The Kashima Maru was swallowed by the Necropolis. As the fleet crossed the final threshold of the Astral Realm, the sea of ash became so dense that the sound of the engines was muffled to a low, rhythmic thumping, like a dying man's heartbeat. The sky above was no longer grey, it was the color of a bruised lung, a heavy, airless expanse that pressed down on the two thousand survivors with the weight of a thousand years of silence.
Ren Hanshin stood at the edge of the prow, his feet anchored to the steel deck by invisible threads of crimson mana. He was no longer shivering. The thirst had been replaced by a cold, crystalline focus. His skin had taken on the translucent quality of fine porcelain, and the red cracks of the Weaver's Mark were now glowing with a steady intensity that illuminated the falling ash like a funeral pyre.
[Synchronization: 56.7%]
[Condition: Celestial Vessel]
[Objective: Clear the Abyssal Palace]
