For centuries, the ocean depths had been still — not lifeless, but quiet in their grandeur. Beneath the shifting tides and ancient reefs, old things had slumbered, bound by promises and sealed by runes no longer spoken by the surface world.
But now...
The sea began to change.
It started subtly — with the temperature rising.
Schools of silver-scale fish began darting deeper into the trenches. Whale Lords, who hadn't moved in decades, swam from their resting grounds with agitation. The gentle coral lights that flickered across the undersea ridges dimmed, as if shadowed by a storm that had yet to arrive.
And then — the boiling began.
Not at the surface.
But in the deepest veins of the abyss, where spirit lines flowed through magma tunnels, the water bubbled and roared with unnatural fury.
At the edge of the Sea Ancestral Temple, a thick veil of steam began to rise. The carved dragon gate that once glowed a passive blue now pulsed with a golden-red fury.
The ocean was waking.
