The barge did not feel smaller at first.
It took time.
Hours passed after the storm where the ship seemed to hold its own—metal groaning but intact, engines humming unevenly, the deck slick with salt and rain residue that never fully dried under Helios-77's dim sky. The ocean rolled in long, measured swells now, not violent, not calm, but vast, each wave lifting the barge as if to remind it that buoyancy was a privilege, not a right.
Fenrik stood near the bow, boots planted wide, one hand resting against the rail.
The metal vibrated beneath his palm.
Not from engines.
From depth.
The flame core in his chest did not flare. It did not warn. It listened. There was a difference Fenrik had learned the hard way. Warnings were sharp. Listening was heavy.
Something beneath them was not moving toward the ship.
It was moving with it.
The pack felt it too, though none could name it yet.
Brann had stopped scanning the horizon. His gaze drifted downward instead, eyes following the subtle distortions in the water where the barge's wake should have been clean and predictable. It wasn't. The wake bent inward, folding slightly, as if drawn by a current that did not match wind or tide.
Nyssa crouched near an access panel midship, fingers resting lightly on the deck. She had learned to read vibration the way some read tracks. Her brow furrowed.
"This isn't weather," she muttered.
Ulric stood near the engine housing, shoulders squared, arms crossed. Ice did not spread yet, but the temperature around him dipped just enough to fog breath.
"It's deep," Ulric said.
Fenrik nodded without looking back.
"Yes."
The barge creaked as another swell passed beneath it, lifting the hull higher than before, then lowering it slowly—too slowly. The ship lingered at the crest, suspended, before gravity reclaimed it.
Lyra whimpered softly.
Eira was beside her immediately, one arm braced around Lyra's shoulders, the other gripping a welded container for balance. Eira's eyes were fixed on the water, pupils wide, jaw tight.
"It feels like… like when the forest listened," Lyra whispered.
Fenrik turned at that.
The comparison struck something deep and cold in him.
"No," Fenrik said quietly. "The forest watched."
He faced the ocean again.
"This waits."
The first sign was not visual.
It was pressure.
A subtle increase in resistance beneath the hull, as if the barge had begun pushing through thicker water without any change in speed. The engines strained slightly, their hum dipping and rising as Ulric instinctively adjusted cooling with small, controlled spreads of ice.
Nyssa straightened.
"We're displacing more mass than we should," she said. "Something's under us."
Fenrik closed his eyes.
The flame core extended—not outward, not aggressively—but down. It brushed against cold so deep it barely registered as temperature at all. What came back was not mind, not hunger, not territorial warning.
It was scale.
Fenrik inhaled sharply.
The water ahead bulged.
Not like a wave.
Like the surface being pushed aside from below.
Brann growled low in his chest.
Kael stepped closer to the rail, eyes wide, breath caught somewhere between awe and terror.
The bulge slid past the bow without breaking the surface, running parallel to the barge. The ship listed slightly, pulled toward it for a heartbeat before leveling out again.
Metal screamed softly.
Ulric planted his feet.
"That thing's longer than the ship," he rumbled.
Fenrik opened his eyes.
"No," he said.
"It's longer than several."
The surface finally broke.
Not all at once.
First, a ridge—dark, smooth, rising just enough to catch the weak light filtering through the clouds. Water poured off it in sheets, cascading back into the sea with a sound like distant rain.
Then another ridge.
Then another.
Each spaced with deliberate precision.
Coils.
The realization hit the pack at once.
A serpent.
Not a creature that swam.
A creature that wrapped the ocean around itself.
The leviathan did not roar.
It did not announce itself.
It surfaced the way mountains do when the sea recedes—inevitable, indifferent, ancient beyond the concept of fear. Its body rose in slow arcs, each coil emerging and sinking again, never revealing the full length, as if the ocean itself refused to show all of it at once.
Then an eye breached the surface.
Just one.
Larger than the helm viewport.
Unblinking.
Pale gold, shot through with veins of something darker, older.
It fixed on the barge.
Not as prey.
As curiosity.
Lyra screamed.
Eira pulled her down behind the container, pressing her head to Lyra's chest.
Brann bared his teeth.
Kael whispered, "By the deep…"
Nyssa went still.
Ulric exhaled slowly.
Fenrik did not move.
The leviathan circled.
Not tight.
Wide.
Its movement displaced water in rolling waves that slapped against the hull from alternating sides, rocking the barge in an irregular pattern that made footing treacherous. The ship groaned, protesting stress it was never designed to endure.
Fenrik's mind raced—not with panic, but with geometry.
Coils.
Constriction.
If it wrapped them, even once, the barge would fold like wet bark.
There would be no time.
No second chance.
Fenrik turned sharply.
"Ulric," he said.
Ulric looked at him immediately.
"I need space," Fenrik continued. "If it coils, we die."
Ulric's jaw clenched.
"You want ice," Ulric said.
"Not on the ship," Fenrik replied. "Off it."
Ulric's eyes widened a fraction.
"Platforms," Fenrik said. "Temporary. Wide. Force it to commit outward."
Ulric looked at the water, calculating.
"The ice will fracture," Ulric said. "It'll drain me fast."
Fenrik met his gaze.
"I know."
A heartbeat passed.
Ulric nodded once.
"I can do it."
The leviathan's eye dipped beneath the surface.
The water around the barge grew unnaturally still for a breath.
Then the sea surged upward as a massive coil rose close enough that Fenrik could see scars along its hide—ancient gouges, pale lines where something else had once tried and failed to kill it.
The barge tilted violently toward it.
Metal screamed.
Ulric slammed his palms against the deck.
Ice exploded outward from the hull in jagged sheets, spreading across the surface of the ocean itself—unnatural, impossible platforms forming in seconds, locking water into structure where structure should not exist.
The leviathan recoiled slightly, surprised.
Not frightened.
Surprised.
Fenrik stepped forward, flame burning low and focused, eyes locked on the rising coils.
The ocean had escalated.
And so had they.
The ocean rejected the ice.
Not violently. Not with rage.
With pressure.
Ulric felt it immediately—the way the frozen platforms groaned beneath forces they were never meant to resist. Water pressed upward from below and inward from the sides, seeking weaknesses, exploiting microfractures that bloomed like white veins across the ice's surface.
Ulric stood braced at midship, palms splayed against the deck, shoulders locked, jaw clenched hard enough that frost gathered in the fur along his neck. Ice radiated from him in disciplined waves, not spreading wildly, but thickening where stress concentrated, reinforcing fractures before they could propagate.
It hurt.
Cold bit inward, deeper than skin, deeper than muscle, draining strength with every second the platforms existed. Ulric welcomed the pain—not because it was noble, but because it was useful. Pain meant the ice still answered him.
The platforms held.
Barely.
Fenrik moved.
Not recklessly.
With intent sharpened by calculation.
He stepped onto the nearest ice platform as the barge pitched hard to port, boots skidding for a heartbeat before his weight settled. The ice creaked beneath him, responding to the added mass with a shudder that traveled outward like a warning.
Behind him, Kael swore softly.
"Fenrik—"
"Hold," Fenrik said, not turning.
His flame core flared just enough to stabilize his footing, heat flowing downward into the ice without melting it, creating a thin boundary layer where friction increased instead of vanished. Fire and ice negotiated under him, not allies, not enemies—tools pressed into cooperation by necessity.
The leviathan rose higher.
A coil breached fully now, towering above the platform like a living wall, water streaming off its hide in sheets. Its scales were not scales as Fenrik understood them, but overlapping plates—stone-hard, coral-edged, etched with growth rings that spoke of centuries, perhaps millennia.
The eye surfaced again, closer now.
It regarded Fenrik with unsettling focus.
Not hunger.
Assessment.
The platform beneath Fenrik lurched as a pressure wave rolled outward from the leviathan's movement. Fenrik widened his stance, knees bent, body lowering instinctively. He could feel Ulric's strain through the blood oath—a grinding, relentless drain as ice was forced to exist where physics insisted it should not.
Fenrik raised one hand—not in challenge, but in signal.
The flame core responded.
Heat coiled tight behind his ribs, not exploding outward, but condensing, sharpening, drawing on the whale's essence still metabolizing through his system. Fenrik felt bones reinforce further, microstructures locking into place, fur along his arms thickening slightly as pressure resistance increased.
Evolution did not announce itself.
It applied itself.
The leviathan struck—not at Fenrik, not at the ice, but at the water between platforms.
A massive coil slammed down, displacing the sea with a thunderous force that sent a shockwave across the surface. Ice fractured violently, cracks racing outward faster than Ulric could reinforce them.
"Ulric!" Fenrik shouted.
"I'm on it!" Ulric roared back, ice surging desperately to arrest the damage.
One platform shattered entirely, chunks of ice hurled into the air like shrapnel before vanishing beneath the waves. Another held—fractured, tilted, but intact.
Fenrik leapt.
The jump was impossible by normal standards—too far, too unstable—but the flame core fed him precision rather than power, muscles contracting exactly as needed, trajectory adjusting mid-air with microbursts of heat.
He landed hard on the second platform, rolling to absorb impact, coming up in a crouch as the ice groaned beneath him.
The pack gasped as one.
The leviathan's head rose higher now, a massive wedge of armored flesh emerging fully from the sea for the first time. Its mouth opened slightly—not to roar, but to taste. Rows of ridged plates lined the interior, not teeth but crushing surfaces meant to grind rather than tear.
It could bite the barge in half.
It did not.
Instead, it surged forward, coil sweeping toward Fenrik's platform in a deliberate arc.
Constriction attempt.
Fenrik felt the intent clearly.
He did not retreat.
He ran toward it.
Boots hammered against ice as Fenrik sprinted across the narrowing platform, closing distance before the coil could complete its arc. He leapt again, this time onto the leviathan's body, claws scraping sparks against armored hide as he landed.
The sensation was alien—warmth beneath stone, power thrumming through muscle the size of buildings.
Fenrik dug in.
The leviathan reacted instantly.
The coil bucked, thrashing, sending water and ice exploding outward. Fenrik clung on, muscles screaming as centrifugal force tried to tear him free. His flame surged, not outward but inward, reinforcing grip strength, anchoring him to the moving mass.
"Fenrik!" Eira screamed from the deck.
Ulric felt the sudden change in load through the bond and nearly lost control of the ice entirely.
"Hold!" Fenrik shouted. "Just hold!"
The leviathan twisted, trying to dislodge the irritation on its back.
It was not angry.
It was annoyed.
That realization chilled Fenrik more than the water ever could.
He slammed a flame-wreathed fist into a joint between plates—not to burn through, but to test. The heat sank in, met resistance, then diffused harmlessly.
The leviathan did not even flinch.
Fenrik understood then:
This creature was not meant to be killed by things his size.
This was not a hunt.
This was negotiation through pain.
He shifted tactics instantly.
Instead of striking, Fenrik released his grip and ran along the leviathan's back, using its own movement to propel himself forward. He aimed for the head—not to attack, but to be seen.
The eye tracked him.
Fenrik skidded to a stop just short of it, boots slipping on wet hide, flame blazing around his frame in a controlled aura that hissed against water.
He met the leviathan's gaze.
"You are not my prey," Fenrik said aloud, voice barely audible over the storm. "And I am not yours."
The leviathan's eye dilated slightly.
Something ancient stirred.
The ice platforms shattered one by one as Ulric finally reached his limit, frost exploding outward in uncontrolled bursts as the water reclaimed itself. The barge lurched violently, freed from artificial stability but still upright.
Ulric collapsed to one knee, breath ragged, frost creeping dangerously along his arms.
Fenrik felt it through the bond and knew time had run out.
He jumped.
The fall was brutal—cold water slamming into him like stone, pressure crushing inward as he plunged beneath the surface for a heartbeat before the flame core reacted violently, forcing him back upward in a burst of steam and heat.
He broke the surface just as the leviathan surged away, coils unspooling, eye dipping beneath the waves.
The sea calmed—not suddenly, but decisively.
The storm eased.
The pressure lifted.
Brann and Thorn hauled Fenrik back onto the deck, claws scrabbling for purchase on slick metal. Fenrik collapsed briefly, chest heaving, water streaming from fur and armor.
Ulric dragged himself upright, staggering toward him.
"You idiot," Ulric rasped.
Fenrik laughed weakly.
"Worked," he replied.
Ulric snorted, then pulled Fenrik into a crushing grip for half a second before letting go.
The pack stood stunned, soaked, shaking—but alive.
The leviathan did not return.
The ocean rolled on, vast and inscrutable, as if nothing of note had occurred.
Fenrik lay back against the deck, staring up at the gray sky, flame burning low and steady within him.
He had felt it.
Not just this creature.
But others.
Deeper.
Older.
Waiting.