With her ssh, Kurai managed to push back Ursu and give herself some much needed space. Looking down at her keybde it felt strange but also familiar a sensation most likely due to Hoder’s heart which Helios used to make her body. Hoder having been a keybde wielder before would feel a sense of familiairity even though the underworld has erased her memories. The sensations were still etched in her heart.

  The abyss pulsed with stillness as the two women stared each other down.

  For a moment, neither Kurai nor Ursu moved. The Shadow Sovereign pulsed in Kurai’s grip—an extension of her will, as the power of all the thirteen darknesses fused into one flowed through it. Across from her, Ursu hovered with the trident raised, her form trembling, eyes abze with disbelief and fury.

  The stillness shattered.

  Ursu surged forward, screaming, “You DARE wield that filth against ME?!”

  Kurai’s body blurred into motion—darkness bleeding from her form like wildfire. Her Keybde came down in a bck arc, colliding with the trident in a bst that sent shockwaves through the sea. The trench around them cracked further. Coral towers toppled.

  Kurai pivoted low, dragging her bde along the seafloor, carving a crescent arc of void. The pressure in the water dropped as a gravity well formed—pulling Ursu’s massive body off bance. She corrected with a thunderous swing of the trident, parting the waters around her and shattering Kurai’s technique.

  “You’ll sink into the deep!” Ursu spat, channeling power. Tidal arms erupted from the sea floor, each one curling like a serpent. “You’ll be buried by the very darkness you cim to wield!”

  Kurai narrowed her eyes. “You’re mistaken.” She raised the Keybde. “I don’t wield darkness…”

  A blink—then she was gone. Teleportation.

  Kurai reappeared above Ursu’s head, bringing the Shadow Sovereign down with brutal force. Ursu barely blocked it, the collision sending a high-pitched screech echoing through the trench.

  “…I command it.”

  The battlefield transformed.

  Kurai weaved a spiral of shadows mid-air, forming jagged nces that fired in rotating patterns. She zipped between vectors of darkness, blinking through shadow portals like a phantom. Her bde danced in her hand, casting afterimages of itself with each motion.

  Ursu roared in frustration, spinning to conjure a tidal dome around herself. Lightning burst from the trident’s tip, searing through the water.

  Kurai ducked and spun, twirling through the bolts with her bde arcing behind her. The spiral teeth caught one bolt mid-flight and deflected it into the sea bed. The impact carved a crater below them.

  Ursu unleashed a school of cloned water forms—each mimicking her movements, striking from all sides. But Kurai pulsed once, and all around her dimmed. Her Keybde spun in her hand like a wheel, releasing a sphere of total darkness.

  The clones were devoured instantly.

  “You learned from him,” Ursu hissed, teeth grinding. “That little boy you follow. I see it now—his tricks… his step patterns.”

  Kurai sshed a series of dark sigils midair, each one glowing with menace. “Well, I did learn it from watching his every move.”

  The sigils detonated.

  Ursu screamed as her shields fractured. Kurai lunged in, twirling through the debris, her bde scraping across Ursu’s arm. Dark ichor bled into the water. The sea trembled.

  Still, Ursu endured.

  She raised the trident high and smmed it into the seabed. The ocean convulsed. From the depths rose a vortex, spiraling up with elemental force—currents wrapped in lightning and searing heat. Kurai was swallowed whole.

  Inside, the pressure mounted. The vortex spun violently, attempting to crush Kurai’s body, tear her limbs apart.

  But the darkness within her boiled.

  Kurai extended her hand, darkness crawling up her arm, thickening like armor. With a roar, she unched herself through the cyclone wall, cleaving a tunnel with the Shadow Sovereign. As she emerged, Ursu’s eyes widened—just in time to catch a full-force ssh to the trident’s shaft.

  The divine metal sparked.

  Small cracks spiderwebbed through it.

  “You…!”

  Kurai didn’t wait. She teleported again—behind Ursu now—repeating the motion, hammering her bde into the trident. Each impact echoed like a war drum. Ursu staggered back, disoriented, her control slipping.

  And Kurai pressed harder.

  She spiraled into a full-on assault, chaining sword combos like Helios—angled sshes that struck between breath and heartbeat. She bled into the openings, danced with calcuted malice.

  Ursu screamed and shed out wildly, but Kurai caught the incoming spell with a dark construct—an ornate shield of abyssal energy, shaped like a sigil-crowned door. The spell shattered harmlessly against it.

  Kurai flipped over her, nding behind the back of her neck, and dropped—smming Ursu’s face into the trench floor.

  “I was made from your worst nightmares,” she whispered.

  Ursu roared and surged upward with elemental force—cracking the seabed with a seaquake. The water turned chaotic—pressure detonations everywhere. Rocks flew. The battlefield became a nightmare ndscape.

  A geyser of cursed light smashed into Kurai’s back, sending her flying. Blood and void mist trailed behind her. She hit a crag and dropped—her body convulsing in pain.

  Ursu limped forward, bloodied, eyes wild. “You… will never… defeat me. Never.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. After I promised I would. Helios says I should always keep those. So let’s not make me break my word now.” said Kurai

  She raised the trident for the killing blow.

  Kurai, broken, didn’t move.

  The sea stilled once more.

  And then, with fingers trembling, Kurai raised her bde—slowly. Her breath ragged, her strength near gone. But in her eyes bzed something primal, like a dark beast that would devour all.

  A silver-bck spiral of shadow coiled around her.

  And she charged.

  Ursu brought the trident down with world-breaking force.

  Kurai sidestepped it—barely—and struck the trident one final time.

  It cracked yet again.

  The explosion that followed threw both women apart.

  Darkness and the trident’s energy ruptured in tandem, shattering coral, tearing apart the trench. Debris bnketed the battlefield.

  As the waters calmed, both combatants y bloodied and spent on opposite ends of the seafloor.