"You're late," Gir growled, dragging Abzu's Fang free from a wound that sizzled reality. "He's already halfway out."
"We stopped for snacks," Tahazu replied as he hurled Gorehowl through the ribs of a forming arm. "Hope you saved us the fun parts."
Ninim didn't answer. She landed with the soundless precision of falling snow, Rajinken trailing a curl of yokai wind in her wake. Her eyes glinted violet beneath the swirl of ethereal debris. The moment her boots kissed stone, the battlefield recognized her. And it shivered.
The seal flickered violently, weaved in Kingu's deep resonant voice, heard only by the Šarras through the crackle of raw magic:
"I was born from Tiamat's molten pride. The first flame forged to rule after her downfall. I split heavens with a single breath, and they—Kalosum and Mavromino—buried me beneath this gulf."
This echoes his ancient legacy and reminds the team why they sealed him.
Dara didn't turn. His arms were outstretched, the sky tethered to his blood. Vines surged from fissures in the ground, some rooted in earth, others in memory. Then drove both palms into the broken soil, lightning snaking down his arms. From the veins of the ground, roots surged. Gnarled and silver-tipped, soaked in ancient forest-blood. They cracked stone and coiled around the obsidian shell of the fractured seal, binding Kingu's essence back to the earth. They dragged through molten rock and cursed ash, snarling around Kingu's rising torso in a noose of sacred rage.
But then the rhythm faltered.
A jolt ran up his spine. No resistance. A memory. A recoil of planetary pain.
Visions flashed unbidden across his mind — not his own, but dredged from the world's marrow.
The eruption of Anak Krakatoa, blood-lit sky over the Sunda Strait.
Taal belching ash onto the Filipino plains.
Etna splitting open like a scream.
Lightning storms dancing across scorched forests in New South Wales.
Each eruption matched a pulse that now throbbed beneath his hands, a syncopation of fury and freedom. These weren't just disasters.
They were calls — blood-beats in stone that had weakened the seal.
Kingu hadn't clawed his way out. The world had called to him. In every collapse of magma and quake of fault lines, the old god had listened.
He was answering now.
This was not an accident.
Dara gritted his teeth, driving the storm-roots deeper, fighting the betrayal of nature itself. "He's been feeding off the human breaches," he growled through gritted teeth. "Every upheaval… every tear in the crust… it was never random."
Ninim caught it too. Her yokai flames flickered erratically across the fractured runes as she growled through her teeth, "We didn't find him. We summoned him."
"Focus on the ribcage," Dara ordered. "If we don't pin the anchor lines, he'll finish the emergence."
Gir leapt over a concussive burst from Kingu's shoulder and twisted midair, landing beside Ninim.
"He's adapting fast," he said. "Too fast. That roar earlier unraveled three layers of the seal."
"And the glyphs are degrading," Ninim added, already etching new containment runes with the tip of Rajinken. "His presence is distorting ley line flow."
As if summoned by their words, Kingu let out a soundless howl. The air rippled outward—not noise, not power. Memory. It struck like a fever dream, a flash of every war ever lost, every god ever devoured. Dara flinched. His roots recoiled.
Tahazu didn't.
He flung Bane like a comet, the axe embedding into Kingu's collarbone with a thunderclap that shattered two nearby pylons. Then he followed in, Gorehowl spinning from his hand into the creature's jaw. Both axes flared, runes alight, tearing holy ichor from bone.
"Let's give the ugly bastard a migraine," Tahazu grunted, reclaiming both weapons in a sweep of emerald fire.
Kingu turned.
Half a god, half an origin myth, he towered above them now—chest fully risen from the abyss, limbs unstable but enormous. He had no true face, only a crown of bone where light bent wrong and eyes that did not blink. His breath didn't fog. It bent time.
Dara's mouth thinned.
"Reset the cage. Now."
Gir stabbed his trident-sword into the cracked seal. Energy exploded outward, binding the field with salt light. The vines answered, dragging themselves taut with unnatural speed. From above, rain began to fall—thick drops tinged with silver and red. Dara fed the storm with a clenched fist, veins glowing with verdant light. The sky coiled tighter.
Ninim moved with purpose, wind whipping into her kanji script. She slashed Rajinken into the air, tearing a sigil mid flight. "Seal of Torii, Seal of Aramitama," she whispered. The magic curved, spiraling into the bindings like an exorcist's chain.
Kingu flailed.
The backlash shattered a chunk of the platform beneath Gir's feet. He dropped, caught himself midair with a burst of fire, and kicked off toward the god's exposed spine.
"We hold," Dara growled, lightning kissing his hair.
Then the wind shifted.
Not by weather. Not by battle.
By presence.
"Namus, little late to the party, aren't we?" Tahazu in turn growled as he and Ninim stepped into the chaos, boots crunching over fractured runes and blood-slick stone. The stench of burning ozone hung thick. Air rippled with pressure as Kingu exhaled from the half-breached sarcophagus.
Gir didn't look back. His blade—Abzu's Fang—hummed in his grip, thrumming with an ancestral flame as he dragged it in a wide arc to corral the churning abyss around Kingu's limbs.
Dara's neck snapped toward the threshold of the ruins, storm light dancing along his skin. His hands faltered.
"Atlantean," he said through clenched teeth.
"Tell me he's joking," Tahazu muttered, swinging Gorehowl into Kingu's hip and opening a reality-wound that sucked light inside.
"He's not," Ninim said without looking.
"Why now?" Gir snarled, landing beside her, face drawn tight. "We had him. We had him!"
Kingu's body surged upward, emboldened by the falter in the weave. Roots shrieked. The ley line bent inward.
Dara released the sky.
The storm buckled.
"Dara," Ninim hissed. "Don't you dare."
But the Blood King was already moving.
The forest in his bones peeled back, replaced by vengeance. Lightning spiraled down his arms, not to bind—but to strike.
And it didn't aim for Kingu.
Gir didn't look up.
He didn't have to.
"Let him go," he told Ninim as he anchored the failing runes. "We'll handle this."
Tahazu growled. "Letting him off his leash now? That's your call?"
"I'm not wasting breath on that bastard Atlantean," Gir snapped. "We need every drop of power to put this thing down."
Namus stood at the epicenter where Dara has left off. Just like his brother, nature bent to him—lightning split from his outstretched hand to feed monstrous vines and crawling roots that encased the perimeter, glowing with primordial verdancy and crackling with static. His hair whipped in the cyclone he'd summoned, eyes glazed in divine concentration.
"Seal is failing," Gir barked. "We need full triangulation."
"I've got south," Ninim answered, voice clipped. Already her aura had bled outward—her Rajinken glinting violet at her wrist, a whisper-thin blade etched in yokai glyphs. Every flick of her arm drew invisible cuts through the battlefield, carving wind into spell-forms that tried to slow the entropy pulsing from Kingu's skin.
Tahazu moved to anchor west. Gorehowl and Bane responded with a low growl from the void, appearing in his grip like wolves on a leash. With every slash, green ether burst from the edges, locking jagged chains of battle-magic across Kingu's writhing aura. His axes weren't meant to contain—they broke gods.
"Focus," Namus ground out, slamming his palms into the ground. Thunder cracked the earth open. From it, a sacred root system exploded upward like a cage—snaring one of Kingu's flailing limbs in electrified bark. "He's not whole yet. We keep him disoriented."
"I don't think he likes our welcome gift," Tahazu grunted, deflecting a wild pulse that cracked one of the outer runes. "Hold formation!"
Kingu's voice was not sound. It was the scraping of realms collapsing into one another. His half-formed body boiled with contradictions—scales and skin, star fire and stone. Where his eyes should be, swirled memories of dying suns.
"Gir, strike the sigil. Reinforce the lock." Namus called out over the roar of wind and war.
"On it." Gir dropped to one knee and slammed Abzu's Fang into the glyph embedded into the floor. Flames circled it, sealing cracks with ancestral heat. But the sigils bled black light—resistance.
"They're weakening," Ninim snapped, dancing along the edge of Kingu's influence, wind-blades whirling. Her lips moved silently, weaving a binding chant in tengu runes. "We need a temporal anchor—now."
"Everyone hold your marks," Namuš ordered. "I'll buy you thirty seconds. Make them count."
He drove the tip of his sword into the center sigil. The ground recoiled, then stilled. Light expanded outward in slow-motion pulses. Within the glow, Kingu's form began to drag—stuttering between frames, limbs freezing mid-twitch, roar dissolving into a warped echo.
Gir clenched his teeth. "Temporal stasis?"
"Localized," Namuš replied, eyes locked on the writhing god. "Won't hold if you start throwing tantrums too."
A smirk twitched at Gir's mouth. "Someone's feeling brave today."
"Don't encourage him," Ninim muttered, sweeping her Rajinken in a wide arc. Ethereal calligraphy hung in the air before dispersing in a wave of pressure. "Namus, now. Finish the chant."
The storm above tightened, a vortex of raw sky magic drawn down by Namus's will. Lightning forked into the surrounding pillars, igniting runes buried beneath the structure.
He lifted his hand, fingers splayed. His voice thundered, not in words but in power.
"Ezri'el… Huur-Et… Shaar."
Roots surged. Flame surged. Wind surged. Time itself strained under the convergence.
Kingu let out a soundless scream, and cracks fissured the very air around them.
"I'll not drown this world again—but do not mistake my restraint for weakness. Let me rise as the flame that purifies, not destroys. Or continue binding me. Your choice will burn just the same."
The air thickened like molasses. The sky bled ink.
Kingu raised an arm. The bones sang with pre-divine resonance, the hum of a world before form.
Tahazu flanked low, carving runes with his axes in opposing arcs. "We'll get one shot."
Ninim answered in a whisper: "Then we don't miss."
She leapt. Midair Rajinken split into three blades of mirrored steel, dancing in her aura. She chanted ancient war prayers from her grandmother's line, words not meant for gods—but for ending them.
Gir drove Abzu's Fang into the ground, channeling saltfire into the very marrow of the battlefield.
Dara's thunder raged elsewhere, chasing his fury.
But here—here, the remaining Šarras made their stand.
Kingu raised his head and screamed.
The world cracked.
Despite that, they advanced.