Chapter 119: Brawler
"Get ready."
I say it quiet. The shape of the shadow on the tunnel floor is enough—long, wide, low-shouldered—and the energy signature rolling off it hits me square in the sternum before its body is even in view.
"Oliver. You’re ragged. Check your OXI. Eat Scales, now. I need you full."
"Same for both of you, girls."
I pull my own numbers up.
[OXI: 1,301 / 1,600]
I open my inventory and take out a fistful of Scales—the small translucent ones, dry and dense in my palm—and chew them as fast as I can swallow them.
[Scales: 545 → 533]
[OXI: 1,600 / 1,600]
The heat of the refill spreads from my chest out through my limbs. I close my eyes for a second, let it settle, then draw the Eventide’s hilt.
A second later, the thing I’ve been afraid of the last half hour finishes walking around the curve of the tunnel.
It barely fits.
The ceiling is thirteen feet high at the peak of this passage. The creature’s shoulders scrape the roof with every step, pebbles of old stone cracking loose in small puffs of dust. Its silhouette fills the corridor wall-to-wall.
Reef Goberingei. Rank C. Apex Predator.
I exhale slow.
Gorilla body. Shark anatomy. Gills flare along the sides of its thick neck. A dorsal fin rises from the ridge of its spine, wet, sluggishly rippling. Its hands are the size of wrecking balls—black-nailed, knotted with muscle, each knuckle the width of a soup bowl. The pelt is a dirty silver-white, matted with something that could be sea salt dried into the fur.
Bone plates sit over the critical points. Over the heart. Over the throat. A crown of fused plates forms a rough helmet across the top of the skull.
Two apex predators in two days. I’m beginning to think Boris undersold this place.
The Reef Stalker was a hunter. Silent, patient, efficient. I almost didn’t survive that.
This one is a brawler. Built to break and crush and absorb punishment. The Stalker wanted me dead before I knew it was there. The Goberingei wants me to see it coming.
I glance at Lola.
"Lola. No Lullaby. This roof comes down on us if you fire."
"Hm."
"Scales. Pop them on him when I signal. Like before."
She nods. Already has a small pile forming in her cupped hands, one after another, her thumb flicking each Scale into position.
"He’s cute," she says, her face flat. "But I want to leave."
"Good girl."
I look at Rhayne.
She has the Reef Clocked Cape on already—its edges shifting gray and black, chameleoning against the stone behind her. She steps close to me. Raises a bare hand. Presses her palm to my cheek.
[Void Link — Activated]
The alert flares in the corner of my vision in red.
A cold runs up my spine at the same moment.
Wrong-shaped.
Under the skin.
Something that shouldn’t be there, settling into me at the same time that something of mine settles into her. I still don’t have a name for it and I still don’t trust it.
But I know what it does in a fight. And in a fight, I’ll take it.
The Goberingei keeps walking.
It isn’t hurrying. It walks quietly, like checking. Its aura expands as it comes closer—an actual physical pressure now, pressing against the roof of my mouth, against the backs of my eyes.
It knows this tunnel. It knows nothing in this tunnel has ever been stronger than it. It’s never needed to hurry in its life.
At a hundred feet out, it stops.
It rises up on its hind legs, slow, almost ceremonial. Its head nearly scrapes the ceiling. The chest is broader than my arms can stretch. Goberingei lifts both fists and slams them against its own chest in three forceful strikes.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Each hit lands inside my ribcage like a hammer on a drum I didn’t know I was.
A gutter roar follows. The air in the tunnel vibrates. Dust sheets off the ceiling.
"Follow my orders," I say. Voice low. "This one is different. One hit from him and we’re picking up the echo fragments off the floor."
Oliver doesn’t answer. He just shifts his grip on his hammer and moves into my blind spot to cover it.
We don’t have Veric this time. Oliver isn’t a Vanguard. I don’t have a meat shield. Every calculation I make in the next sixty seconds has to include that.
The Goberingei drops back onto all fours and starts sniffing the air. Deep and methodical. Its nostrils flare wide enough for me to see the wet red inside.
It’s not charging. It’s inspecting.
We’re something new in this tunnel, and kings don’t rule by being stupid. It’s looking for traps. For anything shaped wrong.
Buying me exactly the window I need.
"Lola. Scales on my signal."
"Okay."
"Oliver. Cover me when I commit."
"Got it, boss."
Rhayne doesn’t speak. Just a single nod from under the shifting edge of the cape.
I close my eyes for half a second.
[Memory of Lightwaves — Activated]
Yellow heat blooms out of the sockets behind my eyelids. When I open them, my vision has gone sharper at the edges and slower in the middle—every motion the Goberingei makes is arriving in clean, separate frames. A thin curl of golden vapor drifts up from the corners of my eyes and dissipates into the torchlight.
I bring my left hand to rest on the top of Eventide’s hilt. Right hand at the base. The blade tilts back behind me, flat against my ribs, edge down, point behind my hip.
A draw position. The oldest one, engraved in my memory from the ghosts.
Eventide hums against my palm. It knows this stance. It likes this stance.
Time to find out how much of this new life has stuck to me.
The Goberingei’s nostrils stop flaring.
Its eyes lock onto mine across the hundred feet of stone between us. I see the exact moment it reads the yellow smoke coming off my eyes and decides the new thing in its tunnel is not just prey—it’s a problem.
Goberingei instincts catch fire.
It drops its head, plants four hands on the stone, and charges.