The healing of the Kermadec-Tonga crust-sink fault was a deep-rock miracle that unfolded with quiet, majestic dignity.
Thirty-two thousand meters beneath the Pacific surface, the blackened dense green rock cliffs that had been scarred by two hundred years of void rusting were undergoing deep cellular and stone reversion. The jagged, pitted stone, once veined with toxic purple mycelium, smoothed into spotless shelves of dark green olivine and lustrous black dark rock. White-hot-water vents that had vomited acidic black sludge for an epoch now bubbled with crystal-clear stone water, releasing gentle clouds of dissolved calcium, magnesium, and life-giving Wood-Water mana.
Arthur Vance knelt on a newly formed dark rock ledge, his Zeiss monocle dialed to high-resolution polarizing spectroscopy. He pressed his silver-steel bone-callipers into a fresh stone fissure, extracting a two-inch core sample of the restored mantle rock.
“Complete stone reversion,” Arthur dictated into his field log. He watched the spectroscopic curves resolve on his heads-up display. “The biogenic quartz dust and mutagenic void crystals have been fully lysed by the Four Pillars’ deep ringing hum. The dense green rock lattice has reverted to its clean pre-Disaster crystal-clear shape. Cellular tests on the surrounding hadal settled mud show zero parts per billion of void neurotoxin. The deep-crust Aether Crystallization Disease has been fully halted.”
