The sheer scale of the underground ocean inside Vault 5 defied human imagination.
Suspended forty miles beneath the surface of the Pacific, the water was so clear that Arthur could see the waving blue coral reefs twenty miles in the distance. The surrounding heat was a pleasant twenty-two degrees, heated by the earth-heat leylines of the surrounding mantle. He smelled of ozone, fresh rainwater, and the sweet, stone musk of living aquatic flora.
Yet the peace of the ancient sea was desecrated.
Drifting across the surface of the turquoise water were thick, oily slicks of black void residue. The rainbow-bright coral reefs below showed patches of dead, bleached calcium where leech-like mycelium had drained the living aether. That left behind brittle, skeletal structures covered in slime.
Arthur brought the squad to a halt fifty meters outside the aqueduct archway. He anchored himself against Titus’s forward scute.
“outer edge scan,” Arthur murmured, adjusting the sight spectrum on his Zeiss monocle.
The aiming cross zoomed in on the central jade ziggurat.
The titan resting atop the summit was the Fossil of the Primordial Azure Sovereign—the ancient physical avatar of Qinglong. The draconic skeleton was two hundred meters long, carved from living sea-jade, its antlers branching like coral trees, its five-toed talons resting on the four cardinal water gate gates of the well.
