The descent was not a journey through distance; it was a journey through weight.
Inside the Abyssal Bell, the air was thick and tasted of recycled copper. The only light came from the central capacitor bank, which pulsed with a soft, rhythmic iridescence, casting long, dancing shadows against the curved walls of the hull. Outside, there was nothing but absolute, crushing blackness.
Ignis sat huddled by the pressure gauge, his organic eye wide and unblinking. His mechanical arm was locked rigid, the gears frozen in fear.
"Two miles," Ignis whispered, his voice trembling. "The pressure outside is now four thousand pounds per square inch. The hull... listen to it."
The Lead-Bismuth cylinder was groaning. It was a high-pitched, metallic shriek that sounded like a dying animal. The rivets Kael had reinforced with his own mana were glowing a faint violet, straining against the ocean's attempt to crush them into a tin can.
Kael sat in the center of the pod, his legs crossed, his hands resting on his knees. He wasn't looking at the gauge. He was looking inward.
LET ME OUT! the God screamed in his mind. It wasn't a thought; it was a psychic shockwave that rattled Kael's teeth. THE WATER IS TOO HEAVY! IT IS TOUCHING MY MIND! THE SALT IS EATING THE SHADOW! TURN BACK, YOU FOOL! TURN BACK BEFORE WE DROWN IN THE DARK!
"Quiet," Kael murmured, the word barely audible over the groaning metal. "You survived a thousand years here. You can survive an hour."
I DIDN'T SURVIVE! I ROTTED! I SAT IN THE SILENCE UNTIL I FORGOT MY OWN NAME! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE TRENCH WHISPERS, KAEL? IT DOESN'T WHISPER SECRETS. IT WHISPERS YOUR OWN FAILURES BACK TO YOU!
Kael opened his eyes. The silver-blue ring of the Goddess Aura's blessing was pulsing rapidly around his pupil, acting as a mental shield against the God's panic.
"Ignis, depth check," Kael commanded, his voice steady.
"Two and a half miles," Ignis replied, wiping sweat from his forehead. "We're entering the Trench proper. The sonar... it's picking up something strange."
Ignis tapped the glass of a small, crude sonar screen he had jury-rigged from a salvage drone. The green line was jagged, erratic.
"It's not topography," Ignis said. "It's... movement. Something massive. It's circling us."
Kael stood up. The pod shifted, the sudden movement causing the hull to creak ominously. He walked to the wall of the cylinder. He couldn't see through the metal, but his "Healer's Sight"—enhanced by the dark, high-pressure environment—could feel the displacement of the water.
Something was out there. It was colossal, serpentine, and it didn't have a heartbeat. It had a hum.
"The Abyssal Warden," Kael whispered. "Aura warned me. It's not a beast. It's a biological weapon left over from the fall of Aethelgard."
Suddenly, the Abyssal Bell was struck.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. The pod spun violently, throwing Ignis against the capacitor bank. The pressure gauge shattered, spraying glass across the floor.
"We're breached!" Ignis screamed, pointing to a hairline fracture appearing in the welded seam of the hatch. A fine mist of seawater sprayed into the cabin. It hit the floor with the force of a hydraulic cutter, slicing through the steel grating.
"We aren't breached yet," Kael said. "But we will be if I stay in here."
"What are you talking about?!" Ignis yelled, clutching his mechanical arm. "You can't go out there! The pressure will turn your bones to dust in a microsecond!"
"I know," Kael said. He looked at his hands. The "Stable Agony" was already reacting to the threat, his mana density increasing to match the environment. "But my bones know how to rebuild. The pod doesn't."
Kael placed his hand on the hatch wheel.
"Seal the inner air-lock behind me," Kael commanded. "Do not open it until I knock."
"You're insane!" Ignis shouted. "You're actually insane!"
Kael didn't argue. He spun the wheel.
The hatch flew open.
The ocean didn't rush in; it exploded in. A wall of water hit Kael with the force of a freight train. He was blasted out of the pod and into the abyss.
The cold was absolute. The pressure was a physical hammer that struck every inch of his body simultaneously.
CRACK-SNAP-CRUNCH.
Kael's ribs shattered instantly. His femurs snapped. His skull fractured in a dozen places. The air was squeezed from his lungs in a single, violent bubble.
To any other mage, this was death.
But to the Blood Weeper, this was just Tuesday.
The "Stable Agony" flared. The Star-Core in his ring reacted to the trauma, flooding his body with "White Sun" energy. His bones knit together instantly, reinforced with mana-dense calcium that was stronger than steel. His skin, torn by the friction of the water, healed into a tough, iridescent hide that glowed in the dark.
Kael opened his eyes. He wasn't dead. He was floating in the black, a glowing speck of defiance.
And facing him was the Warden.
It was a nightmare of engineering. A leviathan, easily two hundred feet long, its body was a fusion of a deep-sea eel and Academy machinery. Its scales were plates of ancient, rusted Soul-Steel. Its eyes were massive, rotating searchlights that cast beams of blinding green mana through the gloom. And embedded in its chest was a turbine—a massive, spinning engine that sucked in the water and expelled it as a jet of super-pressurized force.
The Warden roared—a sound vibration that rippled through the water, hitting Kael like a physical punch. It lunged, its jaws opening to reveal rows of rotating saw-blades instead of teeth.
IT WANTS TO GRIND US! the God shrieked. USE THE VOID! ROT THE METAL!
"I can't!" Kael thought back. "Fire won't work here! The heat dissipates too fast!"
Kael didn't try to cast a beam. He kicked off the water, using a burst of kinetic mana to propel himself downward. He was fighting in three dimensions now, moving with the fluidity of a creature born to the deep.
The Warden's jaws snapped shut inches from his boots, the saw-blades grinding against each other with a screech that traveled through the water.
Kael landed on the creature's back. He gripped the rusted Soul-Steel scales, his fingers digging into the metal.
"If I can't burn you," Kael thought, his mind crystal clear under the pressure, "I'll crush you."
He channeled his mana not outward, but around. He manipulated the water pressure itself. He created a localized gravity well right on top of the Warden's central turbine.
"Ancient Art: The Hydro-Static Guillotine!"
He increased the pressure on the turbine from 8,000 PSI to 80,000 PSI in a single second.
The result was catastrophic for the machine. The turbine housing buckled. The Soul-Steel groaned and then imploded. The engine, designed to withstand the deep, could not withstand the sudden, localized singularity.
The Warden shrieked, thrashing violently. The implosion sucked the creature's own flesh into the turbine, grinding its internal organs against the broken blades. Black oil and blue blood billowed out into the water, clouding Kael's vision.
The creature stopped moving. It began to sink, a dead weight drifting down toward the trench floor.
Kael pushed himself off the carcass. He looked up. The Abyssal Bell was drifting above him, its spotlight searching frantically.
Kael swam up to the pod and knocked on the hull. Clang. Clang. Clang.
He didn't wait for Ignis to open it. He grabbed the tow-cable hook on the pod's nose and wrapped it around his waist. He became the engine.
"Down," Kael whispered into the water.
He swam downward, dragging the heavy metal pod with him. He passed the corpse of the Warden. He passed the jagged cliffs of the trench.
And then, he saw it.
Resting on the ocean floor, surrounded by a field of shimmering, golden bubbles, was the Sunken Cradle. It wasn't a factory. It was a temple. Massive pillars of obsidian rose from the silt, etched with runes that predated the Academy by a thousand years. And at the center, a massive gate of gold stood closed, holding back the ocean.
This was Aethelgard. The true ruins.
Kael descended, his boots touching the silt. He unhooked the pod and tapped the glass of the porthole—a new one he had fused shut with his healing art before leaving. Ignis's face appeared, pale and terrified, but alive.
Kael looked at the gate. He felt the resonance of the "Infant Source" inside. It was a heartbeat. A slow, steady thump-thump that echoed the rhythm of the tides.
WE ARE HERE, the God whispered, its voice trembling with a mixture of awe and horror. THE PLACE WHERE I WAS BORN. AND THE PLACE WHERE I KILLED THEM ALL.