Chapter 72 - Chapter 72: The First Shift of the Sieve

The Grotto of the Forgotten was not a place built for the living. It was a cathedral of the discarded, a monumental tomb located at the absolute floor of the world's consciousness. Here, the weight of the water was not a physical measurement but a metaphysical judgment. Every inch of the Iron Sovereign's hull groaned under the pressure of the Seven Trenches, the iron plates shrieking like tortured ghosts as the rose-gold Surface-Bubble struggled to maintain a pocket of air in a realm that demanded total saturation.