The silver blood drifting from the Man Who Returned’s shoulder didn’t scatter like mortal gore. It remained suspended in the black hadal salt water. It curled into glowing, metal fractals that lit up the underwater ruins of the Sanctum with a horrible, pale soft glow. The headsman stood in eighteen feet of freezing salt water, the ragged tear in his wool robe revealing yellowed skin that looked like ancient parchment. But the wound didn’t bleed further. The edges of the cut were already smoking with cold time ash.
‘He’s wounded!’ Ren Prime shouted from the dais, wiping the boiling spray from his eyes. His mammoth bone awl flared with violet ink as he channeled his focus into the water. ‘Diver, draw the wire! Nomad, break his footing! The salt is holding his severance!’ Beside him, Mira’s sound deep ring surged to maximum intensity. Her smoky quartz arm glowed with such violent bright glare that the water around the dais began to hum with deep, rhythmic ringing waves. The pure silver chime pierced the dark ocean. It locked the thickness of the salt water into a solid, jelly-like mass around the Man’s knees.
Nomad Ren didn’t wait. The desert hunter closed from the flank, his flint knife flashing through the salt water. His Mastered Craft, Sound Flooding, allowed him to glide through the water without creating a single wake or pressure ripple. He was a ghost moving through fluid. He struck at the blind spot behind the Man’s left ear where…
