The ocean had never felt heavy before.
But now… it pressed inward.
Not in pressure, but in presence.
Lord Kaelen stood in the great observatory of Auronus, the primary city of the Atlanteans who remained beneath Earth's waves. It was quiet. Too quiet. Not the kind that brought peace, the kind that made you listen for something that should be there… and wasn't.
He stared at the columns that curved high above, their translucent surfaces rippling with filtered sunlight. Outside the dome, great sea creatures drifted by, but their patterns had changed. Whole schools that once swam in balance now split too early, too sharp.
Something was off.
The reports came in waves.
Power fluctuations in core systems. Organic material reacting oddly near energy zones. Entire coral beds collapsing overnight. No earthquakes. No visible cause.
But everything felt… unstable.
Kaelen moved through the halls with silent urgency. His people were growing restless. The young engineers whispered in corners. Mid-tier command officers eyed the relic vault more often than they admitted. Though they had sent Aeloria and her fleet off with reluctant support, their decision to stay now hung in the air like a question no one wanted to answer.
Had they made a mistake?
In the lower research chamber, Orielle, a hydro-engineer, examined one of the last functioning relay nodes, the device that once connected their oceanside city to the larger Atlantean network.
The signal was gone.
She tapped the panel again. Still nothing.
Only static.
Then… a flicker.
A faint residual trace.
Coordinates.
But they weren't from the departed fleet.
They were from within.
Something beneath the city was responding to the same signature the relic had used, and it was growing stronger.
She tapped her comms.
"Lord Kaelen. I think you need to see this."
A few levels above, Kaelen entered the council chamber. What had once been a place of calm debate was now tense and fragmented.
"This is temporary," one of the elders insisted. "We have endured worse. Earth is our home."
Orielle interrupted, her tone respectful but firm.
"Home is not immune to decay. We may have ignored the signs too long."
She shared the coordinates. The energy signature was unmistakable.
Kaelen studied it for a long moment.
"It's from the shard," he said at last. "The fragment of the relic that never left."
Eyes turned toward him.
"You kept a piece?" someone asked, stunned.
Kaelen's jaw clenched. "It was for study. Containment. But now… it's active."
Later, in the vault, Kaelen stood alone before the chamber that housed the relic shard.
It had always been dormant.
Until now.
Now it pulsed, low and irregular, like a heartbeat out of rhythm.
He didn't touch it. He only watched.
Behind him, Orielle spoke gently.
"The others are starting to ask questions. The children feel it before we explain it. The ocean… isn't healing anymore."
Kaelen's voice was quiet. "It's not the ocean. It's us."
A long silence stretched.
"I thought staying would preserve who we are," he continued. "But peace kept without movement becomes stagnation."
He turned toward her.
"We have to prepare a ship."
Outside the city dome, in the open dark of the trench, something shifted.
An ancient current, long dormant, reversed.
The sea stirred differently.
And far above, drifting toward unknown stars, the relic aboard Aeloria's ship pulsed faintly… as if acknowledging the echo of the shard still buried in Earth's depths.