# Chapter 607: The Sunken City
The Strix-class transport settled onto its landing struts with a sigh of hydraulics, the sound swallowed by the ceaseless, rhythmic crash of waves against a desolate shore. The ramp lowered, spilling a rectangle of pale, grey light onto the black sand. Captain Bren was the first to step out, the salty air thick with a cloying, sweet scent of rot that clung to the back of his throat. It was the smell of ancient decay, of things long drowned and given a second, monstrous life. Before them lay the Bay of Sorrows, and within it, the Sunken Library of Aeridor.
The sight was a wound upon the world. Where once a gleaming city of white marble and golden spires had stood, now only half-sunken ruins remained, like the bones of a leviathan picked clean by time. The library itself was the centerpiece of the desolation. Its main tower, a colossal structure of spiraling buttresses and arched windows, listed at a severe angle, its upper floors still catching the weak sunlight while its base disappeared into the murky, churning water. The sea around it was not the blue of the ocean but a sluggish, oily black, and the surface did not reflect the sky. Instead, it seemed to absorb the light, swirling with faint, violet currents of dark energy that coalesced and dissipated like ghostly ink. A palpable malevolence radiated from the water, a pressure that made the teeth ache and the skin prickle with a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"Scans confirm the energy signature," a voice crackled in Bren's earpiece. It was Lyra, his Inquisitor, her voice steady despite the oppressive atmosphere. "It's concentrated in the main tower. But the ambient Bloomblight density is… higher than projected. Much higher."
Bren's gaze swept the coastline. Jagged, rust-stained remnants of the old city poked from the sand like broken teeth. The air, besides the smell of decay, carried a low, dissonant hum, a vibration felt more in the bones than heard with the ears. It was a sound that promised madness. "Form up on the beach," he commanded, his voice cutting through the gloom. "Deploy the skiffs. Rook, you're on overwatch. I want eyes on every window and rooftop."
His team moved with practiced efficiency. Twenty of the Dawnlight Protocol's finest, a mix of Crownlands Wardens, Sable League skirmishers, and Synod Inquisitors, all united under his command. They unloaded two shallow-draft, armored skiffs from the transport, their metal hulls clanking loudly in the unnatural quiet. Rook Marr, Bren's former mentor turned subordinate, scaled the skeletal remains of a nearby lighthouse, his long rifle a silent promise of retribution. The betrayal still stung, a raw wound beneath Bren's disciplined exterior, but on the field, Rook was a weapon, and Bren would use every weapon he had.
They pushed the skiffs into the black water, the liquid clinging to the hulls with a viscous reluctance. As they rowed toward the ruins, the whispers began. At first, they were just at the edge of hearing, a sibilant hiss like wind through cracked stone. But as they drew closer to the library, the sounds resolved into something more articulate—a chorus of voices speaking in a language that was ancient and guttural, a tongue that felt like shards of glass in the mind. The words were incomprehensible, but the malice behind them was crystal clear. It was a constant, psychic assault, probing for weakness, sowing seeds of doubt and fear.
Bren felt the cold tendrils of the Soren-echo stir in his memory, the phantom sensation of that crushing, lonely power. He gritted his teeth, focusing on the solid weight of the oar in his hands, the rhythmic dip and pull. He was not that broken thing in the wastes. He was Captain Bren of the Dawnlight Protocol, and he had a mission. He reached into a pouch on his tactical vest and retrieved the object Nyra had given him: a brass and crystal monocular, its lens ground with a mixture of powdered silver and a sliver of bone from Soren's own discarded gauntlet. It was their key, their only hope of cutting through the noise. He pressed it to his eye.
The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of screaming color. The black water became a river of pure, screaming agony, the violet currents were lacerating wounds in reality, and the air itself was thick with the psychic residue of a million tormented souls. Through the lens, the library was not a ruin but a beating heart of corruption, pulsing with a deep, resonant thrum of power that made his head swim. He saw the Bloomblight not as an energy field, but as a parasitic organism, and its tendrils were sunk deep into the foundation of the world. He tore the monocular away, his breath coming in ragged gasps, the afterimage of that cosmic horror burned onto his retina.
"Captain?" Lyra's voice was sharp with concern.
"Status," Bren barked, forcing the bile back down his throat. "Report."
"Nothing on the surface, sir," Rook's voice came from the lighthouse, calm and detached. "The place is dead. Too dead."
Bren knew what he meant. It was the silence of a predator holding its breath. "Stay sharp. We're going in."
They beached the skiffs on a crumbling marble causeway that led to the library's grand, waterlogged entrance. Massive bronze doors, once adorned with reliefs of scholars and mythical beasts, were now twisted and torn, hanging from a single hinge. The air here was even colder, the whispers louder, more insistent. They seemed to be coming from the water itself, from the dark gaps between the submerged buildings. The team fanned out, their weapons ready, the beams of their mag-lights cutting nervous swaths through the gloom. The light did little to push back the shadows; it only made the darkness between them seem deeper.
The interior of the library was a cathedral of drowned knowledge. Shelves the size of galleons had toppled over, their contents—a slurry of bloated vellum and warped leather—floating in the stagnant water that covered the floor. The air was heavy with the smell of mildew and the sweet, cloying scent of the Bloomblight. Their footsteps splashed, the sound unnaturally loud in the vast, echoing space. The whispers here were a cacophony, a thousand voices all speaking at once, their words twisting into shapes that danced at the edge of vision.
Bren kept the monocular in his fist, a cold, heavy anchor to reality. He knew what he was looking for: a concentration of Soren's essence, a bright point of defiant light in the overwhelming darkness. Nyra's theory was that the Withering King had used Soren's own power as a seed for these anchor points, and that by finding and severing them, they could weaken the prison. But as he swept the lens across the ruined hall, he saw nothing but the uniform, oppressive corruption. There were no cracks, no points of light. Just a solid, suffocating wall of shadow.
The team moved deeper, wading through the knee-deep water. They passed through a rotunda where a massive orrery, its planets and stars made of tarnished brass, had crashed to the floor, its arms bent like the limbs of a dying giant. The whispers grew louder, more personal. Bren heard his father's voice, disappointed. He heard the taunts of rivals from his early Ladder days. He shook his head, clearing the phantoms. "Maintain discipline," he voxed, his voice a low growl. "It's trying to get inside your heads. Focus on the mission."
They found a grand staircase, its marble steps cracked and slick with algae, leading up into the tower's higher levels. That was their destination. The energy signature was strongest there. "Lyra, take point. Jex, you're on our six. Let's move."
The ascent was treacherous. The steps were uneven, and in places, entire sections had collapsed into gaping holes that revealed the churning, dark water below. The whispers followed them, clawing at their minds. One of the skirmishers, a young man from the Sable League, stumbled, his eyes wide with terror. "They're in the walls," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I can hear them scratching."
Bren grabbed him by the collar of his armor, pulling him back to his feet. "Look at me, soldier," he ordered, his voice iron. "There is nothing in the walls. There is only the mission. Do you understand?"
The man nodded, swallowing hard, his fear momentarily overridden by the sheer force of Bren's will. They continued their climb, the pressure mounting with every step. The air grew colder still, and a faint, luminescent moss began to appear on the walls, casting an eerie, blue-green light that made their shadows dance like wraiths.
Finally, they reached the top of the staircase and stepped out onto a wide, rickety gallery that encircled the upper levels of the main tower. Below them, the ruined hall stretched out into the gloom. Before them, across a fifty-foot gap of open air, was the entrance to the Archivist's Sanctum, the supposed location of the anchor point. A narrow stone bridge, slick with moisture and partially collapsed, was the only way across.
"Rook, what do you see?" Bren whispered into his comm.
"Movement on the bridge, Captain," came the immediate reply. "Can't get a clear shot. Too much structural interference."
Bren raised the monocular again, bracing himself for the psychic onslaught. He peered across the chasm, toward the sanctum door. And then he saw it. It wasn't a point of light. It was a void. A perfect sphere of absolute nothingness that seemed to drink the light and the sound around it. It hovered just in front of the sanctum door, a hole in the world. And it was growing.
As he watched, a tendril of shadow snaked out from the sphere and touched the stone bridge. The rock didn't break; it dissolved, turning to dust and falling into the darkness below. The whispers in his mind coalesced into a single, triumphant voice.
*You are too late.*
"Back! Get back now!" Bren roared, shoving the man beside him.
But it was too late. The water in the great hall below began to bubble, not with heat, but with a rising, churning energy. The surface heaved and bulged upwards as if something impossibly vast was rising from the depths. A shape formed in the black water, a silhouette of nightmare given substance. It was a mass of writhing, shadowy tentacles, each one thick as a tree trunk, uncoiling from the depths. They rose into the air, dripping with the oily, corrupted water, their surfaces swirling with the same malevolent violet energy as the bay.
At the center of the mass, a single, colossal eye opened. It was not an eye of flesh and blood, but a lens of pure, solid shadow, and in its depths, a single point of light burned with the same sickening, malevolent glow as the husks in the wastes. It was the eye of the Bloomblight itself, a guardian born of the corruption, a sentinel placed to guard this strongest point of the prison.
The creature let out a sound that was not a roar but a psychic scream, a wave of pure despair and hopelessness that crashed over the gallery. Soldiers cried out, clutching their helmets, their minds buckling under the assault. The tentacles lashed out, not with speed, but with an inexorable, crushing weight. One smashed into the gallery where they stood, shattering marble and sending men screaming into the abyss.
Bren stood his ground, his prosthetic arm whirring as he locked it into place. He raised his rifle, the tactical sight useless against this enemy. He looked through the monocular one last time, past the writhing limbs and the terrifying eye, focusing on the sanctum door. And there, shimmering faintly in the air just beyond the void, he saw it. A tiny, defiant spark. A single, brilliant point of golden light. It was Soren. Not the echo, not the corrupted memory, but a fragment of his true self, a piece of his soul trapped and used as bait. The anchor point was real. But it wasn't a crack in the dam. It was a lure, placed at the very heart of the beast's lair.
The creature's gaze fixed on him. The whispers in his mind became a single, deafening command.
*Yield.*
Bren lowered the monocular, a grim, terrible resolve hardening his features. They had been sent into a trap. But they were soldiers of the Dawnlight Protocol. They would not die in the dark. They would die in the light.
"Open fire!" he bellowed, his voice a raw defiance against the encroaching doom. "Concentrate all fire on the eye! For Soren!"