Rust-tinted maintenance lamps cast long shadows along Glyphbay Nine's entry duct, painting every dented plate and exhausted face the color of dried blood. These lamps only glowed crimson when the reef's deeper wards were faltering or when the watch wanted every soul to understand the moment was dangerous enough to skip subtlety. Tonight, both reasons applied.
I drifted through the bay's pressure curtain, bracing for the sting of disinfectant brine. Medic artisans swarmed Darun first, wrapping his shoulder with kelp salve that shimmered against the wound. His usual humor dimmed under the strain. A junior crafter guided me to a moss-lined basin. The moss crackled as it drew heat from my gills, easing the migraine pounding behind my eyes. Colors returned slowly, though reds still looked like aged rust instead of living coral.
"Pupil response sluggish," she muttered, waving a lightvine across my visor. I tracked it left and right, the pearl in my chest thumping like a slow drum.
"I can see, just dim," I answered.
"Noted. No marrow leak. Do not cast until the pressure settles."
Nearby, Veshra unpacked crystal shards, each piece landing with a delicate clink as she cataloged them with steady hands. Ashekan stood near the outer arch, helmet off, his posture rigid. His watchful eyes never left the corridor leading deeper into the reef.
A relay conch on the wall hissed with static. "…mote flow re-entering nursery quadrants… lattice holding at sixty-one percent… drain on bloom troughs at critical threshold." The message repeated, the voice frayed by distance. Veshra sighed, wiping brine from her slate before striding toward Command.
The council rotunda reeked of burnt resin from emergency welds, its usual calm incense long gone. Seven elders formed a crescent within overlapping ward bands. Yera walked the inner ring, voice steady despite the tension. Rejah projected slit-cam stills of the massive ring artifact, Kaelen dangling in a harness, and streams of motes slipping sideways.
"This structure serves as a lung," Yera said. "Its pulse fed the vortex we neutralized. Other organs may exist, forming an array."
Elder Shemril narrowed tired eyes. "You believe? Show me certainty."
Veshra stepped forward, pointing to the images. "Sideways flow implies a directed pipeline. Lungs seldom function without a heart to regulate pressure. Gaps around the ring align with missing chambers."
"Seal the lower ridges, starve the machine," Shemril argued.
"And starve ourselves," Yera countered. "The grid already devours bloom reserves."
Rejah's voice cut through. "Grid or hatchlings, that is our choice if we wait."
The chamber simmered until Elder Fin gave the order. "Form a trace unit. Find the heart device, disable it before the invaders return."
Echo-Hand waited in an empty storage bay, mask set aside so his gills could fan open. Without it, he looked younger, though salt scars streaked his jawline. He unrolled parchment sketches stained with lichen dyes.
"Your council wants certainty," he said, tapping the faded lines. "Exiles map certainty."
Each sketch showed a ring like the lung, lines converging on a central sphere. "Four lungs feeding one core," he explained. "Only one remains intact. The heart likely sleeps beneath Glass-Bloom Ravine."
"That place is restricted," I said quietly.
"The reef restricts what it fears."
I studied the sketches, pulse thrumming. "Then we find it first."
"Because Exiles breathe this water too," he said, his voice calm but firm.
Preparations began quickly. Veshra distributed new helm liners—mirror-baffled silk stretched across resin frames—to keep motes from slipping past ear ridges. Lis, a shellguard scout with fresh stripes on her pauldron, joined us carrying dual anchor cannons. Artisans fitted my wrist with a humming stone, its tone so low I felt it more than heard it, a steady rhythm that soothed the pearl's unrest.
When I shaped a test swirl, the tone cooled the migraine, though phantom cold danced along my lateral line.
"Pressure wakes," Lis said, noticing my reaction. "You'll get used to it."
We launched at half-tide through an abandoned cargo duct. Barnacle-crusted rails arched like rusted ribs overhead. Empty planter barges rocked gently in the current, their wooden trays long stripped of seedlings. Somewhere in the darkness, I tasted a metallic tang through my gills, the same bite that lingered near the lung.
The duct opened into a wide basin where the current felt unnatural, holding little salt as if something upstream filtered it. Turquoise glow leaked from cracks in the stone. Above, a ribbon of motes drifted east like a thin stream of stars.
Lis lobbed an anchor into the ceiling and set a static line. The thud vibrated through the water, and a blurred silhouette shimmered near the far wall. A mech sentinel uncloaked, smaller than the warriors we had fought before but faster. Its limbs bent with foreign joints, three grafted organs pulsing like lanterns.
The sentinel launched a tri-spoke harpoon straight at Veshra.
My pearl surged. I shaped a lens of water between us. The spokes shattered on impact, fragments dissolving into motes that swarmed our lamps, dimming them in a violet fog.
"Positions!" Ashekan barked, drawing his blade.
The sentinel readied a second volley as the water churned with rising tension.