The warehouses burned. Flames licked the sky over Lübeck's harbor, turning the Baltic air bitter with smoke. Greta stumbled across the ruined pier, her ears ringing from the gunfire.
They weren't dockworkers anymore—these were soldiers. Not uniformed, not official, but armed with weapons far beyond anything ordinary gangs carried. Their eyes gleamed with the same sickly green light as the leviathan's.
The Schwarzschwarm.
Greta's Guardians fought valiantly, darting and striking, but the enemy adapted fast. Nets of humming energy crackled from handheld launchers, tangling Olrick's limbs. A blast of sonic resonance sent Tilo shrieking back into the water. One by one, they were being forced down, trapped.
And Greta—Greta was cornered.
She ducked behind a half-toppled container, heart hammering, watching her companions weaken under the assault. Her chest burned, not with fear but with a strange ache, as though their pain were folding into her own.
"You can't hold them off forever!" a soldier shouted in German, his mask glowing. "Surrender! The creatures are not yours—they belong to us!"
Greta's fists shook. Not yours. Never yours.
Then she heard it—seven voices, not separate, but layered. Whispering, urging.
Let us in.
She froze. What do you mean?
You are us, Greta. We are you. You cannot fight divided.
Her whole body trembled. She thought of her father's notes, the warnings scribbled in the margins: The bond is deeper than symbiosis. To wield it fully is to change.
A blast shook the container she crouched behind. Splinters cut her cheek. Olrick roared in her mind, the sound ragged, fading.
Greta stood. She spread her arms wide, feeling the ache in her chest flare until it was unbearable. "If we do this… there's no going back."
The voices answered in unison: Then forward.
She screamed—not in fear, but release—as her body erupted in a surge of light and water.
The Tintenwächter poured into her, not climbing onto her skin but dissolving into her blood, her nerves, her bones. Tentacles of radiant energy unfurled from her back like wings, each one tipped with the colors of her seven companions. Her eyes glowed with a deep oceanic blue.
The soldiers froze.
Greta stepped forward, no longer simply human, no longer only their bondmate. She was something in between: flesh and cephalopod, woman and abyss.
When she raised her hand, arcs of electricity cracked through the smoke. With a flick of her wrist, black ink burst from nowhere, blinding the enemy. When she spoke, her voice carried the resonance of seven beings at once.
"Ihr wolltet sie haben? Jetzt habt ihr mich."
("You wanted them? Now you have me.")
The soldiers fired. Bullets slowed in the ink-cloud, tentacles snatching them from the air. Greta's new limbs lashed out, striking with impossible precision, disarming weapons, sending men sprawling. She moved like the sea itself—fluid, unyielding, crushing.
One soldier tried to flee. Greta's gaze fixed on him, and for the first time she felt it: a new power coursing through her veins. Not strength, not speed—command.
The soldier dropped his weapon, eyes wide, and without a word, staggered back into the flames as if compelled.
Greta's breath caught. The fusion gave her more than her companions' powers. It gave her their will—the ability to command weaker minds like the tide pulling ships to wreck.
It terrified her.
But there was no time to stop.
As the last soldier fell unconscious, Greta stood amid the wreckage, glowing tentacles coiling and uncoiling behind her. The fire crackled. The sea hissed at her feet.
And in the silence that followed, she realized: she had crossed a threshold she could never return from.