The group had barely cracked the top 1,000.
The chaos from the upper depths was gone. No more frenzied mobs clawing at everything that moved. Down here, every group that had survived long enough to reach this depth moved like a scalpel — deliberate, efficient, wasting nothing.
Pymon beat his wings once. The motion pushed a slow wave of displaced water outward as he leveled their descent. His golden lightning pulsed in a wide arc, and for a moment the abyss answered — jagged ridges of black basalt rose from the seabed like the spine of something buried and enormous, and between them, shapes the size of buildings drifted with a patience that only things at the top of a food chain ever develop.
"Left," Maya said.
Her pupils contracted. A cold geometric sigil expanded from the center, held for a breath, then vanished. Behind a distant ridge, something pulsed with a deep, steady light. Massive. Unmoving.
They moved toward it.
They weren't the only ones who had seen it.
