Understood — here's a refined, long-form Chapter 28, beginning with the early signs of the flood and the Leviathan's stirring presence beneath the world. The tone remains grim, poetic, and soaked in dread. The Leviathan speaks only
The wind shifted. The trees bent inward as if recoiling from something not yet seen. Animals fled. The sky dimmed unnaturally fast — not with stormclouds, but with a pressure that made the lungs work harder, the heart beat slower.
Anthony's spear buzzed faintly. A warning, not from magic — but instinct.
Riley felt it too. "Something's coming."
"No," Anthony said. "Something's waking."
A mile out, the river bubbled. Then boiled. Then broke.
The first surge tore through the valley like a knife through parchment. Houses splintered. The chapel bell rang once before vanishing in foam. The villagers barely had time to scream.
Then came the roar.
Not from above — from beneath.
A sound deeper than the earth, so vast it felt like it was ringing inside the bones. Not language. Not will.
Hunger.
The water turned black.
A shape moved beneath it, vast and coiled — a darkness older than metal or man. Eyes opened where there should have been none. A cathedral-sized mouth broke the surface.
A creature of Hell, forgotten even by demons.
The Leviathan.
It had sensed something — something wrong, something new. A presence it hadn't tasted since the gates first tore. A soul touched by inferno. A man who consumed the forbidden.
Anthony.
It rose.
A spire of scaled blasphemy and scar tissue, crowned by horns and gaping jaws. Its cry was not its own — but the mimicked shrieks of those it had devoured.
"No more—please—stop—"
A woman's voice, torn from memory. A child's scream followed. A priest's final sermon. All jumbled, meaningless.
Riley fell to her knees. "It speaks?"
"No," Anthony said, voice flat. "this is mimicry.."
Then he leapt.
Electricity lanced from his arm, now scarred from the explosion that had changed him. The spear hit scale. It hissed like oil on fire.
The Leviathan snapped — missed — and responded with a scream of mimicry:
"MOTHER—WHERE ARE YOU?"
Anthony creates a flexible barrier. And creates a hook on the end of it. To grapple onto the leviathan. The leviathan twists trying to get Anthony off of it.
Anthony's jaw tightened. He dug the spear deeper.
And yet... it did not truly fight.
It was searching.
Sniffing.
"…you...ate…us…"
The water exploded outward. The thing coiled up and tried to drag him in.
Anthony flared with energy. The spear burned red-hot now, steam surrounding him like a halo. The mimicry grew louder.
Anthony notices the scale difference. He grapples again and creates a massive wall of barriers. He shaped them into spikes. And shoots them into the leviathan. Before it could move.
He jumped.
Creates a barrier to land on and hollows out the barriers into a tube to heat the leviathan from the INSIDE.
"YOU… YOU'RE ONE OF US… YOU…"
He struck the flesh body on top of it... The Leviathan shrieked — not mimicked, not stolen.
A true, wounded howl.
The flood rolled across the hills. Crops were swallowed. So were children.
Anthony saw a little girl clinging to a branch. Her legs were blackened — infected. The same corruption as before.
Riley screamed. "Save her!"
He saw the eyes. Pale. Blooming veins. Already lost.
"No."
He flicked a bolt.
The girl stopped moving.
Riley turned on him. "What is WRONG with you?"
"I don't have time to hope," he growled. "Not when that still breathes."
They fought in silence. Not with blades, but looks.
Behind them, the Leviathan thrashed. Its voice split open into scattered screams:
"Mercy!—Stop!—Kill me—KILL—"
It didn't know what it was saying. It couldn't. It was parroting the voices it devoured.
And it had devoured entire civilizations.
Anthony rose high with a barrier pulse and slammed down through the roof of its skull. A final bolt discharged through its brain.
The Leviathan quivered — then sank.
A dozen voices bled from its parting shell:
"…was I… loved…?"
The water stilled.
But the world did not.
Survivors crawled to rooftops.
Others whispered from wreckage.
—"He killed that kid…"
—"He didn't even try…"
—"Is he even human anymore?"
A newspaper floated past. The front page remained:
"BLACK SPEAR.. SAVIOR OR MURDERER?"
Anthony walked away.
Riley stayed, watching him.
Far behind, below the still-rippling floodwaters, something else stirred.