The sky fractured with cannon fire. Thunder-clouds split as roaring iron spheres wreathed in royal-blue energy plummeted toward the Eltuvaine. Each carried the force of a collapsing reef.
"Brace!" Admiral Rudra's voice thundered over the deck. His hands clasped into a seal, veins swelling with abyssal force. The Heart Engine responded, humming like a god's drum. In an instant, Abyssal Burst flared—the Abyssal Sails whipping alive with black light. The Eltuvaine darted aside, the cannonballs screaming past to shatter the waves into walls of steam.
The enemy ship emerged from that mist like a leviathan clothed in gold-and-sapphire hull plating. Their banner—marked with the sun-sigil of the Royal Faction—billowed against the storm. Fifteen Grim Adventurers stood arrayed across the deck. Their auras burned bright, refined, each one exuding years of honed cruelty.
The two ships collided with proximity cannons, their blasts deafening.
