The smell of rust and salt clung thick in the water-soaked air, a suffocating heaviness that wrapped around everything in sight. Inside a massive iron cage its bars corroded from years of being submerged, flakes of reddish-brown metal constantly peeling away two figures sat in silence. The entire place looked ancient and neglected, as if forgotten by the civilized world long ago. Only a few half crumbled buildings made of dull blue stone stood around the area, their shapes warped and eroded by currents and time.
Dozens of cages surrounded them, scattered across the open underwater clearing like discarded debris. Inside those cages moved… everything. Atlanteans with dulled expressions, strange underwater creatures with fins and scales of all kinds and even monstrous beasts that growled softly through barred teeth. It felt like a grotesque market of life every species imaginable trapped, restrained, and waiting for whatever fate these traffickers had planned.
