The groaning from behind the iron door was the city's new heartbeat. It was a sound felt in the bones more than heard by the ears, a deep, resonant complaint of stone and sea. Commander Hale's fortress-like certainty had crumbled, replaced by a bewildered, simmering anxiety. She had expected a foe to fight, not a diagnosis to decipher.
"A wound?" she repeated, the word foreign and inadequate on her tongue. She gestured violently at the sealed door, at the weeping stone walls. "How do you bandage the ocean?"
"You don't," Seraphine said, her voice still distant as she listened to the song of the rock. "You find the source of the bleed. The tear." Her hands pressed flat against the wall, she frowned. "The energy here… it's not wrong. It's in pain. It's dissonant, like a string pulled too tight and vibrating itself apart."
