Beneath the coral moonlight filtering from above, Helios stood at the edge of a ruined garden outside the palace grounds—a place once cultivated with care, now choked by curling kelp and fractured stone. The water here felt denser, less forgiving. Even the usual current had stilled, as if this forgotten corner of Atlantica recoiled from light.
Kurai drifted silently nearby, her hair trailing like silken blades. Her eyes moved not across the wreckage, but through it—tracing echoes of the confrontation that had taken place. Even without using her darkness, her instincts and senses were quite acute. Although finding it a colossal waste of time Helios said if they helped check if any people were buried that would help their position. So she could only do so and see what would happen next.
Thalen remained behind with Queen Athena and helped her. Helios had entrusted him with more than protection. The boy was a litmus test for how much trust they could expect from this Queen.
"How long do we have to waste time here," Kurai said.
"Quiet. I need to know what is happening with my power," Helios replied.
Athena had directed them here—to the precise site where Atlantica's scouts had found the remnants of the corrupted vessel. Though most of the ship had been consumed in battle or crushed by the sea, residual magic still clung to the shattered wreckage like a rot that wouldn't wash away.
Helios reached out and pressed his palm against a twisted beam embedded in the reef. The surface burned faintly beneath his hand—not heat, but dark energy.
With a gesture, he released a pulse of energy from his hand. The beam shuddered. The currents rippled outward. And then a shape formed: an afterimage of the vessel in its last moments—coated in darkness, steered by puppets, and pierced through with Ursula's magic.
"Oh, this was Ursula's doing. She anchored it here," he said. "It wasn't just an attack. It was a test of their defenses."
Kurai watched the ghostly projection shimmer. "For what?"
"To see where the weakness in their defenses are," Helios said, more to himself than to her. "Ursula knew she couldn't control this world through brute force alone. She needed the trident and the best way to get it would be a trade."
"And how that fool of a king would willingly give it to her in exchange for his family."
He nodded.
Then his expression tightened.
Behind it, something slithered.
Not physical. Not yet. But near. A pressure. A pulse.
"I feel like I'm being watched," Helios said.
Kurai raised her hand and summoned a veil of dark energy, casting a wide arc to obscure their presence.
"Can you find out who while I block their sight?"
Helios closed his eyes. His senses reached beyond what sight allowed.
Yes. There it was—a tether woven into the seabed, threading through coral and broken magic, stretching toward the deep trench beyond the palace walls.
"There," he said. "The spell is like a line buried just beneath the surface."
He raised Equilibrium.
With a twist, he tried to conjure the dark whip the keyblade shifted into its moon spear form.
"Damn, I can't even control these transformations," said Helios as he looked at the spear.
He drove the spear into the reef.
The seabed pulsed.
A flare of energy burst from the impact, racing through the leyline like fire through veins. From the deep came a wail—not sound, but pressure and distortion.
"Looks like we've gotten rid of the unwanted eyes but something still feels off," Kurai said, smirking faintly.
"Yeah, I feel it too."
Helios pulled the spear free. The unintended light receded, allowing the spear to return to its keyblade form.
Far beneath, in Ursula's abyssal lair, the witch stirred, surrounded by curling tendrils of seaweed and her glowing cauldron.
She paced before the cauldron, murmuring curses and concocting a potion of defense—a ward against possession and intrusion. A rare brew for desperate times.
The water around her pulsed. Her cauldron darkened. The image she had conjured of Helios shimmered and twisted—then collapsed into the shape of an eye. Not just any eye—the eye. The same that had stared into Helios days before.
Ursula gasped.
She moved back, raising the potion to her lips.
A tendril of black mist surged from the cauldron and struck her hand. The vial shattered.
"No—NO!"
But the eye remained, unblinking as all the countless eye looked at Ursula.
A single wisp of darkness slipped through the image and touched her forehead.
Her body convulsed. She screamed.
Then she went still.
Her form hung in the water, suspended like a broken marionette.
A moment later, she straightened. Her eyes opened.
But now they were completely black.
Inside her soul, she was aware—trapped in her own flesh. She saw, but could not speak. Felt, but could not resist.
And the parasite smiled.
It was not the great entity. Not the eye.
Merely an extension. A servant. An insignificant splinter of a being too vast to enter this realm fully. But that fragment alone was enough.
It looked into the cauldron. The eye stared back.
And it whispered, in a voice not hers:
"I shall do my job. I shall test the boy."
Ursula's arms moved without her will. She raised them toward Flotsam and Jetsam, her loyal moray eels who cowered in the shadows.
"Come."
The eels hesitated.
The possessed Ursula's smile widened.
Darkness exploded from her hands. It ensnared the two creatures, coiling around them like serpents made of void.
They screamed.
Their bodies stretched, warped. Grew. Once no longer than human torsos, they now expanded into monstrous eel-like beasts, their teeth sharper, their eyes a deep, gleaming red-gold.
They coiled and hissed, circling her.
And they obeyed.
Not their mistress.
But the parasite within her.
The possessed Ursula turned toward the trench wall.
She did not swim.
She glided.
And the sea itself recoiled.