{"In the silence of the drowned sanctuary, the truth rose like a wave—too old to silence, too dark to escape—and we knew then: the storm had already begun."}
—Fenris's POV—
The deeper we went, the quieter everything became. The sea above us shimmered with filtered light, but all memory was cold and unrelenting below it. The pressure curled around my ribs like a second heartbeat, yet Tharion moved like he belonged to the water, which he did in every possible way.
I swam beside him in my beast's waterborne form, shadowed and sinewed with power, the earth-bound part of me watching in awe. Tharion did not speak, but I could feel him listening to something far older than even the trench-birth of Morkai's castle. When he finally slowed near a jagged reef sculpted by the ages, he turned and pressed his palm to the stones. A small glyph glowed in response, and with it, the current shifted.
