Darkness fell across the edge of the Aetheric Sea.
But it wasn't night.
It was presence.
From the broken seal left behind by Poseidon—once Dominic, now no longer either—a pulse of ancient energy spread across creation like a ripple through glass. It passed through the skies of Olympus, across the sunlit domes of the Cloud Sanctums, and dove deep into the trenches of the mortal oceans where even gods dared not tread.
And there, in the farthest chasm of the deep—The Abyssal Fold—something stirred.
Something older than Olympus.
Older than Thalorin.
A creature wrapped in flesh of coral and void, whose heart pulsed once every century.
The Abyssal Wyrm, the firstborn of the sea's hunger, opened its eyes for the first time in ten thousand years.
Its chains rattled.
Not broken. But weakening.
Because its jailor had just unsealed a part of the veil that kept the world in balance.
