A massive wave of psychic pollution invaded the depths of Bella's mind.
Even the best swimmers can drown. She'd specifically asked Professor Charles Xavier for guidance on using mental cages.
One was a mutant ability, the other was psionic power—different energy types, but similar methods and effects.
Bella had set up a mental cage deep in her psyche early on, preparing for external contamination. What she hadn't expected was that once activated, the cage would sink so deep into her mental lake that it dragged most of her consciousness down with it.
"Miss Swan?..."
"Wake up! Bella... can you hear me?"
After what felt like an eternity, Bella heard someone calling her name. Her vision remained blurry, unable to focus. Even with her eyes half-open, she couldn't make out who stood before her.
Time seemed to stretch endlessly, then contract to an instant. Finally, cellular activity reached her brain. After a long stupor, she realized Sadako was using her powers to heal her.
Her condition was bizarre.
Her brain could receive external signals, but her body refused to obey. Her thoughts crawled at a glacial pace—each idea took ages to process.
Her physical injuries healed quickly, but the mental and spiritual damage required her own careful attention.
She nodded at Sadako, signaling she was okay, then had no choice but to shut out external sensations and focus on healing her psyche.
Sadako and the female professor laid her on a piece of broken metal plating from the ferry. The three of them drifted across the ocean surface.
The professor, with her wealth of experience, searched through the wreckage and eventually found an emergency flare gun.
Half a day later, they were fortunate enough to encounter a fishing vessel named the Endurance.
"I'm Lara. Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need us to turn back? We're quite far from shore right now."
"My student is injured. Do you have a satellite phone? I don't need you to turn back—I just need to contact Tokyo. With my clearance, I can call in a helicopter for her."
The professor didn't need Lara to turn the ship around. She only borrowed the satellite phone to contact Tokyo, where her authority could summon a helicopter to treat Bella.
But after multiple attempts, the call wouldn't go through.
"The storm's too strong. Phones won't work right now," said a young man named Lu Ren.
Bella hadn't completely lost consciousness. She vaguely heard Lara and Lu Ren's names and saw them moving around in her field of vision, but she didn't respond. All her mental energy had sunk into the deepest layer of her psychic world, fighting Calypso's mirror corruption.
"Calypso! You bitch!" In the mental realm, she cursed at the figure before her, venting her rage.
This was Bella and Calypso's first encounter. A mirror image of the sea goddess now occupied the depths of her mind, locked behind silvery-white iron bars.
This goddess bore little resemblance to traditional divine imagery—no dignity, no allure, only overwhelming malevolence. Her upper body appeared relatively human, with hair like sea serpents and ornate decorations on her elbows and shoulders. But from the waist down, she'd transformed into a dark green octopus monster covered in tentacles.
Bella found herself in a difficult position.
Her enemy was contained, but she didn't dare let her consciousness leave. Not knowing Calypso's true strength, she worried that if she withdrew her awareness, the goddess would break free and take over her body. That would be a disaster.
"Little witch, open your mind. I will grant you limitless power." Calypso's voice carried a cold quality, like the ocean's icy depths.
Bella sneered. "Limitless power? Do you think I'm stupid? You're not even a full goddess anymore, are you? At best, you're a sea monster—one whose power has drastically weakened, forcing you to merge with that creature beneath you. Where do you get the nerve to make promises? Limitless power!"
Exposed, Calypso's reaction was peculiar. Her upper body remained motionless, showing no emotion, while her lower tentacles writhed furiously, slamming against the mental cage.
Bella's mental cage wasn't exactly a spell—more like an application of supernatural power. She had to constantly channel psionic energy to reinforce it, which was why her consciousness couldn't leave.
Unfortunately, Professor Charles had designed this technique purely for containment, with no offensive capability. Bella had to figure out on her own how to destroy Calypso's mirror avatar.
She talked down the goddess verbally, but in truth, Calypso was still formidable. The magic-less environment had devastated the divine beings. Many gods could only hide in divine realms like Asgard and never emerge. Calypso, bound by her divine portfolio, couldn't leave the ocean—which had trapped her in a terrible situation.
Surviving a day or two was fine. A year or two, manageable. But a hundred or two hundred years? Unsustainable.
Her current fusion with this sea monster was a choice born of desperation.
Bella struggled to recall the image of O'Rin transforming into a spirit body and attacking Sadako with a soul blade. That technique was truly formidable—simple, direct, but limited in application, seemingly only usable in spirit form.
She replayed the scene in her mind repeatedly, missing no detail, slowly forming the soul blade.
But the moment she grasped the sword, it crumbled to dust.
"Not right. Still missing something essential..."
Calypso's mirror alternated between threatening Bella with her family's lives and tempting her with divinity and divine essence. Bella remained unmoved, simultaneously reinforcing the mental cage and crafting the soul blade.
She appeared calm, but anxiety gnawed at her. A defense can't hold forever—she didn't know how much longer she could last.
The Endurance was just an ordinary fishing vessel. Now it carried four disaster magnets: Bella, Lara, the professor, and Sadako. This drew Calypso's gaze, the Yamatai Queen's surveillance, the fish-people's hatred, and little Sadako's curse from the other side of the Yellow Springs—all converging at once.
The young, handsome captain Lu Ren discovered in horror that his ship suddenly suffered seized bearings, rudder failure, turbocharger damage, and a host of other malfunctions.
The hull inexplicably began tilting left. Before he could adjust course, the water ahead suddenly dropped, revealing a massive reef over five meters (16 feet) tall and more than ten meters (33 feet) wide.
The Endurance smashed straight into it.
A ship ramming a boulder? The outcome was obvious.
A thunderous crash echoed across the water.
The professor, too frail, tumbled across the deck again. With no Bella to rescue her this time, she splashed into the ocean.
The hull shattered into pieces. Lara, Lu Ren, and Sadako all fell into the water.
Unconscious Bella arced through the air like a projectile, flung over a hundred meters (328 feet) away.