The lagoon of the Gilded Coast, once a masterpiece of iridescent pearl and sun-drenched coral, was being swallowed by an impossible ink.
The water didn't just turn dark; it lost its translucency, its buoyancy, and its life. It became a viscous, light-drinking sludge that rose in rhythmic, silent mounds around the obsidian platform where we stood. The air, which had smelled of orange blossoms and sea-salt moments ago, was suddenly scoured clean of any scent, replaced by the terrifying, sterilized vacuum of the True Deep.
I stood in the center of the platform, my boots clicking against the volcanic glass. Aidan was a warm, vibrating weight against my chest, his gold and black eyes fixed on the rising blackness with a focus that chilled me to the marrow. My right arm throbbed, the Sovereign's Spear—the diamond blade of the First Alpha—humming beneath my skin as if it were trying to warn me of a predator it had failed to kill eons ago.
