The lock clicking into place felt like a death sentence. Inside the conservatory, the
four sisters pressed themselves against the balcony railing, their knuckles white as
they gripped the stone. Below them, the harbor was a landscape of pure,
unadulterated carnage. The Seven Sins had not just arrived; they were rewriting the
very laws of life and death.
Ryuki, Tidus, and Kaito stood at the edge of the pier, their once-proud capes tattered
and soaked in a mixture of seawater and the black, rhythmic ink of the corruption.
They were the steel that balanced the chaos, but the steel was beginning to shatter.
"Form the trident!" Ryuki roared, his voice cracking as he cut through a possessed
sailor.
But the Gilded Fleet was no longer human. The Elder Duke, fueled by the grief of
losing his son—the man Jee-shahn had crushed—stood at the prow of the lead ship.
He raised a hand, and a wave of concentrated shadow-energy erupted from the hull,
slamming into the Suiseiryu defenders. Tidus was thrown back against a stone pillar,
his water-aura flickering like a dying candle, while Kaito struggled to pull a line of
civilian Mermaids and Lizardmen away from the encroaching sludge.
From the conservatory, the sisters watched their brothers, their father, and their
people sufer under the possessed Elder Duke and his fleet. Despite taking dozens of
critical hits from the Royal Army and the High Priest, the enemy numbers did not
dwindle. Simultaneously, the dark ink consumed the entire Aurex ocean, its creatures,
and more than half the port. The ink-black rot did not distinguish between friend or
foe, consuming even the possessed fleet in its path; it seemed it would not stop until
it devoured every creature and the very land created by the god Suiseiryu Aurex, the
Water Star Dragon.
"Father is down there!" Yuna sobbed, her yellow hair falling over her face as she
watched the High Priest fall to the ground, riddled with wounds after fighting the Elder
Duke to protect his people. At that moment, the clouds turned an absolute black, and
the air grew so thick that breathing became a struggle.
A shadow appeared in the sky, similar to the Draco ancestors, but it was ten times
larger and shrouded in a thick, black aura that waved like a dark ocean. The massive
head of the Seven Sins descended from the clouds, its presence making every heart
tremble with terror as the dark ink began to consume the world at a terrifying speed.