Their protective sphere hit something solid in the dark. Not rock, not ruins, but something that pulsed with its own light.
“The water’s wrong here,” Kira said, her coral spheres flaring bright against the strange surface. “It’s not flowing like it should. Like it’s afraid.”
The void-hunters’ empty patches pressed down from above, forcing them closer to whatever they’d found. In the combined light of their magics, vast patterns emerged – scripts carved into surfaces that shifted between solid and liquid, telling stories in languages older than stone.
Lira pressed her hand against their sphere’s wall, reading the pressure patterns. “These aren’t temple walls. They’re skin.”
The thing they’d touched moved. Not quickly, but with the inevitable force of continental drift. Their magical barrier shuddered as currents older than oceans swirled around them.
“We need to move,” Kira said. Her hands worked complex forms, fighting to maintain their breathing liquid as the pressure grew worse. “Now.”
But the void-hunters had positioned themselves too well. Every direction except down was blocked by patches of unmade water, forcing them toward the ancient thing’s surface.
More of it became visible as they descended: vast geometric patterns that formed and reformed, surfaces that reflected light in ways that denied physics, and everywhere, everywhere, signs of what the world was like before separation.
The pressure hit them like a physical blow. Their sphere cracked again, longer this time. Through the breach, they tasted water that wasn’t water anymore – liquid that remembered being something else. Something older.
“Can you feel what it’s trying to tell us?” Kira’s voice was strained as she fought to maintain their failing barrier.
Lira nodded grimly. Through her earth-sense, through the stone that wasn’t quite stone anymore, she felt the ancient thing’s purpose. “It’s not just a guardian. It’s a test.”
The surface beneath them split open, revealing depths that shouldn’t exist. That couldn’t exist. That existed anyway.
Kira’s spheres pulsed warning, but it was too late. Current became gravity. Water became memory. Pressure became purpose.
They fell into spaces between elements, where water and earth first learned to dance.
Their protective sphere held, barely. But as they descended into the ancient thing’s heart, they saw the truth:
The void-hunters hadn’t been herding them toward danger.
They’d been herding them toward judgment.
And in the deep, judgment wore many faces.
All of them hungry.
All of them old.
All of them waiting.