Chapter 369
Under their oppressive gazes, the magic circle shattered like glass, leaving Aska staggering. His courage faltered, and he stumbled back before turning. Letting out a desperate roar, he dove headfirst into the ocean, his serpentine form cutting through the dark waters.
As he fled, his thoughts spiraled into panic. "Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I just want to sleep... I just want to sleep..."
Aska’s body coiled instinctively as he plunged deeper into the dark waters, the ocean swallowing him whole. The oppressive weight of the sea pressed against him, but it was nothing compared to the gnawing exhaustion in his very core. His mind was a storm, split between his fractured visions and the unrelenting pull of his body’s primal needs.
Sleep. The thought consumed him, louder than the currents roaring past his ears. He could feel the Leviathan’s body faltering, muscles sluggish and unresponsive, its powerful form trembling with every motion. The creature needed rest, and so did he—but the sensation of being hunted clung to him like a second skin.
The void from his corrupted eye throbbed in his skull, the lifeless world it revealed unnerving and relentless. Shapes—impossible, shifting things—seemed to flit through the edges of his vision, but they vanished when he tried to focus. It made him feel exposed, watched, vulnerable.
His other eye, the one rooted in reality, strained to keep track of the faint light filtering down from above. The water there was tinged with the two opposing forces he had fled: the shadow’s oily corruption and Jaus’s heavy, commanding presence. Even at this distance, their power churned the ocean, and he felt it reaching for him like cold, invasive fingers.
Aska’s breaths grew ragged. No escape. No refuge. Just silence... just sleep... The thought was desperate now, clawing at his fraying mind. He sank lower, deeper, where the pressure would drown out the noise of the world. The Leviathan’s instincts guided him, pulling him to a trench where the ocean’s embrace was cold and ancient, where even the light dared not trespass.
His chest ached, his soul burned, but his need was simple: to escape, to find stillness, to hide in the crushing black until the storm within him quieted. Yet even as he slowed, curling into the depths, the corrupted vision remained. The empty, hollow world. The sensation of unseen eyes.
He shuddered. Sleep was a fleeting dream now, slipping further away. But it was all he had left to chase.