Leon turned to Aqua. "Can you maintain the resonance?"
She nodded, her voice hushed. "As long as the city listens to me… I can guide us."
They descended.
The staircase wound downward like a spiral shell, narrowing and deepening until the temperature changed—the water here was denser, heavier, rich with pressure and ancient echoes. Runes flickered faintly along the walls, showing glimpses of entities older than the Deep Singers: jellyfish-like thought-forms, cities that floated on minds instead of tides, and one colossal shape that seemed to stretch across the Rift like a sleeping god.
They reached the bottom.
The Core Sanctum
The chamber was vast, spherical, and completely silent. In its center hovered a fragmented sphere—similar to the Crown Engine, but broken into a thousand pieces, each shard orbiting the next like fragments of a shattered moon. Between them ran trails of liquid light, barely holding the thing together.
