*Day 6 - The Infinite Ocean*
Silenus descended through water that had never known sunlight.
A thousand meters down, pressure crushed against his scales like the world's judgment. Two thousand meters, and his dragon bones groaned. Three thousand, and the darkness became a living thing with teeth and opinions.
The Leviathans ruled here, in the Abyss where even dragons feared to fly.
He could feel them watching—massive consciousnesses that made dragons seem like sparrows. They'd been here since before land learned to be dry, before sky separated from sea. While dragons played at being gods, Leviathans simply were.
*Turn back, sky-crawler.*
The thought wasn't words but pressure waves, each pulse making his organs shift.
*I seek audience,* Silenus replied, though 'replied' meant letting his pain radiate outward. In the deep, everything was communication. Every heartbeat, every tremor of fear.
*You seek death. We give freely.*
Something moved in the darkness. Bigger than islands. Older than civilization. A Leviathan whose name was the sound drowning makes.
Bioluminescent parasites covered its hide—cities of them, ecosystems that had evolved just to live on this one being's skin. They spelled out words in languages that had died before dragons learned to speak:
*HERETIC. MURDERER. FOOL.*
*Yes,* Silenus agreed to all three.
The Leviathan circled, and Silenus felt the water move like years passing.
*Why should we not crush you? Make paste of dragon bones for the hagfish to feast?*
*Because you want to know why.*
Silence in the deep, which meant the water stopped trying to kill him for a moment.
*Why what, sky-crawler?*
*Why the Angels broke their own laws. Why someone could pay them enough to steal a dragon child. Why the Distillers have returned.*
The last word hit the water like poison. Every Leviathan in hearing range—which was half the ocean—recoiled. Bioluminescent cities went dark. Even the pressure seemed to flinch.
*The Distillers drowned. We made sure.*
*Their coins are surfacing. Soul-currency, compressed suffering. Someone's harvesting again.*
The Leviathan's eye opened. Just one. Larger than Silenus's entire body, with an iris like a black hole and intelligence older than hate.
*Show.*
Silenus had brought one coin, taken from a dead guard in Crysillia's ruins. He released it into the water.
The reaction was immediate. The ocean itself recoiled. Every fish for miles fled. The water around the coin turned black—not dark, but the aggressive absence of light.
*Abomination.* The Leviathan's disgust tasted like copper and rot. *True Distiller work. Seventeen souls crushed into singular suffering.*
*Seventeen. Always seventeen with them.*
*Their perfect number. They were seventeen when we drowned them. They'll be seventeen when they return. They think it means something.*
*Does it?*
*It means they're obsessed with patterns that don't exist. Order where chaos is truth.*
The Leviathan descended, and Silenus followed, pressure increasing until his scales began to crack. Four thousand meters. Five thousand. At six thousand, blood began seeping from his eyes.
*How deep?*
*Until you understand.*
Seven thousand meters. The water wasn't water anymore but liquid pressure. Eight thousand, and Silenus felt his bones compressing, shortening. He was being crushed into a smaller version of himself.
Nine thousand.
Something else was down here. Not Leviathans. Older.
Cities. Drowned cities that predated any civilization Silenus knew. Structures that hurt to perceive because they were built when physics had different opinions. The architecture of the Shapers, who'd made the world before the world knew it was made.
And walking through those cities...
The Distillers. Or what had been Distillers. Or what would be Distillers.
They moved wrong, joints bending in too many places, heads turning too far around. They were harvesting something from the ruins—memories maybe, or the dreams of stones. Their hands passed through solid matter like it was suggestion.
*They never left,* Silenus realized.
*Bodies drowned. Minds sank deeper. They've been here, learning from Shaper ruins. Learning to distill concepts, not just souls.*
*What concepts?*
The Leviathan showed him. Not with words but by adjusting pressure until Silenus's brain decoded patterns that weren't meant for dragon comprehension.
The Distillers were rendering reality itself. Taking fundamental forces—gravity, time, causality—and reducing them to tradeable essence. They were making existence into economy.
*Why haven't you stopped them?*
*Can't reach that deep. Even we have limits. But also...*
The Leviathan's eye focused on him with terrible clarity.
*They're working on something that might kill dragons.*
Silence. Then:
*You knew. You knew what they were doing and let them because—*
*Because dragons needed humbling. You flew too high, thought yourselves untouchable. The Distillers are wrong, but so were you. Sometimes wrong fights wrong and right emerges from the corpses.*
*Children died. Thousands of children.*
*Children always die. In every war, in every age. At least these deaths might mean something.*
*You're monsters.*
*Yes. So are you. So are the Distillers. So is the crystal-child walking south with death in her footsteps. The question isn't who's monstrous. It's whose monstrosity serves purpose.*
The Leviathan began ascending, dragging Silenus with currents that had no choice but to obey.
*We'll make a deal, sky-crawler. We'll tell you where your egg-child is. We'll even help you get him. But you owe us.*
*What?*
*When the crystal-child comes—and she will come, the ocean has tasted her path—you'll bring her to us. Let us see what corruption looks like when it walks on legs.*
*She'll kill you.*
*Maybe. Or we'll kill her. Or we'll make something new from the meeting. That's what the deep does—takes two things and pressure-fuses them into a third thing that shouldn't exist.*
They were rising faster now. Three thousand meters. Two thousand. The pressure releasing so quickly Silenus felt his bones expanding, threatening to burst from his flesh.
*Where is Vash'nil?*
*The Forgotten Foundry. Where Vorgoth made weapons from concepts. The Distillers have him, trying to make him into something else. A dragon that isn't. An absence with wings.*
*That's impossible.*
*Everything's impossible until someone does it.*
One thousand meters. Sunlight visible above, pale and beckoning.
*One more thing, sky-crawler. Your youngest—Pyrrhus. He came here seeking death.*
Silenus's heart stopped. *Is he—*
*We gave him what he sought. But not how he expected.*
The Leviathan brought forth something from the deep. A sphere of crystallized water, perfectly clear. Inside, Pyrrhus floated, suspended. Not dead. Not alive. Preserved.
*He wanted to forget the burning children. So we froze him in the moment before memory forms. He's conscious but can't create new thoughts. Eternal present without past or future. Perfect peace, if peace means nothing happening forever.*
*Release him.*
*When the crystal-child comes. She'll decide—does he wake to remember his crimes, or stay suspended in not-remembering? Her choice. Everything's her choice now. That's what corruption does—makes choice where none existed.*
The sphere sank back into darkness, taking Pyrrhus with it.
*Go, sky-crawler. Tell your Chorus what you've learned. The Distillers aren't hiding. They're preparing. And what they're preparing will make the burning of Crysillia look like mercy.*
Silenus broke the surface, gasping air like salvation. Above, the sky seemed too bright, too open. He'd been in the deep too long. Everything up here felt fragile as paper.
He flew toward the Foundry, wings heavy with water and worse—knowledge.
The Distillers were seventeen. They'd always been seventeen. And they were about to make the number mean something terrible.
Behind him, the ocean swallowed all trace of his visit. But in the deepest trenches, seventeen figures continued their work, rendering reality into coins that could buy anything.
Even dragon souls.
Even corruption itself.
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*End Chapter 6*
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