Chapter 65: THIRD POV.

Persephone, who was swimming desperately towards the whirlpool, was shocked.

She stopped for a second, her mouth hanging open. Not once did she think he had inherited her ability as well.

She hadn’t known he could do that. Truthfully, even he didn’t know he could, but in this moment of need, the power finally manifested itself.

Jacob didn’t say a word. He didn’t have any breath left to speak.

Instead, he concentrated all his remaining strength in his feet. With one final, massive effort, he kicked Artria, who was still encased in the protective water glob, away from the whirlpool.

It was a powerful strike, intended to send her flying into the calmer waters far away from the danger zone.

The force of the kick did exactly what he wanted, but it had a cost.

Every action has a reaction, and as Artria was launched to safety, the momentum pushed Jacob deeper into the whirlpool at the same time.

He didn’t fight it. He let his body go limp as the white water swallowed him. His body vanished without a trace into the spinning darkness of the center.

"NOO!!!!!!" Persephone let out an anguished cry that sounded like a wounded animal.

Her expression turned maddening, her face twisting with a mix of horror and disbelief.

She reached out toward the spot where he had been, her fingers clawing at the empty water.

’I didn’t mean it like this! She’s supposed to die! Not you!’ her mind screamed.

The jealousy that had driven her to this point turned into a poisonous regret.

’Why are you doing this! You promised you wouldn’t leave me again!’

Her speed increased several fold as her grief turned into a wild, frantic energy.

She swam towards the whirlpool like a black streak of lightning.

She didn’t care about her own safety anymore. If he was gone, she didn’t want to be here either. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

She activated her water manipulation ability to its absolute limit.

Persephone focused all her mental energy on the spinning funnel, hoping to calm the whirlpool and force it to spit him back out.

The whirlpool shook greatly. The smooth, deadly spin became jagged and unstable as Persephone’s power crashed into it.

The water roared in protest, and the entire area began to vibrate with a terrifying energy.

Artria, who saw all of this from a distance, paled. The water glob had already vanished after she left the whirlpool’s event horizon, leaving her floating in the relatively calm water.

She was bruised and exhausted, her throat burning from where Persephone had squeezed it.

But seeing Persephone still struggling to calm the whirlpool, she bit her lower lip.

She looked at the spot where Jacob had disappeared, and her heart felt like it was breaking in two.

Recalling Jacob’s last words to her, his plea for her to look after her sister, she felt a surge of duty.

She couldn’t let him die for nothing, nor could she let Persephone destroy herself in her grief.

Artria steeled herself and swam forward, moving back toward the chaos.

Persephone was so focused on the whirlpool that she was caught completely off guard when Artria tackled her from the side.

Artria used her remaining weight to drag Persephone down behind a large, jagged rock that sat on the edge of the basin.

"What are you doing!" Persephone glared murderously at her sister. She tried to shove Artria away, her hands glowing with blue energy. "Let me go! I have to save him!"

But the moment Artria grabbed her and forced her to take cover, the world seemed to end.

BOOM!!!!

The whirlpool, made unstable by Persephone’s interference and the clashing powers, finally reached its breaking point.

Unfortunately it didn’t stop like she’d hoped, rather, it exploded outwards in a massive shockwave of pressure and foam.

It was like an underwater bomb had gone off.

The rock they were hiding behind withstood the initial rush of water for a few seconds, but the force was simply too much.

Gradually, the stone began to crumble and crack under the weight of the blast.

Until finally, it shattered into a thousand pieces. The remaining force of the explosion carried both Artria and Persephone away like they were nothing but pieces of driftwood.

They were sent hurtling hundreds of meters away through the dark water.

Artria, who was already in bad shape from the fight and the suffocation, felt her body breaking.

The pressure was so high she couldn’t breathe. She coughed up mouthful after mouthful of blood, the red clouds disappearing instantly in the rushing current.

Her vision began to tunnel and fade.

Eventually, her body struck hard against a distant coral reef. She hit the ground with a sickening thud, ploughing through the soft soil and sand for several meters.

Her movement finally came to a stop in a cloud of dust. She tried to lift her head, in order to look for Persephone or any sign of Jacob, but her strength was too far gone.

In less than a few seconds, she gradually lost consciousness, her world turning completely black.

The ocean returned to a deathly silence, the whirlpool gone, leaving only the ruins of the rocky landscape and the two broken sisters behind.

"Urrgh... Why does my head hurt so much." Jacob groaned as he started to wake up.

His head felt like someone was hitting it with a heavy rock from the inside. Every time his heart beat, a sharp pain shot through his skull.

He tried to raise a hand to rub his eyes, but he couldn’t move his arm more than a few inches.

His eyes were stinging badly, and as the light started to filter through his eyelids, it felt like needles poking at his brain.

Clank. Clank.

"What?" he muttered in surprise.

The sound was strange, like a heavy, metallic noise that didn’t belong in the quiet underwater world he had grown used to.

It was a cold sound, one that made the hair on his neck stand up.