Chapter 95: The Abandoned City
The sea was silent.
Not the silence of absence, but of reverence, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Beyond the black chasms of the Shivering Sea, past the trenches where even light dared not wander, there lay a structure that time itself had forgotten.
It did not crumble, nor decay.
Its spires still pierced the abyss, its walls still shimmered faintly with runes that no mortal hand could replicate.
It was not a ruin. It was a promise sealed in eternity.
The Abyssal Host of Submareth encircled it on every side.
An army of leviathans and knights, of armored sirens and abyssal mages, all floating in a formation so precise it seemed choreographed by the gods themselves.
Their banners rippled like sheets of living flame in the dark water.
The runic glow of their armor traced rivers of light through the depths, illuminating the seabed until it looked like the night sky inverted.
At their head, Thalassaria hovered upon her throne of pearl and silver, draped in her battle regalia, a gown of scale and silk that shimmered like the moon breaking through stormclouds.
Upon her brow burned a crown of living coral, each branch tipped with a shard of frozen lightning.
She was magnificent, terrible, divine.
Even the whales had gone silent in her presence.
And beside her was Caedrion Ferrondel.
His new armor was unlike anything crafted by mortal hands.
It was a hybrid of abyssal enchantment and Architect latticework, forged in the royal furnaces of Submareth and sealed by his own sigils.
Each plate flexed like living steel, responding to his movement with weightless precision.
Between its seams pulsed faint veins of light, the same rust-colored cadence that the little Architect had taught him to weave.
A living alloy, a symbiosis between machine and will.
Thalassaria drifted closer, her gaze trailing over him. "You wear it well," she murmured, the faint curl of a smile playing across her lips. "Almost as if the sea has already accepted you."
He smirked, adjusting the reinforced gauntlet that concealed his revolver. "Let’s hope the revolver holds up too."
She arched an elegant brow. "Still clinging to that crude little weapon of yours?"
"It’s saved my life more than once," he replied. "And these rounds..." He drew one cartridge from his belt.
Inside, a small capsule shimmered with twin cores: one glowing orange with Crucible flame, the other pulsing rust-red with Architect resonance. "...can function anywhere. Land, sea, or void."
"Then you are ready," she said. "But pray you won’t need to test them today."
She extended a hand.
The currents parted, and from the distance came the hum of drums, bass reverberations rolling through the water like thunder through a valley.
Her legions aligned behind her, banners shifting as the command signals rippled across the ranks.
Every soldier in the abyss knew what this moment meant.
Ten thousand years of waiting, scheming, praying, and now the threshold stood before them.
The door.
It loomed ahead like a continent of stone, its surface unmarred by time, its sigils faintly glowing with light older than the stars above.
Around it, the sea seemed to hesitate; the current itself diverted, as though unwilling to touch it.
The doorway was vast, large enough to swallow Submareth whole.
And yet, despite its scale, there was precision in its geometry that made the eye ache to behold.
Every line perfect. Every curve purposeful.
No coral grew upon it. No life clung to it. The sea respected what it could not claim.
Thalassaria raised her trident, the gesture solemn.
"The Gate of the Eidolons," she whispered. "Unopened since the dawn of the world."
Her voice carried, echoing through the army.
The soldiers raised their weapons in silent salute. Even the leviathans bowed their heads.
Caedrion floated forward, the key in his grasp.
It was not large, only the length of his forearm, but its weight pressed upon him like the gravity of worlds.
Crafted in Dawnhaven’s deepest forge, with the Architect’s own guidance, the key was a fusion of mortal ingenuity and divine inheritance.
It pulsed with every beat of his heart, resonating faintly with the power sealed within the door before them.
"Are you certain?" he asked quietly.
Thalassaria’s gaze softened. "I have waited an eternity for this. If it kills me, so be it. Open it, Caedrion."
He nodded. Slowly, he drifted toward the great gate.
The closer he came, the more the water seemed to resist him, pressure building, whispers swirling like the voices of ghosts.
His armor compensated, shimmering with layered wards.
The key’s glow intensified.
At the base of the monumental door, nestled between two ancient pillars, he found the aperture.
It was not mechanical. It was alive.
Runes coiled around the hollow in elegant fractal spirals, shifting as if aware of his presence.
He could feel it scanning him, tasting his essence, recognizing the faint trace of Architect blood in his veins.
Caedrion inhaled, steadying himself, and slid the key into place.
For a moment, nothing.
Then the world moved.
The gate’s sigils flared in sequence, a ripple of light racing outward across the structure like veins carrying divine blood.
The abyss trembled. Sediment lifted from the seabed, spiraling upward in slow motion.
Energy arced across the ocean floor, illuminating the armies with radiant latticework.
"Stand ready!" Thalassaria’s voice thundered through the comms, her trident raised high.
The light from the key merged with the runes.
The hum grew into a roar.
The entire sea seemed to pulse once, like the beat of an enormous heart, and then silence fell again.
A seam appeared across the door.
Caedrion watched as it widened, not with the groan of stone, but with the smooth, soundless precision of perfect engineering.
The waters shuddered as invisible barriers snapped into place, separating the abyssal pressure from what lay within.
Beyond the threshold, the darkness stirred, and then light spilled forth.
Not the blue of the ocean, nor the gold of flame.
It was white. Pure. Endless.
As the gate parted fully, a field of shimmering energy held the sea at bay. On the other side was air, breathable, dry, pristine.
The water could not cross it.
And beyond that veil... lay a world no mortal had seen since the first dawn.
Caedrion’s breath caught.
The chamber beyond was colossal, stretching farther than the eye could see.
Its walls gleamed with metal unlike any alloy known to man, etched with flowing sigils that shifted like rivers of light.
Machines of incomprehensible design hung suspended in the air, humming softly, rotating upon invisible axes.
Bridges of crystal arced across abysses of glowing circuitry.
Towers of glass rose from the ground, their cores pulsing in slow rhythm with the Architect’s resonance.
It was not a ruin.
It was a city, still alive at least in function.
Thalassaria drifted forward beside him, her eyes wide, her divine composure faltering for the first time in millennia.
"By the abyss..." she whispered. "It’s untouched. All this time..."
The air barrier shimmered as her fingers brushed it. A thin ripple spread, then subsided.
"Still active," she murmured. "Still sealed against the sea. They... left it running."
Caedrion stared in awe. "Ten thousand years," he said quietly. "And the systems still hum."
Her eyes shone with reflected light.
"This was not built by mortals. This is the work of your ancestors. The true gods of the world."
He flinched slightly at the word gods. "If they were gods," he said, "then why did they lock it away?"
Thalassaria didn’t answer.
Instead, she lifted her trident, signaling her vanguard to advance.
The first line of soldiers moved toward the gate, their armor glinting under the alien light.
The instant one crossed the barrier, the entire structure reacted.
A surge of energy pulsed through the chamber.
Symbols lit up across the floor in concentric circles, scanning them all.
A voice, soft, melodic, in a tongue older than thought, echoed from every surface at once.
None could understand it, yet all felt its meaning deep in their bones.
"Unauthorized presence detected."
The air thrummed.
Power rippled outward.
Caedrion grabbed Thalassaria’s arm, dragging her back just as beams of light shot upward from the floor, enveloping the first squad in a brilliant flare.
When the radiance faded, they were gone. Not dead, simply gone.
Thalassaria’s jaw tightened. "Defense systems," she hissed. "Still functional."
Caedrion’s mind raced. "Wait. Let me..."
He reached toward the gate, his armor’s inner circuits flaring in resonance with the Architect’s key.
The sigils across the threshold responded, dimming slightly, as if recognizing him.
A low hum filled the water again, this time not hostile, almost curious.
"It knows me," he said under his breath. "Or something in me."
Thalassaria’s gaze darted between him and the light. "Then command it."
"I don’t know how."
"Then learn."
He closed his eyes.
He could still hear the Architect’s voice in his mind, her laughter, her lessons.
He steadied himself, exhaled, and willed the cadence to align.
The glow subsided.
The voice that had once declared them intruders now fell silent.
The barrier shimmered once and then opened, a thin doorway into the air-filled world beyond.
The water did not rush in.
The laws of physics bent at the threshold’s will.
Caedrion stepped through first, boots touching the smooth metallic floor.
The transition was instant, dry air, breathable and cool, filling his lungs.
Thalassaria followed, her long hair floating down her shoulders like strands of midnight silk freed from gravity.
Inside, the city awaited.
Light descended from nowhere and everywhere.
The architecture was both organic and mechanical, shifting subtly like a living thing breathing in its sleep.
In the distance, suspended above a great central spire, hung a crystal sphere the size of a cathedral, turning slowly on its axis.
Within it pulsed a lattice of energy, the heartbeat of the ruin itself.
And then came the voice, human and inhuman at the same time. Like an artificial intelligence attempting to replicate the lost tone of its ancient masters.
"Welcome... By my count it has been ten thousand years, six months, twenty-seven days, four hours, and 17 seconds since I lost contact with the administrators. Would you like to re-establish contact with this colony?"
Thalassaria turned sharply toward him. "Your... what?"
Caedrion didn’t answer.
He could only stare upward, where ghostly shapes moved behind the luminous glass, forms vaguely humanoid, drifting in slow procession like memories caught in crystal.
The abyssal queen’s expression flickered between awe and unease.
"This is no tomb," she said at last. "It’s a heart still beating."
Caedrion nodded slowly, his voice low. "And now that it’s awake, the world above will feel it."
They both stood there, dwarfed by the scale of it all, two small figures framed in the light of eternity, as the machines of a lost age stirred once more to life.