Gray launched forward, his body compressing into a spear of dark crystal and serrated edge. The water howled around him as he closed the distance in an instant.
[ABYSSAL LANCE — ACTIVATED]
The Wraithfin twisted at the last possible moment, its lace-like fins flaring as it slipped sideways through the water with a grace that defied its size. Gray’s barbs raked across its flank but didn’t impale. A thin line of pale fluid bloomed from the wound.
[ABYSSAL LANCE — 68 DAMAGE]
[VEILED WRAITHFIN — HP: 262 / 330]
The fish retaliated instantly.
Its body curled, and those delicate fins snapped forward like whips. One caught Gray across the bell, tearing through his armor. The pain was sharp, but what followed was worse.
A cold, slick fluid spread from the wound, seeping into his flesh and blurring his vision. The frozen landscape around him warped, twisted, and the bones of the serpentine skeleton began to move.
The skeleton rose from its frozen grave, reforming into a massive, impossible serpent of bone and frost. Empty eye sockets blazed with crimson light.
It closed in with terrifying speed.
’What...?!’
[WARNING: HALLUCINATION DETECTED]
The bone serpent’s jaws opened wide, and Gray felt the cold of its breath. He pulsed backward, but the ground beneath him shattered. The skeleton’s tail whipped toward him, and every instinct told him that it was real.
’No... no, it’s not real...!’
The tail struck, searing pain spreading through his side.
[-42 HP]
[GRAY ASHFORD — HP: 896 / 980]
It was terrifyingly real.
The Wraithfin circled above, its red eyes blazing. The stronger his fear, the stronger it became and Gray felt the fear crawling back from the realization that the fish could make his own mind turn against him.
’It’s not real!’ he told himself. ’It’s just a hallucination—’
The skeleton lunged again, and Gray dove sideways, his tentacles lashing out on pure instinct. They passed through the serpent’s body and hit the ice behind it. But the thing moved like it was solid, turning with him, tracking him.
’This thing is mimicking reality perfectly.’
The Wraithfin’s fins pulsed, and another wave of that cold fluid drifted through the water. Gray tried to retreat, but the skeleton was already there, coiling around him like a cage of living bone. The crimson light in its eye sockets burned brighter.
[FEAR LEVEL RISING]
’WRAITHFIN STRENGTHENING!’
The fish’s body began to change. Its size increased, its fins grew longer and sharper, its red eyes blazed with that terrible, devouring light. It was feeding on him again and the more he fought, the more afraid he became.
Gray tried to reach for Cindy.
’Cindy! Do you hear me?’
There was no answer from Cindy at all. Her sweet voice seemed to vanish from his mind, and that only made him more afraid.
His thoughts reached out again, desperate now as the crimson-eyed serpent of bone coiled closer, its hollow skull tilting as if savoring his panic.
’CINDY!’
Still, there was no answer from her.
A cold wave of realization washed through him. The Wraithfin had severed their connection or buried it beneath layers of psychic static. The locket still hung against his bell, but the thread that bound them was silent.
’It’s blocking her...’
A wall of frozen water slammed into Gray from behind, sending him tumbling through a forest of jagged ice. He never saw it coming. The hallucination had become so thick that even the sea itself had turned against him.
[-68 HP]
[GRAY ASHFORD — HP: 828 / 980]
He struggled to right himself while the world tilted around him, the bone serpent’s tail lashing up from below to whip through his tentacles, scattering his senses into a blur where the impact, the cold, and the fear all felt horribly real.
[-78 HP]
[GRAY ASHFORD — HP: 750 / 980]
’Fuck!’
He twisted, lashing out with his serrated bell. It passed through the serpent’s skull as if through smoke. But the serpent’s counterattack was anything but smoke. It slammed into his bell with the force of a falling mountain.
[-92 HP]
[GRAY ASHFORD — HP: 658 / 980]
The crimson light blazed brighter.
The Wraithfin circled above, its fins spread like tattered wings, its body now half-again larger than before. It had grown a second set of eyes. They blinked at him with slow, deliberate cruelty.
The fish attacked again.
Its body dove from above, its lace-like fins now hardened into blades that sliced through the water. Gray tried to dodge, but the world around him had twisted into a spinning maze of ice and bone. The fin slashed across his side.
[-66 HP]
[GRAY ASHFORD — HP: 592 / 980]
’Tch...!’
He twisted, trying to retreat. But the bone serpent was already waiting below. Its tail swept from his blind spot, smashing into his bell and hurling him into a pillar of black ice. The impact cracked the ice and sent fractures through his already-damaged armor.
[-84 HP]
[GRAY ASHFORD — HP: 508 / 980]
’At this rate... I’m going to die.’
The words surfaced in his mind like a cold truth. He tried to rise, but the hallucination shifted again. The ground beneath him splintered, and the frozen sea opened like a mouth. The Wraithfin’s red eyes blazed above, and the bone serpent coiled tighter, its crimson gaze burning into him.
’I have to think of something...’
He dove sideways behind a broken ice pillar, trying to buy even a second of cover. The Wraithfin hovered, its two pairs of red eyes watching with cold amusement, as if it knew exactly what he was doing and was enjoying it.
’But how do I stop being afraid when everything I see is a nightmare?’
He pressed himself flat against the frozen stone, trying to slow his breathing, trying to steady the frantic pulse of his bell. The hallucinations pressed in from all sides. The bone serpent slithered through the ice as if it were water. The Wraithfin’s fins whispered through the dark.
Then, in the chaos, a single thought cut through.
’If I can’t trust my senses... I’ll trust my instincts.’
He closed off his vision, let the hallucinations rage without watching them. He stopped listening to the roar of the false serpent, stopped feeling the cold that wasn’t real. He reached instead for the one sense the Wraithfin couldn’t fake.
His electroreception.
In the abyss, every living thing gave off an electrical field. A real creature, no matter how clever its illusions, still had a heart, nerves and the faint electric pulse of life.
He let go of the world his eyes and skin were telling him was real and there, he felt it.
A single, pulsing signal, drifting above him.
’Found you fucker!’
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