The crimson warning runes on the Fallow Slate flickered once, then settled into a slow, rhythmic pulse.
On the morning of Day Seventy-Six, the final fifteen-day countdown began.
Two miles below the northern ocean, inside the Abyssal Fire Trench, Kaelen Vance opened his eyes.
He did not see the familiar dark ceiling of the obsidian grotto.
Instead, a vast field of shimmering golden mirages danced across his vision.
Every time he blinked, translucent golden lotus petals floated through the air like radiant autumn leaves, drifting lazily before dissolving into silver mist.
The basalt stone walls hummed with a low, vibrating chord that resonated behind his teeth.
At three thousand six hundred Fallow Hours, his unspent cultivation potential was sitting at thirty-six thousand times baseline.
