Through the maelstrom of my thoughts, the world narrowed to a single impression: an armored figure, surging toward me like an arrow freed from its bowstring. In a few swift steps, he’d lurched across the entirety of the broken deck, his every movement a blur to my eyes. Yet, before he could fully reach me, my body—no, Liang—moved ahead of my thoughts.

  He stepped forward, the staff in our hands swinging in a wide, lazy arc. It wasn’t the clever feint of a seasoned fighter, nor was it the desperate lunge of an amateur. It was something in-between, a gesture of mockery wrapped around something dangerously calculating. The action of someone who’d already foreseen the outcome.

  There was no titanic hand bursting from the deck this time, but as the armored soldier slipped beneath the swing with ease, Liang's motion shifted as well, fluid as water. The gauntleted fist, meant for our chest, missed its mark by inches. Instead, it tore across our exposed ribs, ripping through flesh with startling ease. Pain flared hot and immediate, a sharp counterpoint to the cold water still glistening across my skin.

  “Bastard,” Liang hissed under his breath, but he was already moving. No, I was moving—our steps blurring together. I didn’t stop to think; thinking would come later, if I lived long enough to regret this night. My feet, driven by instinct, carried me across the deck, toward a jagged, gaping wound in the ship’s hull.

  Liang had bought me the promised second, and I wouldn’t waste it. My plan was the same as it had been all night: if a hole opened up before me, I would jump through it.

  "Duck," came Liang's voice, sharp and urgent. Without a second thought, I obeyed, throwing myself across the slick planks. Something passed just a breath too close, the air stirring as it whizzed past my ear. My hair fluttered against the wind's sharp bite. But before I could even begin to decipher its death-laden whisper, the shattered deck swallowed me whole.

  I let myself plunge into darkness.

  The impact as I hit the wooden floor below was sharp and cold, and the accompanying splash was just a big enough to keep my bones from rattling. Water already pooled several feet deep where the river forced its way through a breached hull, but it was impossible to tell exactly how bad it was in the eerie light.

  The sound of my landing echoed hollowly, and for the first time in what felt like hours, everything slowed—just long enough for me to realize I was truly inside the belly of the beast. The night air, acrid and thick with smoke, had been replace by the suffocating stench of death, clinging to each breath I sucked into my straining lungs.

  But it wasn’t just the smell or the dark. There was something in the dark. Something ominous. Something massive. I could feel it, the weight of its presence pressing against me like the heavy, expectant silence before a storm. The ship itself seemed to shudder as it moved, a slow, deliberate motion that sent a splash and clatter echoing through the chamber. Something hit the water—a greave, still attached to a half-chewed piece of armor, the implication of which I tried not to linger on.

  I strained my eyes, searching for it. The faint light that seeped in through broken planks was barely enough to pierce the gloom. Shadows swam together, indistinct shapes that might have been crates, chains, or bones.

  And then, foolishly, I raised the lantern-staff.

  The glow it emitted felt small and fragile against the yawning dark, but it was enough. Enough to show me my mistake. It wasn’t that the thing was hidden in the darkness. No, it was the darkness.

  I froze, the staff trembling in my grip as my eyes were drawn upward—slowly, reluctantly. I craned my neck, and there they were. Two uneven, oval orbs stared back at me, dim and unblinking, set just below the splintered edge of the deck I had fallen through.

  It wasn’t just big. It was massive. Too large for this space, its bulk hunched awkwardly beneath the wooden beams, its limbs dragging through the water that rushed in with every shift of its grotesque body.

  It wasn’t human. It wasn’t even trying to be. Dead flesh, pieced together with all the artistry of a butcher patching a tapestry of meat, stretched taut and rotting. Stitches crisscrossed its misshapen form, holding the abomination together in defiance of any natural order.

  Its slack jaw hung open, revealing uneven teeth, blackened and jagged. And its eyes—those dull, dazed orbs—were locked on the glowing tip of my lantern-staff. Like a moth drawn to flame. Like hunger personified.

  It moved then, dragging itself forward with a sound like waterlogged wood tearing itself apart. And I, foolish, frozen thing that I was, could do nothing but grip the staff tighter, its glow feeble against the creeping tide of the creature’s shadow.

  “Damn, and here I thought Aunt Lanying was ugly…” Liang Feng’s muttered whisper cut through the stillness. Before I had time to question his bravado, Liang shifted the staff in my grip, leaving the lantern dangling from its end to arc through the air just as my armored reaper plunged through the gaping hole above.

  The reaction from the creature was immediate. The vacant gaze sharpened, and its jaw snapped shut as a roar tore from its throat. The sound wasn’t just loud—it was a physical thing, a vibration that shook every plank in the ruined hull and rattled my teeth in their sockets. Then came the fist, massive and rotten, surging forward like the tide, aiming straight for the staff’s glowing tip.

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  For a moment, it seemed almost childish, like some oversized toddler chasing fireflies. But Liang, always quicker than I was, adjusted the staff’s arc mid-swing. The creature’s decaying hand missed the lantern entirely and collided instead with the armored figure who’d just descended.

  The impact was thunderous, a sound that seemed to suck all the air from the room. But it wasn’t the soldier’s cry of pain that reached my ears. It was Liang’s.

  “Your…” he coughed, the strength of the blow reverberating through our shared body, “turn.”

  The fluid motion of the staff turned sluggish, leaden, as Liang relinquished control to me. My legs buckled under the sudden weight, and I staggered back into the rising water. I barely had time to catch my breath before the armored reaper, who had been flung across the cargo space like a discarded doll, twisted in midair.

  He wasn’t done. Not even close.

  With uncanny precision, he angled his body, hitting the wall feet-first. The force of his landing sent a cascade of water spilling in every direction, but he used it to vault himself back to the floor in a smooth, predatory motion. He hit the ground in a crouch, water rippling around him, and rose with an unrelenting grace. He was barely scratched.

  The undead giant, on the other hand, recoiling from the force of its own strike, let out a guttural cry that shook the room again. Then I saw it. A ragged piece of flesh—a severed finger, wrenched clean from the undead behemoth’s massive hand—that crashed into the water.

  Even before the rotting limb had twitched once and then stilled, the armored man’s hollow gaze locked onto me. It was an empty, chilling thing, like staring into a well where no light reached. Then he bolted forward, water churning in his wake.

  Behind me, another roar tore through the darkness, deep and guttural, a sound that seemed to rise from the ship’s very bones. The force of it rippled through the water and through me, rattling my ribs and leaving me breathless. Before I could think, a tidal wave crashed into me, driven by the sweep of a massive, rotting arm dragging along the floor. The limb cut through the cargo hold with deliberate malice, its path aimed directly at me.

  Still reeling from the whiplash of Liang’s relinquished control, I barely had the sense to move. My body reacted before my mind caught up, legs pushing off just as the giant’s arm clipped my feet. I tumbled through the air in a graceless spin, hitting the water hard enough to knock what little breath I had left from my lungs. Cold and murky, the river surged into my mouth and nose as I scrambled, disoriented, for some sense of direction.

  The pain in my chest was sharp, but the adrenaline roaring through my veins was sharper. Twisting beneath the surface, I found the ground beneath me and pushed up, emerging with a splutter of coughs and gasps. I had no time to collect myself—no time for anything. A shadow loomed above, and I looked up just in time to see a man-sized fist descending, fast and brutal, while my own armored grim reaper closed in from the front.

  My hands moved on instinct, the staff in my grip glowing brighter as I swung it up. The lantern-light seemed to carve a path through the dark, redirecting the giant’s strike at the last moment. The undead behemoth’s fist crashed through the floorboards, splintering wood and sending a spray of debris into the air. The river surged in through the fresh breach, the water rising faster now, swirling and churning with a relentless hunger.

  I threw myself to the side as the armored soldier darted in the opposite direction, both of us narrowly avoiding being crushed. The force of the blow left the ship groaning, its timbers protesting under the strain. The water was already up to my chest by the time I found my footing again, the weight of it dragging at my movements.

  The undead giant seemed to feel it too. An uneasy snarl rumbled low in its chest, and the ship groaned beneath us as the creature restlessly shifted its weight. It wasn’t just drowning—it was panicking. But there was no escape—not for it, not for the soldier, and not for me.

  And so, I couldn’t let it falter. Not yet. If it stopped thrashing and turned its attention elsewhere—say, anywhere that wasn’t the armored man—I wouldn’t last long. Worse yet, half-blind in the chaos, the river crushing in from every direction, I couldn’t even see where my murderous assailant had vanished to.

  Not that I waited around to find out either.

  I forced myself forward, trudging through the water as if sheer will could carry me faster.

  “Here, you ugly bastard!” I shouted, the words raw in my throat. I swung the lantern-staff in a wide arc, its green glow slicing through the murk like defiance made manifest.

  The giant’s eyes, each the size of a wagon wheel and clouded with something that might’ve been fear, refocused in an instant. The river was forgotten. It snarled, a sound so deep it felt like a second heartbeat pounding in my ribs, and I saw the flicker of flame reflected in its pupils. Rage replaced hesitation, and its colossal hands began to move.

  They came sweeping through the water from either side, carving twin wakes through the rising flood. The motion was terrifyingly familiar, like a person swatting at a gnat. And just like a gnat, I hurled myself out of the way at the last possible moment.

  The impact of its palms colliding was deafening, a thunderclap that left my ears ringing. The force alone sent waves crashing across the hold, slamming me into the splintered wall of the cargo space. Pain flared across my ribs as I hit the wood, and I gasped reflexively, sucking in more river water than I cared to think about.

  Before I could catch my breath, a gauntleted hand tore through the air where my head had been a moment before. A jagged edge of broken armor caught the light as it passed, the green glow reflecting off the deadly arc of its movement.

  There was no time to think, no time to plan. Survival wasn’t a strategy—it was instinct, raw and desperate.

  I dove into the water without hesitation, throwing myself left into the rushing current while hurling the staff to my right. Its green light spun wildly as it arced through the air, then splashed into the rising river, leaving me in utter darkness. My lungs screamed for air, but I clawed forward, every stroke desperate and blind.

  The water surged around me, a cold chaos that erased all sense of direction. Up became down, forward became backward, and the rising river swallowed everything. When I finally breached the surface, gasping and sputtering, my feet no longer found purchase on anything solid.

  The ship was sinking faster than I’d realized. The cargo hold, already an unstable, groaning space, had given way to the river’s relentless pull. Still disoriented, I fought to steady myself, gulping air in ragged breaths. And then I saw him.

  The armored man stood waist-deep in the flood, the glowing staff now clutched in his gauntleted hand. His black visor locked onto me with chilling precision, and I had only a heartbeat to register my doom before something else intervened.

  A colossal fist, rotted and furious, struck him like a battering ram. The force of the blow hurled him through what remained of the hull, tearing wood apart as if it were paper. For a single breath, I saw the burning sky beyond the shattered planks. Then the river surged forward, filling the void and dragging me under with it.