Soliz sat petrified, quivering in the mess he had made of himself—an indignity that no longer mattered with his life balanced on the edge of extinction. His feet were scarcely a pace from where a drowned god had smashed into the ship. Still, he refused to move, scarcely daring to breathe, terrified that even the smallest motion would draw the attention of the titans tearing La Esmeralda apart as her body screamed and splintered.

  The crushed section of the galleon had once housed the cannons—and the soldiers who manned them. Now, both lay buried beneath the massive coils of an evil winged serpent, the largest of the monstrous gods assailing the ship.

  It battled savagely with the light-god stationed at the stern. The guardian’s halo, once dimmed to a sickly gray, slowly regained its brilliance as the fight dragged on. With no temple or shrine aboard to draw strength from, the god was severely limited—yet still, it stood firm. Wounds and corruption riddled its energy body, but none of it stopped the god from shielding the defenseless huddled below deck.

  Splintered wood along the hull glowed faintly and began to mend. It was a painfully slow process, one usually reserved for the calm of harbor. Yet the spirit of the ship seemed to will herself onward, reinforcing her broken body with every scrap of power she could muster. Much like Soliz, who clutched his blessed necklace with white-knuckled desperation.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Each movement of the serpent’s vast, scaled body undid hours of repair in moments. Even days of uninterrupted regeneration would not have saved the ship under such an onslaught. If the monster did not move away, La Esmeralda would soon sink into the abyss.

  Soliz felt it again—the deliberate scraping beneath the hull. The vibration was subtle, intimate. Like droplets of water falling onto exposed skin. Like the ominous tapping a worm felt just before the bird’s beak struck.

  Soldiers continued to fight with grim resolve, sacrificing themselves to prevent the invading fish-men from reaching the lower decks. Armor and weapons gleamed with divine power as they carved through warped, piscine flesh.

  Blessed relics anchored throughout the ship pulsed weakly, their waning light wrapping defenders in ethereal armor and knitting wounds—so long as those wounds were not already fatal.

  Then the relics flared one final time.

  A colossal crab climbed over the opposite side of the ship, its shell gleaming gold and silver. Muskets fired in unison, bullets blazing with blessings—only to ricochet uselessly off its impossibly hardened carapace.

  At the bow, the captain of La Esmeralda stood her ground.

  A half-saint in the midst of her trial.

  Soliz had no doubt she would earn the title. He had watched her annihilate the fish-men with merciless precision, then hurl herself without hesitation at the towering golden crab—a creature that tore through soldiers as though their bodies were no more than wet parchment.

  Steel rang.

  Shell cracked.

  Faith burned.

  And the sea roared, eager to claim them all.

  -

  Rafael felt unease coil tightly around his divine core. The ambushing drowned gods knew him. Not his light, not his rank—but him. An impossibility. They had been caged too long to know of him. None should have remembered his name, his shape, or the weight of his will.

  The answer slithered before him.

  Salutaris exhaled miasma that crawled across the deck like living poison, wilting flesh and spirit alike. Sailors who strayed too close collapsed, retching blackened blood as the malice ate through them. The serpent’s eyes locked onto Rafael—depthless, ancient, and brimming with hatred that went far beyond this battlefield.

  Rafael scoffed.

  He surged forward, his hands solidifying into spears of divine light as he tore into Salutaris’ body. Corruption split and burned away beneath his touch, purified into screaming motes as his blows carved through the drowned god’s slick, oil-dark scales.

  Salutaris’ physical form was denser, more resilient—yet Rafael’s energy body moved with blinding speed. He struck, vanished, reappeared. Cut. Crushed. Impaled. Again and again, he dismantled the serpent—only for it to regenerate in a single convulsive breath.

  If not for the sudden intrusions of madness tearing through his thoughts, Rafael would have ended this already. Each blow he landed came with a memory not his own—visions forced into him, soaked in malice, gnawing at his focus.

  “You should have accepted your duty with dignity,” Rafael said coldly.

  He impaled Salutaris through the torso, a spear of condensed light driving the drowned god into the deck. Blessed wood screamed as divinity scorched its surface.

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  “A little snake has no choice but to follow the commandments of a god.”

  Rafael brought his fist down.

  Salutaris’ skull collapsed beneath the strike, divine force caving it inward. Eyes bulged grotesquely as blackened ichor sprayed across the deck. Yet even as the serpent writhed, another memory surged into Rafael’s mind—their first encounter, twisted and sharpened into a weapon.

  The corruption seeped deeper.

  It had been a necessary sacrifice.

  The people had been afraid.

  They had begged for salvation.

  Rafael clenched his jaw.

  “Do you remember your duty to your worshipers?” he demanded, severing one of Salutaris’ wings in a flash of light before retreating.

  The serpent wailed—a sound that rattled bone and faith alike—as Rafael dashed around its massive form. Each pass left the creature maimed or pinned to the ship with radiant stakes, anchoring it in place to keep it from tearing La Esmeralda apart.

  For now, Rafael held the advantage.

  But beneath the fury, beneath the righteousness, he felt it.

  His divine core—once flawless, once solidified through years of devotion—began to fracture. The power he had cultivated swelled and buckled, destabilized by diseased divinity mingling with his own.

  The light inside him trembled.

  And for the first time since his ascension, Rafael wondered—not if he could win—

  —but what would be left of him if he did.

  -

  Salutaris began to cackle as corruption finally took root within Rafael.

  Did the god truly believe himself the only thinking mind in this abyss? Truly unassailable? Salutaris had planned far too long for this moment. Every skirmish, every sacrifice, every writhing corpse in the deep had merely been a step toward this.

  This was the moment.

  The serpent coiled around Rafael’s body, which now flickered with violent purple arcs. The golden light that had once defined him warped and dulled, drinking deeply from the corrupted blood and flesh offered in tribute. What had been radiant became stained—then redefined.

  Foul viscera drifted through the air around the ship, bloated fragments bursting into thick miasma that swallowed the galleon whole. The cloud collapsed inward, clinging to Rafael as he clawed at his own throat, choking on the corruption that forced its way into every orifice of his being.

  Salutaris rejoiced.

  It answered Rafael’s earlier mockery, speaking aloud the truth only they shared—each word a blade twisting deeper into the god’s already fracturing mind.

  The Veil strained.

  Rafael felt it tugging at them both, drawing them toward the mirrored world beyond—a place where divinity thinned, where gods were reduced to reflection and rot. Where their vast forms would shrink, their power stripped away until nothing remained but fragile, mortal husks.

  “You sacrificed me for your hunger to conquer,” Salutaris hissed, its coils tightening with every syllable.

  “To monopolize faith. To hoard devotion as though it were your birthright.”

  Its voice reverberated with the weight of countless drowned voices.

  “All gods sent from the empire were tasked with the same atrocity. You brought artifacts sealed with enslaved nature spirits. You built prisons to capture the native gods of this world. You harvested them—body, soul, and will—until nothing remained but empty husks stuffed with divinity for you to consume.”

  Each word sealed the ritual.

  Each truth fed the transformation.

  Salutaris flicked its tongue across Rafael’s once-flawless face, savoring the scent of blood now leaking from his warped body. The corruption forced the remaining light from him, purging divinity not into purity—but into chaos.

  Not decay.

  Genesis.

  A primal force surged through Rafael—wild, ancient, and utterly indifferent to the structures of empire and faith. True godly energy, unshaped and uncontrollable.

  Salutaris cackled as it wrapped itself fully around him.

  It ignored the furious assault of the half-saint captain, who—against all expectation—had shattered the golden crab and now hurled herself at the serpent with blazing resolve.

  It no longer mattered.

  The writhing tentacles that seized her, the colossal presence stirring beneath the waves, the sacrifice of hundreds of drowned clans—all had served their purpose.

  The ritual was complete.

  With its goal achieved, Salutaris loosened its coils and surrendered to the pull of the Veil, laughing as the mirrored world reached out to claim it.

  Laughing at the fortune the world had bestowed upon it.

  Laughing at the god it had broken.