The void-hunters struck before they made it halfway to the surface.
Their protective sphere shattered like frozen dreams, void-blades cutting through magic older than oceans. Water rushed in – not the controlled liquid they’d been breathing, but crushing depths that remembered when drowning was invented.
“Hold on!” Kira reached for Lira as currents tried to tear them apart. The water sphere pulsed between them, its ancient songs fighting against the darkness that ate at reality itself. “I can fix this, I can—”
“No.” Lira’s voice came strange through water that wasn’t quite water anymore. Her earth-mark blazed as she tried to reinforce what remained of their barrier. “Save your power. Save the sphere.”
Around them, void-hunters moved like ink through water, their not-quite-there forms distorting the deep itself. Where they touched, currents ceased to exist. Pressure forgot how to press. Water unmade itself.
Kira’s magic strained against forces that wanted to erase more than just their barrier. The void-hunters weren’t just attacking their defenses – they were trying to make them forget why elements danced at all.
Lira convulsed as pressure found her lungs. Her earth-sense was failing, connection to stone weakening as darkness ate at her magic. But her eyes… her eyes blazed with memories older than stone:
“Remember,” she gasped, blood mixing with seawater. “Remember why they chose to separate. Why they need to—” Another convulsion. “Why they need to dance again.”
The void-hunters pressed closer, their masked faces reflecting nothing as they reached with blades of un-light. The water sphere’s song grew desperate between them.
“Don’t you dare.” Kira tried to reach her friend with what remained of their breathing liquid. “Don’t you dare make me do this alone.”
Lira smiled, and in that smile was everything earth had ever taught water about being strong. About standing firm. About sacrifice.
“Not alone,” she whispered. “Never alone.” Her earth-mark blazed one final time as she gathered what remained of her power. “The elements remember dancing together…”
She locked eyes with Kira. “Now show them how to dance again.”
Before Kira could stop her, before the void-hunters could strike, Lira released everything. All her magic. All her connection to stone. All the memories the deep had given her.
Power older than mountains exploded outward.
The void-hunters screamed as earth-sense stronger than death itself rewrote the currents around them. Not trying to fight the deep – becoming one with it. Lira’s sacrifice turned water to stone, pressure to shield, darkness to light.
Kira felt herself being pushed up, carried by Lira’s final gift. The water sphere sang harmony with her friend’s last dance as the ocean itself chose to remember its first partner.
The last thing she saw as the currents bore her away: Lira’s form dissolving into pure light, her essence becoming one with the memories she’d helped wake. The void-hunters’ darkness couldn’t touch her now.
She had become something they couldn’t unmake.
Something they couldn’t make forget.
Something eternal as stone, fluid as sea.
Kira burst through the surface with tears that had nothing to do with salt, the water sphere’s song now a lament for choices and sacrifices and dances yet to come.
Time to show the world what earth remembered.
Time to wake up what slept in younger stone.
Time to make Lira’s sacrifice mean everything.
The elements would dance again.
No matter the cost.
No matter the price.
Behind her, the deep kept its newest secret:
A light that would burn forever in darkness.
A memory the void could never unmake.
A dance that would echo in ocean’s heart until the last tide turned.
Above her, dawn painted the sky in colors of mourning and promise.
The water sphere sang songs of loss and renewal.
And somewhere, other dancers waited to learn what earth had taught water about standing strong.
Lira had shown them how to remember.
Now Kira had to show them how to dance.