The smaller leviathans tore each other apart for the demon's head.
He was still conscious when the first set of jaws closed around him.
I saw it in his eyes—wide, wet, and full of fear.
Real fear. Primal.
The kind of fear that doesn't reason or think. The kind that just knows.
Knows it's over. Knows there's no bargaining. No fighting. No god to beg.
And it made me happy.
He had devoured others without a second thought.
He had unmade people. Turned girls into meals, joy into echoes.
He had become a cannibal—of the flesh, soul and dreams of the girls.
And yet, somehow, he escaped a cannibal's end. No slow chewing by his own kind. No poetic reversal.
But this?
This was close enough.
His end wasn't merciful.
It wasn't even final.
It was messy. Layered. A slow devouring across monsters.
I watched as his skull was slowly chewed apart by smaller creatures.
Bits of brain matter bubbled out with every crunch.
Eye fluid leaked and slicked across teeth.
Even in death, he gave something to the sea—if only filth.
Then those creatures were swallowed whole.
Larger beasts crashed through the water like battering rams, jaws splitting wide. They consumed the ones who consumed him. The chain continued.
Devourers devoured.
Blood fed blood.
And then I saw her.
The water shifted—pressure changing like the air before a storm.
The surface bent. Bent.
And the Apex Leviathan rose.
Not surfaced. Rose.
Her mouth opened once and nearly 90% of everything in her path vanished in a single swallow. A swallow that sounded like the sky splitting open.
There was no resistance.
She didn't roar. She didn't scream.
She ascended.
She broke free from the ocean like a god rejecting the sea. Her mass pulled water after her, spiraling into clouds. She passed the other leviathans like they were statues. Left a column of emptiness behind her, the ocean parting like it was afraid.
Her color was pitch—darker than shadow, darker than oil. She was the shape things take in nightmares when you forget what light is.
I cranked my neck as high as I could.
My spine hurt. Didn't matter.
I had to see.
Not because she was what I had been waiting for.
But because she was what I still needed.
She was the final piece.
The last truth.
The last weight to tip the ritual into something complete.
She cast a shadow that swallowed everything. The ship. The sea. Even the fading sun disappeared behind her ascent. The light didn't dim. It died.
I could feel the temperature drop.
Not a chill. Not a breeze.
A plunge.
Like standing beside an open grave carved into the sea itself.
And I smiled.
Because now—now I saw her fully.
No storm this time. No fog. No veil.
Just her.
The Apex Leviathan.
Her head kept rising, still hidden inside the thick belly of the clouds. I couldn't see the full shape. Just the underbelly. The curve of jaws. The long, terrifying length of her body, still climbing.
Such a beauty.
Not in the way men speak of flowers or women or gold.
This was a cathedral.
A force made flesh.
A thing too old to name, too large to measure.
Even the ship—battered and cracking—had gone quiet. It no longer rocked violently. No more gnashing against the hull. No more screams in the water.
Because there was nothing left.
She had swallowed the sea.
Only I remained.
I walked to the ritual site again.
It had been shaken, scattered slightly by the chaos, but the heart of it held. The circle. The bone. The symbols in the blood.
I knelt again. Rearranged them. One last time.
Made sure every piece was where it should be.
This wasn't superstition. This wasn't fear.
It was respect.
Not for the Leviathan.
Not even for the ritual.
For the girls.
For the dead.
For what came next.
And then I stood.
I looked up again.
I couldn't see her eyes—but I knew she saw me.
Felt me.
She was still rising.
It would take time. I knew that. Felt it in my gut.
When something that large moves, it doesn't just fall. It descends.
And when she finally came back down?
The world would change.
But for now?
I waited.
Blood in my veins still humming.
Brick in my hand still warm.
Sun long gone.
I stood in the eye of it all.
And I waited.