The ramp shuddered beneath their feet.

From below, the ruin exhaled, long, hollow, and wet.

The air thickened, the walls seeping condensation that shimmered with faint phosphorescence.

For a heartbeat, Caedrion thought the entire structure was bleeding light.

Then came the smell.

It wasn't rot. It was sterility undone, ozone laced with something metallic and faintly sweet, like the breath of a corpse preserved too long.

"Containment sector compromised," the voice whispered from nowhere. "Entities reconstituting from stasis medium. Estimated count… indeterminate."

Thalassaria's trident brightened, its haft vibrating in her grip. "Show yourself," she hissed to the dark.

Nothing answered, only a deep, biological hum, so low it was almost felt instead of heard.]

The sound of ley resonance being drained.

Caedrion felt it in his veins, the tug, subtle at first, then stronger, a magnetic pull on the very core of his energy.

The runes on his revolver dimmed, flickering as if starved of light.

"Caedrion," Thalassaria said sharply, "they're feeding."

"I know." His voice was tight. "They're siphoning the leyfield… stripping it bare."

The corridor ahead twisted into a broad chamber, a junction where four passages met around a central shaft.

The water here had grown cloudy, particulate matter swirling in strange eddies.

He raised his handlight.

And saw the first one.

It hung weightless in the water, body translucent like glass stretched too thin.

Within its form pulsed veins of rust-colored light, the same hue that glowed faintly from Caedrion's key.

Its head, or what passed for one, was smooth and featureless, save for a single vertical slit that leaked blue radiance.

Then it screamed.

The sound wasn't heard through the ears, it was felt inside the skull, a psychic shriek that bent light around it.

The creature lunged, its movement more like folding space than swimming.

Thalassaria struck first.

Her trident cut through the water in a flash of abyssal brilliance, the impact sending ripples through the corridor.

The thing split apart, only to reform mid-current, its body stitching itself together from light and fluid matter.

"System!" Caedrion barked. "Identify entity class!"

"Unregistered," the voice replied coldly. "Residual amalgamations of failed resonance matrices. Purpose: experimental containment of unstable hybridization energy. Status: terminated."

"Terminated?" he hissed. "They don't look terminated!"

"Termination unsuccessful. Structural persistence anomaly detected."

Thalassaria impaled the creature again, forcing it back into the shaft, but even dismembered it clung to her weapon, tendrils of shimmering fluid wrapping around the haft and crawling toward her arm.

She snarled, aura flaring. The water boiled around her, vaporizing the limbs before they could reach her skin.

"They're parasites," she growled. "Leeches that drink magic."

Caedrion pulled his revolver and fired.

The weapon thundered, runes flaring in defiance of the pressure.

The projectile, an enchanted fléchette, struck the creature dead center.

For an instant, it crystallized, shattering into fragments that drifted like dying embers.

But the light within the shards began to move again, coalescing, reforming.

"Of course," he muttered, backing toward the ramp. "Energy-based biology. Kinetic force won't hold them."

"Then what will?"

He didn't answer. The console's voice flickered again through the air.

"Warning. Containment loss spreading. Sector Theta-Nine to Theta-Four compromised. Active resonance entities approximated at twelve and increasing."

"Twelve," Thalassaria repeated darkly. "How many failures did the gods make?"

"Too many…" he said. "And it would appear that they locked them down because they couldn't destroy what they created."

The corridor lights dimmed again, then shifted, each crystal panel flaring red.

The hum in the air deepened until the water itself seemed to vibrate.

Something moved in the periphery. Then another.

Shapes drifting out of side passages, humanoid only in outline. Limbs too long, bodies rippling between liquid and solid, skin flickering with embedded sigils half-remembered from Archon architecture.

They didn't swim; they glided, drawn by the scent of power.

Caedrion could feel them probing his leyline, touches against his soul like icy fingers. Each contact left a void, a tiny vacuum where energy once lived.

He stumbled back. "They're learning… focusing on resonance sources."

"Then cut the trail." Thalassaria raised both hands, aura flaring out in a sphere of darkness.

The water twisted around her, collapsing into a void that swallowed light.

The creatures halted, confused by the sudden absence of signal.

Caedrion used the reprieve to drag a portable beacon from his belt, a device he had designed with the help of the little architect that dwelled within the depths beneath his family's castle.

He slammed it into the floor. Its emitter flared, flooding the chamber with rust-light resonance keyed to his own signature.

Instantly, the creatures turned toward it, drawn like moths.

The first one struck the barrier of energy and convulsed, its body warping under the backlash.

The others followed mindlessly, crowding the light, devouring it even as it destroyed them.

Each contact burned away a portion of the beacon's power until, finally, it overloaded, imploding into a burst of molten glass.

The shockwave threw them both back.

When the haze cleared, half the chamber was in ruin—walls cracked, lights dead.

And the creatures were still moving.

"Caedrion!" Thalassaria's voice cut through the distortion. "They're adapting faster than we can kill them!"

He pulled himself upright, breathing hard. "We can't fight this many."

"Then where?"

He looked up, the ceiling far above shimmered with faint geometric seams. "The surface access. There should be a maintenance shaft leading to the outer dome."

"You think your gods left us an escape?"

"They left something. We're going."

They ran, the corridor ahead flashing with intermittent light. Every step echoed like thunder through the drowned ruin.

The creatures followed, silent but relentless, their forms melting through walls and reforming in arcs of pale energy.

As they neared the access shaft, Caedrion's head throbbed, a psychic feedback building with each pulse of the creatures' feeding.

He could feel them pulling at him, trying to drink from his leyline directly. The rust-light inside his veins burned hotter in response, resisting.

Thalassaria noticed. "You're glowing."

He grimaced. "Side effect of being part Archon, apparently."

"Then glow brighter, guppy. They're closing in."

He reached the shaft's base, a circular hatch sealed with Archon script. No keypad, no lever, only a smooth panel of glass.

He slammed the key into the interface. The runes flared.

"System," he gasped, "open the upper conduit. Priority: evacuation."

"Authorization confirmed. Warning: upper sections unstable. Proceed at your own risk."

The hatch irised open, revealing a narrow vertical tunnel lined with crystalline rungs. Beyond it, the faint glimmer of the outer dome.

"Go!" he shouted.

Thalassaria hesitated only long enough to glance back at the horde, then she thrust her trident into the floor. Abyssal energy erupted outward, a sphere of darkness swallowing the corridor.

The creatures shrieked, not in fear, but hunger, as the darkness consumed their light.

She turned and launched upward, her body cutting through the water like a spear of shadow.

Caedrion followed, the key pulsing in his hand, the resonance burning hot enough to sting.

Below, he could see the creatures swarming beneath the hatch, clawing at the closing seal. Their forms twisted, fracturing into hundreds of fragments that reassembled again and again in endless hunger.

The hatch sealed shut with a final hiss.

They ascended through the shaft in silence, the only sound the distant roar of the ruin collapsing below.

When they broke through the last barrier, they emerged into the vast open dome, the outer defense ring bathed in the dim light of Submareth's bioluminescent waters.

Thalassaria hovered there, chest heaving, trident still glowing faintly.

Caedrion joined her, glancing down through the transparent floor beneath them.

Far below, blue light pulsed through the ruin like the heartbeat of some imprisoned god.

She looked at him. "They'll find another way out."

"I know."

"Then what do we do?"

He stared at the faint glow beneath them, the labyrinth now alive again after ten thousand years.

"I don't know… Luckily I called for backup…."

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