The iron deck of the Sovereign was a cold, unforgiving witness to the silence that followed the Deep-King's departure. The ocean, which had moments ago been a churning theater of obsidian spires and violet barnacles, was now as flat and glassy as a sheet of lead. But it was a deceptive stillness—the kind that exists just above a drowning man.
I lay where I had fallen, my forehead pressed against the cold, riveted metal. My wrists were not just broken; they felt as if the very concept of "bone" had been unwritten within them. The indigo touch of the King had left behind a creeping numbness, a salt-heavy lethal frost that was currently warring with the ruby-red magma of my Sanguine resonance. The black hook mark on my palm—the Debt of the Deep—throbbed with a rhythmic, liquid pressure that matched the heartbeat of the sea.
"Elara... Elara, look at me."
