The Lord of the Seas - An Isekai Progression Fantasy [ Currently on Volume 2 ]

Darkness. There it was again. It was a never-ending expanse that he'd seen right after he took his final breath as Julien Fronterra. It stretched on forever, a heavy, suffocating void that wrapped around him like a shroud. No sound. No breath. Just the hollow echo of his own thoughts spiraling endlessly as he fell. And fell. And continued to fall.

Just like that, Lukas Drakos had died. He couldn't tell how long he had been falling. Time worked differently here—there was no sun, no moon, not even a shred of the living world. For all he knew, centuries could have passed and he wouldn't have a clue. So this was it, then. The end. All of that struggle, every drop of blood spilled—Rodan's sacrifice and even the Kraken's sacrifice.

For what? For nothing. You weren't enough. You never were. The words weren't spoken, yet they rippled through the void, familiar and cruel, like they'd been carved into the marrow of his soul.

Rodan and the Kraken had died, simply for Lukas to follow suit. No. He wasn't Lukas. Did he even deserve to bear that name? But if he was not Lukas, was he Julien? Perhaps he was simply a ghost stitched together by borrowed names and broken promises.

Then—

He hit the ground. And it wasn't a soft landing. It was sudden, bone-jarring. A thud that tore breath from his lungs and scraped skin from his back. Pain flared across his body in waves—but not the agonizing kind. No, this pain was almost…like an anchor, pulling him back from the abyss of his own thoughts which would have been more than glad to torture him without end.

It felt…real.

Pain? But he was dead…wasn't he?

His fingers clawed instinctively into the soil beneath him. It was coarse. Dry. Sharp. He pulled his hand back with a hiss. Blood. Tiny glass shards glittered crimson in his palm. Red sand. Like ash and embers crushed together and left to rot under a dying sun. The heat was the second thing he noticed—blistering, immediate. The air was thick, sulfuric, coating the inside of his throat. Every breath felt like inhaling steam off molten stone. Sweat beaded on his brow. He rose slowly, muscles screaming in protest, and took his first full look at the land where he'd fallen.

The sky above him was black—not night, not truly. It was something worse. A ceiling of stone and smoke, pulsing with veins of fire, as if the entire world was trapped within a dying volcano.

And the horizon...

There was no horizon. Only ruins, stretching endlessly across this desert of red. Spires of bone, crumbled monuments, shattered chains hanging from empty gallows. He knew this place. This was fucking hell. Even if he'd never seen it with these eyes before. He was in the Underworld. The pit where cursed souls go when the gods abandon them. Just the very air he seemed to take in was an indicator that he was in the underworld. Everything around him, this environment, it was clear that it was not meant for the living.

A step forward, and the sand hissed beneath his feet. The wind shifted. Or perhaps it wasn't wind at all—just the slow breath of something vast and ancient watching him from below the red sand.

The man turned, and for the first time, he saw it: the rivers. He would come to learn that these…were the Five Rivers of the Underworld. They carved their way through the dead land like veins through decaying flesh, sprawling in unnatural directions, stretching beyond the ends of sight. Each one pulsed—not with water, but with a substance he had never seen the likes of before. They shimmered with color, yes, but not any color he could name. One seethed like frozen lightning, another rippled like laughter without a mouth. They moved in rhythm, as if they each carried a secret the underworld was too proud to speak aloud.

He had fallen near one of the five rivers and decided to inch closer, but that was the limit of how far his courage would take him. He was wiser than to dip his toes in the river, not without knowing what lay within it. The river beside him glistened with a dark, silvery sheen. He crouched near the edge, the heat warping the air above it, and peered in.

A face stared back.

The face had no scales. It was not sharpened by power or experience. It was not the one he'd grown to become familiar with these past few months. He had no wings. He had no claws, fangs or anything draconic of the sort. He had none of it. It was just the face of a man. Just flesh and stubble and hollow exhaustion.

It was the face of Julien Fronterra.

He stared into the reflection, his stomach clenching. That face—it was familiar, but distant. Like a memory warped by time. He barely remembered how that face felt. It belonged to another world, another life.

"Strange, isn't it?" The voice struck him like a blade between the ribs.

He jolted up, eyes wide, spinning to face whoever had spoken.She stood not five steps away yet he had not even noticed her presence.

She was tall and poised, her limbs adorned in coils of golden vine that wrapped delicately around her arms and wrists. Her skin was a deep, rich brown—glowing faintly as though kissed by the sun itself, yet untouched by the ruin around them. Her eyes were a piercing violet, too bright, too alive for this place. They watched him without judgment, but not without power. Her hair was a crown of thick, coiled braids, decorated with small gold rings and threads of glittering metal, some shaped like leaves, others like snakes. They swayed gently as if caught in a wind he couldn't feel. Her gown was a flowing array of violets and soft golds, draped like the robes of a goddess, cinched at the waist with a sash that danced with every motion. The fabric shimmered with impossible texture, like it wasn't quite made for this world.

She…was beautiful. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, both in his past and second life. She looked as if she belonged anywhere but here. Yet here she was.

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"I've been awaiting your arrival," she said, voice smooth and layered, like the first notes of an ancient song.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. What the hell was he supposed to say? A shiver ran through him—not from cold, but from recognition. It was that same feeling he'd had in the very beginning, when the Man in Green stood before him, cloaked in smoke and riddles, offering a second chance at life. It was the same overwhelming presence he felt when Oceanus rose from within the Hero from Another World, bestowing his divine favor like a crown of judgment.

The presence of an Immortal.

But her presence pressed against his skin like warm wind, not crushing, not demanding—just there. Ancient. Eternal. Watching. Yet…not oppressive. Not like the others. She bore no threat in her stance. No divine judgement like the Man in Green. No holy fury like Oceanus. Only patience. And a hint of curiosity. Her eyes scanned him slowly, from head to toe, and a wry smirk curled her lips—half amusement, half intrigue.

"Hmph," her words were soft, her voice folding into the hot air like silk. "So... he chose you as his Champion."

He blinked. "I—what?"

She tilted her head, golden ornaments in her braids catching the light from the unseen sky.

"Julien Fronterra," she said thoughtfully, tasting the name, smirking. "Of all the souls he could've touched, you were the one who caught his eye."

A laugh, quiet and amused, escaped her lips. "How… unexpected."

He stared at her, trying to process the words, but his mind snagged on her face, on her voice, on the impossible beauty that seemed carved from a higher realm. He had never seen anything like her. She didn't seem real. She seemed…almost ethereal. For a moment, he forgot what words were. Then he shook himself out of his trance, returning to his senses.

"Where am I? Where are we? What is this?" He asked.

The woman's smile deepened, this time with something gentler beneath it. "We are in the Realm of Tartarus," she answered. "It is what lies at the end of all things. Where the forgotten souls come to rest. Where the threads of life unravel."

"So I'm… dead?"

"No. Not quite yet." Her voice lowered. "You stand on the precipice. A single breath, a single heartbeat… and you would have tipped fully into Tartarus' sweet eternal embrace." She stepped lightly around the river's edge, her bare feet uncut by the glass-laced sand. "You now remain in between the world of the living and the world of the dead."

He frowned, his heart beginning to race again. "Then why am I here? What—what happens now?" He didn't want to feel hope or excitement, but he did.

Maybe this wasn't the end. She lifted a hand, gesturing for silence; cutting him off before he continued to rattle off more things that he wanted clarification on.

"Your questions will be answered in due time." she promised, her gaze turning eastward, past the dunes of rust-colored dust and rivers that pulsed like living veins. "But there is someone else. Someone who has awaited your arrival longer than I. Someone that you must meet."

Her tone shifted then—something reverent, almost solemn.

"Come," she ordered him, turning without waiting to see if he would follow.

Lukas hesitated for a heartbeat. But what choice did he have? He stepped forward, his bare feet crunching across the heated glass-strewn sand, and followed her deeper into the Realm of Tartarus, the underworld, the land of the dead. They walked in silence, the goddess and the man who should have been dead. Each step across the sand burned into his skin, but he barely noticed. His thoughts churned too violently. The river beside them flowed with that strange, silvery-black substance, its surface neither water nor liquid, its currents whispering things he couldn't understand. Reflections flickered and vanished. Sometimes his own. Sometimes someone else's.

Ahead, in the distance—something moved. A shape loomed by the edge of the river, still and monolithic. He squinted. The heat distorted it, making the air shimmer and making his vision obscured. But it was there. Waiting.

Who…?

Could it be the Man in Green? Was that who she meant? The one who had chosen him as his "champion"? Like how Oceanus had chosen the Hero from Another World, his father, as his own champion? His breath caught. Would he finally meet the being who had given him this second life?

The silence gnawed at him, every step stretching the tension inside his chest tighter and tighter. But then they came close enough for him to see. And what he saw turned his blood to ice.

A dragon. Not the largest one he had seen but even at rest, it radiated raw, ancient power. Its scales shimmered with a deep navy hue, tinged with silver at the edges, and its wings—folded neatly at its sides—seemed carved from starlight and smoke. Its eyes were closed, as if in thought.

The moment hit him like a brick to the face. He fell to his knees. He knew that presence. He watched as the dragon's eyes fluttered open, landing upon him. The Draconic Flow—he could feel it pulsing through the air like a heartbeat. Like a calling. It wasn't just familiar. It was his. The same magic that had coursed through his veins. The same rhythm that he'd learnt to master just months ago.

The dragon stirred. Its body began to shift, light bleeding from its form in strands, scales unraveling into flesh and bone, its massive frame condensing, folding in upon itself with elegance no human could replicate.

And then—

A man stood at the river's edge. Tall. Regal. Barefoot in the red sand. His hair tousled like storm winds, they were long and wavy. Sharp features carved from stone and fire. And eyes—those same eyes that he had seen in his reflection every day in his second life. Because it was his reflection. The man before him wore the face of Lukas Drakos. But not the man who had lived on Earth. Not Julien Fronterra. Not the stranger who had stumbled into this world, into a life that was not his own. A life that he had borrowed. A life that he had stolen.

No. This was him. The real Lukas Drakos. The original. The soul who had been born to this body. The one whose name he had carried through battle, through blood, through tears.

The dragon smiled. Not cruelly. Not bitterly. Just a warm, knowing smile that seemed to reach through the void.

"It's about time we met," he finally spoke, breaking the silence between them. "You and I have a great deal to talk about."