It was petals—the entire petal sea heaving upward into a single monstrous wave. The ferries tilted violently. Several men fell to their hands and knees, scrambling to grab anything that wouldn’t slide. Hwayoung locked one arm around the ferry’s mast, Hazahnahkah squeezed tight in her other hand. The world pitched.

  Lahahm, still strapped to the soldier’s back, groaned. “Oh no. Oh no no no no—”

  The wall of petals was taller than any building. It reached high enough to swallow the clouds, it did swallow the clouds. It peeled them off and took the water with it—an sprawling mass of roaring black and curdling teal blossomed like blood from a carcass—The Leviathan Sky, it was bleeding. All form lost meaning in the presence of the wave: gravity, light, mass. They all surrendered. But Hazahnahkah wouldn’t. He was still mustering up what he could with his Third Terror, even if it wasn’t working, he could try to stir the winds.

  Lahahm cried. “It’s a ystallo seasonal!”

  The wind roared, kicking up sharp streams of petals that stung the skin. Hwayoung and Lahahm’s wielder flinched. Nazaki’s raft veered dangerously, nearly throwing him overboard. One of his men wasn’t so lucky—he lost his grip and vanished into the flood of petals, swallowed without even a scream.

  “A what?!” Hazahnahkah shouted back.

  The ferries were sucked up the next moment. Lahahm flew off into the distance with his wielder like a letter blown away. Hazahnahkah howled but could not muster his Third Terror to yank them back. One moment they bobbed along the hill rising behind them—the next they were climbing straight into the sky, lifted as if the world itself had flipped.

  The petals formed a current, pulling everything higher. Water gourds, fishing gear, and even ceremonial offerings were carried away with the yells of men. Hwayoung snatched an oar and picked up another before it could drift off. She dropped into the ferry and planted her feet wide, muscles locking into the boards, her breath sharp and ragged. Before Hazahnahkah knew it, she slid him into his strap and forced him into a backseat experience of the emerging nightmare before him. She paddled hard—straight toward Nazaki, who still stood there petrified, the only shape unmoving as the world around him broke apart.

  The ferry creaked and lurched. The planks beneath her feet quivered with every passing wave. The surface of the Petal Sea bent and heaved now like a living thing, pink tides glistening under the fractured sunlight that pierced through The Leviathan Sky. The air itself tasted heavy, almost metallic.

  Hwayoung’s arms strained against the oars. Each stroke was a battle. The petals resisted, clinging to the paddles like a thousand glistening hands. A shriek ripped the air. One of the other ferries cracked in two, but everyone on it was already gone. Any person in sight had been carried into the air with the driftwood, their screams fading into the sky as they were lifted higher, higher, carried by the invisible draft that pushed the petals upward. The raft under Hwayoung’s feet groaned as it slammed against a sudden ridge of pink. Geysers erupted around them, spewing honey mist and cherry winds. Hazahnahkah felt every vibration, every warping board threatening to split.

  Still, Hwayoung paddled. She may not have even known what was happening around her. Her heartbeat was still slow, although beads of sweat now painted her.

  Nazaki grew closer. Now he was trying to save himself, still scrambling for a second oar. He had drawn Knife—no, just a broken shard of wood—and was waving it uselessly in front of him for one of his men to help—not that the man could help himself. He pointed at the hills rising behind Hwayoung, but she paid no attention to them. Her rhythm didn’t change. Hazahnahkah tried one last time to activate his Third Terror.

  “Obey me reality! Obey me world!” Hazahnahkah roared, but then fell into a whimper. “Please!”

  And nothing.

  The hills came.

  But Hwayoung was unconcerned with these. Just beyond Nazaki, a gaping rift of white split the ocean end to end, from where the sky kissed the sea at both sides. The petals parted further, and things that fell in went up, and things that went up were dragged downward. Debris splintered one of Hwayoung’s petals and she was stranded with only one.

  Now, her heartbeat changed. She was going to die.

  “No! Not again!”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Hazahnahkah decided to activate his First Terror.

  But even that did not work.

  The Knife cackled in the distance.

  Hwayoung threw an anchor stone Nazaki’s way, but the gales carried it up, up, up. Hwayoung screamed several times, but the noise was all swallowed up, up, up. Everything smelled like blood now. Even Hazahnahkah did not know why. Everything, even the sword, was going up, up, up.

  Then finally, Hwayoung’s scream reached Nazaki.

  “UP!”

  Nazaki jerked, his eyes wide. The anchor stone’s rope was dangling above him like a writhing snake, learning how to fly. He jumped and grabbed it, but the weight of his landing offset the ferry. Hwayoung impaled Hazahnahkah into a surfacing island. The crag broke off and the ferry plunged back into the sea. Petals swept into the ferry, filling it to Hwayoung’s knees. She tilted, her legs blooming with blisters.

  She sprinted the last few steps across the ferry’s length, but then realized before the leap she couldn’t make it to Nazaki’s ferry—not with her legs going numb. The circulation of her bloodstream was slowing down.

  “Nazaki!” she cried.

  Nazaki was spinning round and round. The current seized the ferry like a toy. He grabbed the edge, staring into the sea, staring at Hwayoung, staring back into the sea. Fear, pride, and confusion in a human was so very difficult to determine to Hazahnahkah. He tried, once again, to activate any of his Terrors.

  Nothing.

  And Nazaki did not reach out.

  “Please!” Hwayoung begged, straining against the pull of the petals. Her fingers brushed his sleeve.

  “I—I can’t make it!”

  The ferry jerked violently. Nazaki lost his footing, stumbled to one knee when the boat buckled. The ferry cracked underneath them. Petals poured across the deck in thick waves. The sky above began to spin, the Leviathan Sky tearing open with blinding light. Everything tilted toward it.

  Nazaki hesitated.

  For the first time, the defiance in his face cracked. His mouth twisted—not in rage, but regret.

  He reached for her just as the current took him. Hwayoung made a last scramble to grab him, but nearly fell off herself. The raft tilted sharply, and Nazaki lost his balance. His boots slipped on the slick boards. For a heartbeat, he was weightless, his hand stretching toward hers, a breath away before never being seen again. Nazaki was suddenly just gone—whether pulled into the petals or the heavens, Hazahnahkah could not tell.

  Hwayoung screamed but no noise came out, and Hazahnahkah then saw himself in her. The clouds and islands yawned open above them. Beyond where The Leviathan Sky once was, a new world shimmered—upside-down villages, forests growing along the ceilings of distant continents, rivers pouring upward into nowhere. Any survivors left had flown through the air like scattered seeds, some silent, some shrieking.

  Hwayoung breathed loudly through her teeth but did not release her grip. She curled into a ball and covered herself with the torn sail from another ferry, clutching Hazahnahkah to her chest. Her heartbeat. Hazahnahkah could not hear it now.

  The ferry split beneath Hwayoung's feet. She cried out and jumped—grabbing at the last slat of wood still floating. It spun wildly in the updraft. The pink light of the world faded into pure white. The noise roared into silence. The board creaked and bent. It would not hold.

  And then—

  They crossed the sky.

  They were climbing the face of a world.

  Weight disappeared. The last few petals dissolved around them. There was only cold, bright light, and endless, endless open space. The only thing Hazahnahkah could really sense, were Hwayoung’s arms curling around him. They plummeted toward a floating continent stitched together by ribbons of river and glowing fields, hurtling through the last streams of petals like stars dragging tails of color behind them.

  Hwayoung burrowed deeper into the blankets and wormed herself between what was left of the ferry’s mast and the hull. The higher they rose, the colder it became. The pink petals thinned into mist, and the pull toward the Leviathan Sky became stronger. The floating continents above no longer seemed far — they seemed close enough to reach out and touch. They reminded Hazahnahkah dearly of the painting in Ysan and Ul’s cave.

  Then the wave broke.

  Hazahnahkah’s Third Terror then activated. It did everything he had commanded but far too late. He used what he could to immediately heal the girl’s injuries and secure themselves better, but now the petals were falling and it was hard to coordinate anything spatially at all—even himself. He was flung into the air with a flash, tumbling into pink and green. He watched as Hwayoung’s ferry—the final ferry—tipped over from subsiding hills, and he screamed—he screamed louder than he ever had before, and still no one could hear him.

  Hazahnahkah never saw the sun of this world again. He drifted to the bottom of what felt to be a lake, brushed by scales that pushed him to the sea. His gliding led him to the abyss. His silence led him to contemplation. All he lost, all his mistakes, and the only defeat he ever had.

  Hazahnahkah would rest here forever. He would never allow himself to resurface. Never again. All that ever happened from holding him was swift carnage and generational tragedy. He ushered the petaled death to swallow him up, and here, eternal, he would remain—just as the the village of Osayn had wanted him.

  But even this availed him.

  A hook latched onto him. It hauled him up. The petal surface tore as he was hurled onto the shoreline by a makeshift fishing pole, made of bamboo stalks, clothing scraps, and the shard of a shell.

  It was the girl.

  She smiled.

  “I’m not done with you yet, Hazahnahkah.”

  [Experience Gained — Hazahnahkah’s Hero]

  [Hwayoung’s Relationships]

  Hazahnahkah: Dependent 25/100 → Thankful 30/100

  [Hazahnahkah’s Relationships Changed Dramatically]

  Hwayoung: Emboldened 65/100 → Hopeful 99/100

  Ysan: Lamented 100/100