Chapter 137: EXISTENTIAL / REALM-COLLAPSE
The silence that followed the death of the eighth anchor was not a lull; it was a total mechanical failure of the sea.
In an instant, the remaining ambient currents inside the High Sanctuary evaporated. The water around them flattened, stiffening into an unnatural, motionless expanse that felt less like water and more like solid glass. The bioluminescent moss along the ruined walls flickered out one by one, extinguishing the hall in deep, subterranean darkness.
At the base of the shattered altar, General Nerissa remained completely frozen.
Her dark sapphire armor, once the proud symbol of Nethros’s supreme military command, was covered in cracks and blue blood. Her hands hung limp at her sides, her webbed fingers trembling violently as she stared at the lifeless body of the child on the altar steps. Her golden eyes were unseeing, hollowed out by the absolute destruction of everything she had sworn to protect.
Her duty was gone. Her bloodline oath was broken. Her kingdom was dead.
A few feet away, zephros, the Calm of the sea, slowly withdrew his leviathan-bone blade from the corpse. The white bone was stained with royal blue, but his dark face held no remorse—only an ecstatic, manic fervor.
He looked down at his bloodied weapon, then tilted his head back toward the vaulted ceiling. A low, raspy chuckle bubbled from his throat, quickly expanding into a booming, triumphant laugh that echoed through the dead water.
"It is done!" Zephros roared, his voice shaking the stagnant hall. "The chains are severed! The false crown falls! Let the god reclaim its ocean!"
RUUUUUUUMBLE.
It started not as a sound, but as a violent, low-frequency vibration that rattled the marrow of their bones.
Deep beneath the marble foundations of the palace—miles below the solitary vaults and the abyssal trenches—a massive, ancient mechanism groaned. The continental shelf beneath Nethros buckled. Deep, jagged fissures tore through the marble floor of the sanctuary, swallowing ruined pillars into pitch-black chasms as the seabed itself began to split apart.
An immense, suffocating pressure wave surged upward from the abyssal rift. It wasn’t hydro-mana; it was the pure, unrefined weight of a primordial presence that had rested in the dark since the dawn of the world.
The very ocean itself seemed to hold its breath in terror as something older than the first tide stirred in the lightless depths. The water no longer merely stagnated—it recoiled, as if the sea had suddenly remembered a forgotten nightmare and sought to flee its own body. Pressure folded in upon itself in crushing layers, bending light into warped crimson streaks that pulsed like the heartbeat of a dying star. Every remaining particle of bioluminescence died in the same instant, leaving only the howling void. The marble of the High Sanctuary screamed as ancient wards shattered, their protective runes bleeding black ichor into the glass-still water. Far below, the abyssal rift yawned wider, exhaling a cold that was not temperature but the absolute absence of life, a cold that crawled into lungs and bones and souls. The air—if such a thing still existed here—grew thick with the taste of drowned empires and forgotten gods. Mountains of water above them trembled, ready to collapse inward. The world itself tilted on the edge of unraveling, every living heart within the collapsing palace hammering against the knowledge that something vast, patient, and utterly merciless had finally opened its eyes after eons of enforced sleep. The hype of impending cataclysm roared louder than any voice, promising the end of everything that had ever dared to call this ocean home.
Up on the darkened high balcony, Lyrielle collapsed to her knees, clutching her head as a wave of intense nausea hit her. "Vince... the pressure... I can’t breathe!"
Vetra grabbed the stone railing to steady herself, her sharp teeth bared as the violent vibrations nearly shook her off her feet. "The whole palace is coming down!"
Vince did not fall. He didn’t even bend his knees.
He stood at the edge of the collapsing balcony, his feet planted firmly against the shuddering stone, his arms crossed over his chest. His dark eyes remained cold, analytical, and entirely unbothered as he watched the utter ruin unfolding below.
Down in the pit, zephros was still laughing, raising his arms to welcome the deep sea trench splitting open beneath his feet—unaware or uncaring that the abyssal rift was swallowing the sanctuary whole. Beside the altar, Nerissa didn’t even try to move away from the expanding fissure. She simply stood there, waiting for the stone to swallow her along with the ruined empire she had failed to save.
Vince’s gaze locked onto her broken, motionless form.
There it is, Vince thought, his lips curling into a faint, ruthless smirk. The absolute rock bottom.
Suddenly, the ambient light in Vince’s vision turned a stark, blinding crimson.
A sharp, high-pitched chime echoed directly inside his mind, completely cutting through the deafening roar of the crumbling palace. The system interface, which had remained dormant since his escape from the subterranean cells, burst open in front of his eyes in vibrant, pulsing red text.
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[WARNING: PRIMORDIAL ENTITY AWAKENING]
[CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED: THE SLEEPER (ANCIENT TIDE GOD)]
*Entity Status: Seal Broken (8/8 Anchors Severed)
*Current Threat Level: EXISTENTIAL / REALM-COLLAPSE
*Core Energy Readout: Tide Core detected at the entity’s central nexus.
[MANDATORY SYSTEM DIRECTIVE UNLOCKED]
*Primary Objective: Subdue the Primordial Entity to harvest the Tide Core.
*Failure Condition: Absolute annihilation of the Nethros oceanic sector along with the taming target And last elixir ingredient.
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The glowing red text flickered against the dark, chaotic backdrop of the falling sanctuary.
Lyrielle looked up through her tears, her voice trembling in terror as the walls around them began to collapse into the abyss. "Vince! We have to run! It’s over! The entity is waking up!"
Vince slowly dismissed the floating crimson interface with a flick of his wrist. He didn’t look back at the exit aqueducts, nor did he make a move to flee the crumbling palace.
Instead, he reached out, grabbing Vetra by her shoulder plate and pulling her upright before turning his gaze back down toward the frozen, hopeless figure of General Nerissa below.
"It’s not over," Vince said, his deep voice carrying a heavy, unshakeable certainty that instantly cut through the panic around him. "The play is just getting started."
He flexed his bare hands, feeling the dense, un-magical strength in his muscles coil tight as the floor beneath them gave way, plunging the High Sanctuary down into the awakening darkness of the deep abyss.