Three heavy brass deadbolts clicked into place across the thick oak door of the flagship’s spirit-core chamber.
Kaelen slid an iron bar across the center brackets for good measure.
He gave the door a test shove with his elbow. The reinforced timber did not budge an inch.
Behind him, the warship’s primary spirit vein hummed with a deep vibration that traveled up through his cloth slippers.
The room was twenty paces wide, buried deep beneath the armored waterline of the lead ironclad.
Massive slabs of polished star-iron lined the bulkheads, muffling the ocean into a distant, rhythmic murmur.
In the center of the chamber, a raw spirit crystal the size of a water barrel sat cradled in a brass mounting.
Thick streams of purple mist rose steadily from the crystal, filling the air with the rich scent of raw subterranean Qi.
