The trail shimmered in his mind like an echo seen through water — not a sound, not a path, but a pull. Ethan followed.
The inverted sea bent around him, its impossible geography folding as he moved. Kelp forests parted gently as if recognizing something old within him. The deeper he went, the more silent it became — not from a lack of sound, but because the world itself seemed to listen.
The psychic residue left by the Leviathan didn't fade. Instead, it grew sharper, more intentional, as though it wanted to be found.
Ethan's eyes narrowed. "It's guiding me…"
He drifted past sunken ruins of coral cities suspended in the water like ancient memories. Statues shaped like serpents and beings with horns and tails stood as silent sentinels — their forms eerily similar to the natives he had seen earlier on land.
Then he saw it.
A crevice.
