The chamber was hushed, heavy with anticipation. Twelve figures circled Rex, their forms bathed in the dim glow of the rune-carved floor. The air was thick with the scent of damp stone and salt, a tangible tension vibrating through the space. At the center of the circle, Rex knelt cross-legged, the black plate cradled in his hands. The faint amber of his tattoos pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, steady, deliberate.
The chieftain raised his hands, and without a word, the twelve fish people around Rex began chanting in unison. The sound was low, melodic, almost like the echo of the ocean's currents compressed into language. With every syllable, faint glimmers of light shimmered along their bodies — the glowing dotted lines on their skin beginning to lift and twist into the air like ethereal motes of dust caught in a sunbeam.
Rex's focus deepened, his breath syncing with the rhythm of the chant. Slowly, the floating dots drifted toward the black plate, hovering over the empty recesses. One by one, the light entered each cavity, embedding itself like liquid fire into the stone. As the last dot sank into the final hole, the plate began to hum, resonating in tune with the energy of the room.
The light surged, the plate lifting gently from Rex's hands. The black stone seemed to breathe, stretching and folding in ways impossible to the eye. Gradually, it took shape — a radiant sun, its broad face etched with engraved rays, each tipped with a gem gleaming faintly in the subdued light. The sun plate hovered for a heartbeat, spinning slowly in the air before twisting upright, facing away from Rex as though to announce its power.
Then, without warning, it slammed into his chest. Pain flared instantly, familiar and searing, coursing through every nerve and muscle. The heat, the pressure — it was the same awakening pain he had come to expect from the plates, but magnified, pure and unrelenting. His vision blurred. The chanting of the circle became distant, a soft hum in the back of his mind. His body convulsed as the energy of the plate bonded with him, and then darkness claimed him.
When Rex opened his eyes, the chamber had gone silent. The plate no longer hovered above him. Only the sun's rays remained radiating outward from the serpent tattoo on his chest, like molten heat rising off a desert stone. He could feel it, an aura of warmth suffusing him from within. His breath caught as he instinctively activated it.
A shiver ran through his spine, and the heat poured from his gills, small jets of flame licking the air around him. The stone floor of the chamber began to glow, each rune beneath him warming to molten orange. The fish people stepped back instinctively, their dotted lines dimming in respect and awe, as the room became filled with the pulsing, living power of the sun plate channeled through him. The heat radiated outward in waves, bending the light around his body, making him seem less human and more elemental — a being of fire, serpentine and sun-forged.
Rex closed his eyes, allowing the warmth to flow through him, feeling the energy of the deep, the guardianship of the plates, and the bond of the circle surround him. Then, slowly, deliberately, he deactivated the sun plate. The flames from his gills retracted like the hiss of a retracting spring, the ground cooled beneath him, and the chamber returned to its normal quiet, leaving only the faint amber glow of his own tattoos and the echoes of awe from the witnesses.
He bowed deeply to the chieftain, a silent acknowledgment of the power entrusted to him and the responsibility it carried. The others bowed in return, their faces reverent, filled with both awe and a solemn understanding of the force they had just witnessed.
Rex lifted Lyria gently onto his shoulder, carefully avoiding waking her, and made his way back to his sleeping hollow. There, in the quiet of the small cave, he began packing his scavenging pack, the weight of the sun plate's energy still thrumming faintly through his veins, a reminder of both the power he now held and the journey still ahead.
The chamber behind him was empty now, but the memory of glowing dots, ascending light, and the molten radiance of the sun plate would linger in the minds of those present for days to come — a magical testament to the bond between the people of the deep and the raw, elemental power of the abyss.