The Epic of the Discarded Son-Chapter 49: Great Bait
"What is up with this wind?" Ana’s voice cut through the noise. She was trying to sound calm. But she failed miserably.
"And why did we just destroy our rings?" Luca looked at his empty finger, then back up at Shiro. He wasn’t angry. Well, not yet. Just deeply, profoundly confused. Like a man who’d been woken up, told to break something valuable, and hadn’t been given a single reason why.
"I’ll explain everything once we make it out of this." Shiro’s voice was flat. Without all the humor.
His eyes were locked on the horizon.
Dozens of winged beasts. Dark shapes slicing across the sky, growing larger with every heartbeat. Coming straight for them.
Then his gaze dropped. To the water. Where more shapes moved beneath the surface. Slithering. Following. Patient. Closing in from behind like a net being drawn tight.
Above and below. They were being sandwiched.
"I’ll handle the underwater ones. The rest of you take care of what’s coming from the sky." He pulled off his robe. The knight rose from his shadow and caught it midair, folding it over one arm like a butler who’d done this a thousand times.
He glanced at the knight. Met the empty visor.
"Support them." A pause. "And—you can go all out."
The knight’s massive armor groaned. Plates compressed. Tightened. Contracted against its frame like a predator pulling every muscle taut before the kill. Metal screamed against metal. When it stopped, the knight stood different. Taller. Leaner. Sharper. Every unnecessary piece stripped away. Built not for defense.
But for destruction.
"I will go wake up my father and Darius," Nora said, already turning toward the stairs.
"No." His voice stopped her mid-step. "Let Darius sleep. Him fighting is exactly what my father wants."
"But—"
He glanced at Nora one last time. Flashed her a grin—the cocky, lopsided kind that said I’ll be fine without saying it.
"Try not to miss me too much."
Then he fell backward over the railing. Into the water.
The moonlight painted the surface silver—a shimmering veil between his world and the one waiting below.
He broke through it without looking back.
The ocean embraced him in silence. Pulling him deeper. Gently at first, then faster. The silver above shrank to a coin. Then a pinprick. Then nothing.
He was swallowed by the darkness.
The water turned cold. Then colder. Then the kind of cold that stops being a temperature and starts being a warning.
He hung there. Suspended in nothing. Waiting.
The ship needed distance. And he needed to be the reason it got it.
Because he was bait. A delicious, stupid, incredibly reckless piece of bait dangling in monster-infested water with two daggers and limited oxygen.
It worked instantly.
They came from every direction. Shapes peeling out of the blackness like the dark itself had grown teeth. Surrounding him. Circling. Patient, the way predators are patient when they know their prey has nowhere to go.
He could see them clearly now.
Serpentine. Massive. Armored in scales so dark they looked like they’d been forged from the absence of light itself. Nothing like the eels he’d fought before. Those were surface creatures. Shallow water hunters. Clumsy. Predictable.
These were something else entirely.
Built for the deep. Born in it. Shaped by pressure and darkness into something that moved through the black water like they owned it.
Which, to be fair, they did.
There were about six of them.
’Nice. I’m popular.’
The first one lunged.
It surged forward. Fins slicing the water clean. Its jaw unhinged—wide, impossibly wide—enough to take him in one gulp. Inside, rows of jagged teeth lined up like the ceiling of a cave.
He threw himself sideways. Just barely. The jaws snapped shut inches from his face—close enough that the pressure wave alone shoved him backward like a punch made of water.
Then the second followed up, wasting no time.
Its tail came from above. No warning. Not even a heads-up. Just a wall of armored muscle slamming into his back like a battering ram wrapped in sandpaper.
The impact sent him rocketing downward. Deeper. Faster than he wanted to go. The water screamed past his ears. His vision blurred. His lungs compressed—squeezed by the pressure like a fist closing around a balloon.
’Damn it.’
He twisted. Hard. Forced his body to stop tumbling. Regained balance in the dark water just in time to see the third one coming.
Straight at him. Head-on. Mouth open. Slithering through the water like a living torpedo.
He brought both daggers up and caught its jaw. Blade against teeth. Steel screaming against bone as the beast drove forward, dragging him deeper. Faster. The water turned colder. Heavier, squeezing his chest, pressing against his skull, crushing him inward like the ocean was trying to fold him in half.
And to make things worse, its breath was worse than its bite. Which was saying something, because its bite was trying very hard to cut him in half.
His eyes widened.
The water shifted. The pressure closed in around him like a vise.
Something was coming. Fast. Not just from below—from the left. From the right. Closing in from every direction, like the deep itself had decided to squeeze its fist shut.
Above. Below. Left. Right.
He was surrounded.
No room to dodge. No space to maneuver. No time to think.
Desperate, he drove his dagger down toward the skull of the one in front of him. Everything he had behind the strike.
The water fought him. Dragged against his arm like an invisible hand gripping his wrist, stealing the speed, killing the momentum.
The blade connected, only for it to bounce right back.
Not even a scratch. The armor was too thick. Too dense.
They closed the distance. Seconds away.
His lungs screamed.
With one last desperate effort, he drove his dagger forward and plunged it into the only soft spot he could find.
Its eye.
The creature thrashed. Violent. Wild. A sound that wasn’t a sound but a vibration tore through the water—pain made physical. Its massive head whipped sideways, nearly throwing him off.
But he held on. Twisted his body. Used the buried blade as a grip and hauled himself upward, landing on the thing’s skull. In the same motion, his second dagger found its other eye. He drove it in deep, burying both blades to the hilt.
’Now you’re mine.’
Like any beast that had just lost its eyes, it panicked. Blind. In agony. A thousand tons of deep-sea monster with nowhere to aim and nothing left but instinct. It did the only thing it knew how to do.
It charged.
And Shiro let it.
He gripped both daggers like reins and steered. Pulled left. Pulled right. Aimed the thrashing, screaming beast directly at the one that had been rising from below.
They collided.
The impact was biblical. Two armored skulls crashing into each other with enough force to crack the scales that steel couldn’t touch. The water around them shockwaved outward—a ring of force that turned the ocean into a drum. His teeth rattled. His grip nearly broke. His vision whited out for a full second.
But he recovered fast and was already moving.
Both creatures hung in the water—stunned, skulls cracked, and extremely vulnerable.
He lunged forward and drove his blades into the fractures. Once. Twice. Each stab carrying a gift—his special poison, injected through his daggers.
Their bodies seized. Stiffened. Then went limp.
Slowly. Gracefully. Sinking into the void below.
And the familiar chime rang. Twice.
[You have acquired a soul fragment.]
[You have acquired a soul fragment.]
His eyes darted around as he kicked toward the surface. The other four were still out there. But they weren’t following him.
He broke the surface and the air hit him like a backhanded slap from the god of wind. He sucked in a lungful of fresh air, letting his lungs remember how they were supposed to work.
"That was fun."
His gaze drifted toward the ship, and he noticed it had covered a good amount of distance. He was somewhat relieved—until he looked closer. The sky beasts weren’t attacking. They were circling. Just flying around the ship in wide, patient loops. Like they had all the time in the world.
Suddenly the pieces clicked.
’Clever bastards.’
They weren’t hesitating. They were waiting. Waiting for the serpents below to do their job so they could attack in coordination.
He dove back down.
From the distance, barely visible in the murk, the remaining four had found something better to do than chase him.
The two he’d killed.
Those bastards had completely forgotten he existed. Tossed him aside like yesterday’s meal the moment something tastier showed up. And apparently, dead serpent ranked higher on the menu than whatever he was.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little bad for those two. They’d fought hard. And now they were being eaten by their own kind. Being torn apart piece by piece.
They weren’t just feeding. They were fighting. Snapping at each other. Coiling around the bodies. Each one desperately trying to reach the same thing.
The core.
The source of power. The thing every beast craved—the key to evolution, the ticket up the food chain. And four of them wanted it at the same time.
So he watched them fight, waiting for them to tear each other apart before he moved in for the kill. But something felt wrong.
The four stopped eating. Stopped fighting. Stopped moving entirely. Like puppets whose strings had been yanked taut.
’Why did they—’
Then he felt it.
A vibration. Deep. So low it bypassed his ears entirely and went straight into his bones. Not a sound. A presence. A growl that didn’t travel through the water—it became the water. Every molecule around him humming with something ancient and furious.
His bones rattled. His vision shook. His muscles locked up, refusing to obey. Every part of him frozen. Paralyzed. Pinned in place by something his body had never experienced.
’Move damn it.’
Nothing. His stupid body wasn’t listening.
So he did the only thing a desperate idiot with a blade could do.
He stabbed himself in the leg. The pain was bearable, and just enough to snap him out.
Instantly, his instincts took full control. He started kicking, clawing, tearing through the water toward the ship.
