A brass speaking tube above Kaelen Vance’s hammock hissed with escaping steam.
Three fathoms beneath the harbor swells, cold bubbles trailed along the black hulls of three submerged vessels. Ancestor Draven’s Blood-Star armada had not waited for dawn. Gliding through the deep ocean trench, the three mother-submarines opened their bow tubes.
Fifty iron constructs shot through the black water like predatory eels.
They were Blood-Leech Torpedoes—flesh-iron hybrids forged from abyssal slug marrow and siphon bronze. Each construct bore jagged blood-runes designed to bite into coastal bedrock, tap into the island’s volcanic Spirit Vein, and suck dry the ambient Qi nurturing the grotto.
Down in the harbor watchtower, Deacon Vane stared at the acoustic sonar crystal.
The green stone pulsed with frantic crimson sparks. Beside him, Barnaby Holt slammed his wooden ladle onto the map table, spilling half a bowl of cold herbal broth across the charts.
“What is that racket?” Barnaby barked, squinting at the glowing crystal. “Did an iron whale get caught in the kelp nets?”
“Worse!” Vane shrieked, his whiskers quivering with sheer terror. “Fifty underwater signatures! They are moving at eighty knots straight toward the southern reef! The hull resonance matches Blood-Star siphon casings!”
