The ancient thing that rose from the deep wasn’t alone.
“Above us,” Kira breathed, her coral spheres pulsing warning. “Something’s wrong with the water up there. It’s… empty.”
Lira felt it through her earth-sense – patches of ocean where pressure simply ceased to exist. Where void-hunters had unmade the very memory of depth.
They were being herded.
Their protective sphere shuddered as currents shifted around them. The massive shape below moved closer, its presence making the deep remember older songs. But those empty patches above…
“They’re pushing us down,” Lira said, reading truth in stone layers that grew increasingly strange. “Toward whatever that is.”
“Something the void-hunters fear?” Kira’s hands moved through forms that fought the crushing dark, but her movements were growing strained. This deep, even water-magic had limits.
“Or something they want us to wake up.”
The thing below them moved again. In the combined light of their magics, they caught glimpses: surfaces that weren’t quite solid, weren’t quite liquid. Patterns that hurt to look at. Movement that suggested size beyond comprehension.
Kira’s spheres hummed discordant warning. “The pressure’s changing. Not just heavy now. It’s…”
“Alive,” Lira finished. The seabed beneath them wasn’t just rock anymore. The weight of ocean wasn’t just physical force. Down here, pressure remembered being something else. Something hungry.
Their protective sphere cracked.
Just a small break, quickly sealed by their combined power. But in that moment, they felt it – the deep’s true nature. Not water. Not earth. Something older. Something that existed before elements learned to be separate.
Something that wanted to teach them that lesson personally.
The void-hunters above.
The ancient thing below.
And them, caught between powers older than empire or law.
Pressure sang songs that turned water solid and stone to sea.
Time to learn what the deep really kept.
Time to remember why some things were better forgotten.
Their sphere descended further into the dark.
And the dark reached back.