursting coral growths, and shredding cables in every direction. The monster’s head snapped downward, its circular mouth shrieking as the shockwave blew out whatever passed for sensory organs under the smooth eyeless shell. Blue fluid sprayed like coolant blood, spattering Alice’s armor and sizzling where it touched Cabal’s surface.

For half a heartbeat, Alice grinned.

“Holy shit, that worked.”

Then the water below opened.

Something under the Leviathan’s jaw moved faster than her Bell-marked awareness could process. A secondary mouth. A hidden feeding aperture tucked beneath the armored throat, ringed in smaller rotating teeth, a meat-grinder socket that snapped open from the underside of the serpent’s body like the dungeon had decided one mouth was too fucking fair.

It clamped down around Alice’s leg.

Pain erased the world.

There was no clever thought. No curse. No Cabal commentary. No battle instinct.

Just pressure.

Then tearing.

The teeth spun.

Alice screamed as the Leviathan ripped her leg off below the thigh, the sound raw and animal and nothing like the cool Death Knight bullshit she liked to imagine herself capable of. Cabal hardened instantly around the severed limb, trying to shield, trying to lock, trying to become something the teeth couldn’t chew through, but the monster’s jaws were made for breaching hulls and grinding meat. The armor shrieked through their bond, not in fear for itself, but in outrage.

Alice’s body dropped.

The blade tore free from the Leviathan’s forehead as she fell backward into the open air, blood arcing from the stump in a hot red spray before Cabal clamped down around it like a living tourniquet. The world spun. White corridor. Blue water. Black hole. Nox below her, already moving. Rezzy’s neon fireball streaking past. The Leviathan recoiling, blinded but not beaten, its head thrashing hard enough to tear more of the corridor apart.

Nox caught her.

Not gently. There was no time for gently.

The centaur launched from the floor in a shadow-assisted leap, caught Alice against her chest with both arms, twisted midair, and slammed down hard on a narrow strip of intact flooring as the Leviathan’s tail smashed through the place they had been a breath earlier. The impact rattled Alice’s teeth. She barely felt it through the pain.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Alice sobbed, claws scrabbling uselessly against Nox’s uniform. “My leg, my fucking leg, it ate my fucking leg!”

“I have you,” Nox said.

Her voice was calm.

That terrified Alice more than shouting would have.

The Leviathan’s head slammed into the wall behind them, blinded cutters chewing through white polymer and coral. The sealed door on Alice’s side sparked, then buckled inward, not opening, just dying. The path back to the ship vanished behind collapsing panels and emergency shutters that dropped like guillotine blades.

Nox assessed all of it in a single glance.

Then she ran.

She did not ask. Did not explain. She tucked Alice against her body, turned, and burst into the nearest side chamber with terrifying speed. Shadow pooled under her hooves as she crossed broken terrain, dodging falling ceiling tiles and whipping cables. Rezzy saw them move and reacted on instinct, coating herself in neon mana and blasting sideways after them in a series of chaotic little explosions.

The side room’s door was half-open, warped by age and pressure. Nox hit it shoulder-first.

The door gave.

They crashed through into darkness.

Rezzy followed a second later, skidding across the floor in a shower of sparks and shouting, “HOLY SHIT, THAT THING TOOK YOUR LEG!”

Alice’s answer was a scream.

The side room lit in fragments as emergency systems woke. Cold blue strips flickered along the walls, revealing a broad chamber that had once been some kind of observation lounge or lab. White counters. Broken glass partitions. Chairs bolted to the floor. A long window looked out into open water, cracked but still holding, beyond it a forest of kelp swayed around the side of the skyscraper. Everything smelled like salt, old plastic, blood, and burning Cabal.

Nox lowered Alice to the floor with impossible care, one arm still braced behind her shoulders.

Alice tried to look down.

Nox caught her chin. “Do not.”

Alice shook violently. “It’s gone.”

“Yes.”

“It’s fucking gone.”

“Yes.”

The honesty made her sob. “Don’t say yes like that!”

Nox’s jaw tightened, the first visible crack in her composure. “My lady. Alice. Look at me.”

Alice tried.

She failed.

The pain was too big. Her body kept searching for a leg that wasn’t there, nerves screaming into nothing, Cabal clamped around the torn stump in tight black bands. Heat pulsed beneath the armor. Oni regeneration was already trying to respond, but it was slow, confused, fighting through shock and trauma and the fact that there was so much missing.

Cabal’s voice trembled inside her skull.

I am sealing it. I am sealing it. I am sorry. I could not stop the teeth.

Alice choked. “Not your fault. Fuck. Fuck, it hurts.”

Rezzy stood near the broken door, both hands glowing, eyes wide. For once, the chaos gobo looked genuinely shaken. “Uh. We can’t fight that, right? Like, I’m fun-crazy, not die-for-no-loot crazy.”

The Leviathan slammed somewhere outside the chamber.

The entire room shook. Dust and dead coral rained from the ceiling.

Nox looked toward the door, then back to Alice. “We are abandoning the fight.”

Alice tried to push herself up on one elbow. “Jett Melisse the Døll ”

“They are on the other side,” Nox said. “They have their own route. We cannot reach them through the corridor. Not now.”

Another impact shook the room. This time, water sprayed from a cracked wall seam before automatic sealant foam hissed out and hardened over it.

Rezzy swallowed. “Ship side’s cut off too. Emergency shutters dropped all the way. I saw it before I jumped.”

Alice’s breath hitched. “So we’re split.”

“Yes,” Nox said.

Dice chose that exact moment to chime in.

[SYSTEM NOTICE: LIMB LOSS DETECTED]

(Oh good, we’ve reached the “first dungeon injury trauma bonding” chapter. Usually people start with a broken arm, but sure, go straight to leg smoothie. Ambitious.)

Alice sobbed and snarled at the same time. “I will fucking kill you.”

(Maybe regrow the leg first.)

Nox’s eyes sharpened. “Mute system commentary.”

Alice barely managed to gesture.

Dice’s voice cut off mid-snicker.

Nox pulled a potion from her kit.

Not one of the little cheap vials. This was palace-grade. Hydrated healing concentrate, thick and luminous, swirling with red-gold mana and tiny suspended flecks that looked like ground crystal. The kind of potion that cost enough to make Alice want to apologize to money as a concept.

Alice’s teeth chattered. “Can’t. Gonna throw up.”

“You will drink.”

“No, fuck, Nox, I can’t ”

Nox leaned over her, one hand cradling the back of her head. “You can.”

“I can’t.”

“You can,” Nox repeated, and this time the Mistress was in her voice, not the maid, not the bodyguard. Command wrapped in care. “Open.”

Alice opened her mouth.

Nox poured the potion in.

The taste hit hard, bitter herbs and mineral sweetness and something like hot copper. Alice gagged instantly, body trying to reject it from shock alone. Nox did not let her. She sealed Alice’s mouth with her own, kissing her firmly, forcing her to swallow with steady pressure and one hand at her throat guiding the motion.

Alice made a broken sound into the kiss.

The potion went down.

Heat exploded through her bloodstream.

Not pleasure. Not even relief at first. Pain sharpened, then changed. The torn stump throbbed as if someone had poured molten sunlight into the wound. Cabal loosened by fractions as the bleeding stopped fully, the black tourniquet becoming a cradle. Flesh stirred underneath. Bone began to push outward in tiny branching growths, white-hot and horrifying. Muscle followed in wet threads, knitting down from the stump like something being sculpted under invisible hands.

Alice screamed again, muffled against Nox’s mouth.

Nox held her through it.

Rezzy turned pale green. “Oh, that is so gross. That is so fucking gross. I’m not looking. I’m looking. I regret looking.”

Alice clawed at Nox’s shoulders, not trying to push her away, just needing somewhere for the pain to go. Nox broke the kiss only when Alice had swallowed the last of the potion, then pressed her forehead to Alice’s.

“Breathe,” she ordered.

Alice sobbed. “It’s growing back. I can feel it growing back. That’s not a normal fucking sentence.”

“Oni regeneration is responding,” Nox said. “Potion is accelerating tissue reconstruction. Cabal is stabilizing the template.”

Cabal’s voice came strained but determined.

I remember your shape.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut. “Great. Fantastic. My underwear remembers my leg.”

Rezzy pointed weakly. “Honestly, lucky.”

“Shut the fuck up, Rezzy.”

“Yep. Fair.”

The room shook again, but more distantly now. The Leviathan was moving away or repositioning, its alarm-scream echoing through the broken corridor beyond the side chamber. Somewhere on the other side of the collapsed route, Jett’s guitar screamed back, a thunderous riff muffled through layers of wall and emergency shutter. Lightning flashed through cracks in the doorframe. Then a blue-white arrow punched through a distant section of glass outside the chamber, arcing through the water beyond before exploding against the Leviathan’s flank.

Alice’s head snapped toward it.

“They’re alive,” she gasped.

“For now,” Nox said. “And fighting.”

“I need to get up.”

“No.”

“Nox ”

“No.”

Alice glared at her through tears. “I’m the fucking leader.”

“You are missing half a leg.”

“It’s growing back!”

“Then you may lead after it finishes.”

Rezzy raised one finger. “As the party’s least responsible member, I hate to say this, but horse maid’s right.”

Alice stared at her. “You?”

Rezzy shrugged, sparks flickering weakly around her hands. “Look, I love dumb shit. I am dumb shit. But charging back at the giant robo snake while your leg is still doing wet spaghetti cosplay is, like, advanced dumb shit.”

Alice barked out a broken laugh that turned into a hiss as fresh nerves sparked down the regrowing limb.

Her thigh had extended now, red flesh forming under a glistening lattice of Cabal’s black tendrils. The knee was next, bone swelling into shape, cartilage blooming, muscle wrapping around it. It looked monstrous. It felt worse. But it was working.

It was working.

She wasn’t going to be crippled.

She wasn’t going to be dragged back to the ship as a failure.

She wasn’t going to have to face Jax, if he was here, with one leg missing and panic still written all over her face.

That thought hit too hard.

Alice’s breath hitched again.

Nox saw it instantly and pulled her closer, wrapping both arms around her while keeping the damaged limb angled safely.

“Stay with me,” Nox said.

Alice’s voice came out small. “I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I fucking hate this.”

“I know.”

“I thought I was stronger now.”

Nox’s expression shifted, not soft exactly, but painfully steady. “Strength does not mean teeth cannot cut you.”

Alice stared at her, shaking.

Outside, the Leviathan screamed again.

Far away, Jett’s guitar answered like thunder.

Rezzy moved to the door, peering through a crack while keeping one hand lit with unstable neon mana. “Okay. Current situation: big snake still between us and literally everyone else. Way back to the ship is fucked. Pretty sure the hallway sealed itself. There are maybe smaller creepy things in the walls. Also I think I saw a vending machine.”

Alice blinked through tears. “A what?”

“A vending machine.”

“Rezzy, if you get killed trying to loot snacks in the S-rank dungeon, I will resurrect you just to punch you.”

“Worth it if they have rare flavors.”

Nox ignored her. “We need an alternate route. This chamber likely connects to internal maintenance or observation levels.”

Alice gritted her teeth as her lower leg began forming, shinbone pushing down under new muscle. “And the others?”

“They will do the same,” Nox said. “Jett has mobility. Melisse can fly and heal. The Døll can evade and draw attention. They are not helpless.”

Alice hated that she was right.

She hated that she could not do anything else.

She hated, most of all, that Nox’s arms around her made it bearable.

The foot came last.

That was somehow the worst part.

Toes formed one by one, nerves lighting up like tiny little knives. Cabal slid over the new limb as soon as enough flesh existed, black armor coating red skin, stabilizing joints, reinforcing muscle, checking alignment with obsessive care.

Alice lay there shaking, drenched in sweat, held against Nox’s chest while her body finished remembering itself.

After several long, brutal minutes, Cabal finally exhaled through her.

Leg restored, it whispered. Weak. Usable soon. Do not sprint.

Alice laughed weakly. “Great. My leg has a cooldown.”

Nox brushed damp hair away from Alice’s face. “You will rest for three minutes.”

“Three?”

“Five, if you argue.”

Alice opened her mouth.

Nox looked at her.

Alice shut it.

Rezzy, still by the door, whispered, “Damn. Dominated by medical advice.”

Alice threw a piece of broken floor tile at her.

It missed by a mile.

Rezzy grinned. “She lives.”

Alice slumped back against Nox, exhausted, furious, relieved, terrified.

The party was split.

The ship was cut off.

A cyber Leviathan was loose in the corridor.

Alice pressed her shaking hand against her newly regrown thigh, feeling Cabal pulse beneath her palm.

“Okay,” she whispered. “New plan.”

Nox looked down at her.

Rezzy glanced over from the door.

Alice’s fangs showed in a weak, vicious smile.