Prologue

  The ship groans like the deep, the metal bending under the weight of a force unseen. I stand at the edge of darkness, where the abyss swallows sound and light alike, yet before me looms something greater.

  A titan.

  The warlord sits beyond my sight, his form indistinct, lost to the bck expanse of the chamber. But the hammers… they glisten. They rest beside him, massive, their edges dulled not by age but by the crushing weight of all they have shattered. When he moves, they shift—an avanche of steel.

  I kneel, pressing my cws to the cold floor. The ship hums beneath me, the vibrations curling up my appendages like the distant echoes of waves through a reef.

  "The tides have been kind to us, Wraith," the Hammer rumbles. His voice is slow, deliberate, like the drag of a net through water. "But we do not drift aimlessly. The current must be guided."

  I bow deeper, forehead to metal. "Speak, and I will guide it."

  A pause. The ship groans once more, the sound swelling, as if the vessel itself inhales before the storm.

  "Alvecore," he intones. "A desert, dry and barren. That will change."

  The words settle over me like the pull of an undertow. I have never seen Alvecore, but I have seen wastends before—lifeless, cracked, unworthy of the depths. I imagine it now, parched earth splitting open, rivers threading through its veins, the scent of salt rising into the air.

  "Bring the tides to the desert," the Hammer commands.

  "It will be done."

  The warlord shifts again. Metal grates against metal, a sound like tectonic ptes grinding beneath the ocean floor. Then, silence. A dismissal.

  I rise, turning from the abyss, and step toward the corridor where the artificial lights flicker, revealing the obsidian gleam of my scales. I am the Wraith. The ocean follows in my wake.

  And Alvecore will know the depths.