The last violet bruise of sunlight died at five hundred deep-water lengths.
It didn’t fade like twilight on the surface. There, the sky stayed in amber and copper before surrendering to dusk. Down here, the extinction of the sun was total, an iron door swinging shut on a hinge of cold salt water. Above that boundary lay the world of hulls, hemp ropes, wind, and burning ships. Below it lay nine thousand deep-water lengths of eternal, choking midnight.
The water had ceased to behave like a liquid. Under two crushing deep-sea pressure of deep water pressure, the ocean grew thick, thick, sticky as linseed oil. It pressed inward against every square inch of Ren Vale’s flesh with the weight of an iron locomotive.
Two thousand nine hundred pounds of pressure.
At that depth, an unaugmented mortal skull would have imploded like a hollow eggshell. The ribs would have caved into the spine, driving bone splinters through crushed lungs and turning muscle tissue into a red paste within three-tenths of a second.
Yet the black water pressed against Ren’s lambskin apron and patched wool tunic. Then, the craft of the fifteenth summon held the deep-sea weight at bay. The pressure didn’t crush his ribs. It seated against them like a tailored iron cuirass. The dense fluid pushed against the rigid quartz scarring along his chest bone and collar bone—the hardened legacy of the Artificer’s divergence—and met a structure that refused to yield.
