Rex moved like a shadow through the water, trailing the hunting party at a careful distance. They did not speak. They did not gesture. They barely breathed.
There was something wrong with the silence.
Even from afar, Rex felt a tension thickening the sea around them—like a current held back by an unseen hand. His instincts, sharpened from training and the pulse of his tattoos, kept screaming at him that the water itself was holding its breath.
Yet nothing attacked.
Nothing even stirred.
The valley that was normally full of distant roars and shifting shadows was dead quiet.
The young, newly marked hunter swam near the front, body still glowing faintly from the ceremony earlier. He looked proud. Strong.
Too strong, Rex thought. That ceremony… it had changed the hunters forever. He still didn't know how he felt about it.
He kept following.
But after another hundred feet, the hair on the back of his neck rose.
He swore something brushed against his awareness—a distant gaze trailing him through the murk.
Rex immediately turned.
His amber eyes scanned the blackness.
Nothing.
Only darkness thick as mud, and the faint whorls of his own movement.
He let out a slow, controlled breath and pressed onward.
The hunting group continued ahead, swimming toward the eastern wall of the valley where the water took on a strange reddish tint. Rex could feel the temperature rising with every foot traveled, the current shifting from cool to uncomfortably warm.
The deeper they descended, the darker the water became.
The dim bioluminescent algae clinging to the cliff faces flickered, then vanished entirely.
The pressure increased—sharp behind his eyes, squeezing his ribs.
The water tasted different here too.
Metallic. Bitter.
Like cooled magma dust dissolving into the currents.
His tattoos felt tight against his skin, as if something ancient was brushing against their power.
Still nothing attacked.
Still nothing moved.
Rex slowed his pace, keeping to the high ridges of jagged rock as the hunting party swam into a forest of pitch-black stone pillars jutting from the seabed like the ribs of an ancient monster.
The water grew hotter.
Then hotter still.
Until it felt like he was swimming through the breath of a sleeping volcano.
Finally, the group reached the east-valley clearing—a massive open expanse illuminated by a red glow flickering in the distance.
A magma pool.
Rex froze behind a slope of rock and peered over.
The master grabbed the newly marked hunter by the arm.
Rex frowned—his grip was too tight.
Too deliberate.
Then, without warning, the master shoved the young hunter forward—out into the empty clearing bathed in the pulsing glow of the molten pool.
Rex's heartbeat faltered.
The water trembled.
Something enormous stirred in the dark.
And Rex realized this was no hunt.
This was a sacrifice.
The clearing… the silence… everything suddenly made sense.
The betrayal had only just begun.