He felt it.
It clawed at him, the unbearable weight of it. A sudden surge ignited within him, tearing his essence apart and knitting it back together, searing through his eyes, his skin, his nostrils, and his very soul.
Her force enveloped him, a presence he recognized as intimately as a long-lost twin. It infiltrated every particle around him, saturating the air, the chains that bound him, the world itself.
This profound understanding lanced through him like black ichor threading through his veins. His fingers dug into the chains, shattering them under the pressure of his grip. His brows furrowed, and his gaze, sharp as a blade, sliced through the void beyond the opulent palace's window. The darkness within him roused, a slumbering beast stirring from its tortured repose, craving release, yearning for the chaos and ruin only it could unleash. Its resolve was a serene fury.
It was incomprehensible.
He knew this essence, knew the bounds of its power, a solitary witness through the eons to magic unmatched in this world.
He delved into himself, into this sensation, chasing the ichor as it coursed through his veins, rushing down every corridor of his being to unearth its origin. There was something in that abyss. He plunged into it, tearing it asunder, vile in his desperation to unearth its truth.
A weaker soul might have missed the thread, a tendril of black and flame embedded in the periphery of his mind, an almost imperceptible tug on the fringes of his consciousness.
But he did not. He seized it, commanded it to yield, to divulge more.
It revealed a face. He regarded it with solemn intensity.
All it did was point the way. So he followed.
YOU ARE READING
The Triton
FantasyMermaids do not exist. Beneath the roiling waves of the oceans of our world, there are no peoples, no creatures that resemble us, nor are there great cities built into the coral reefs or mountainous trenches of the seas. The humanity of our world is...
