The pulse of raw, hyper-accelerated vitality generated by Rowan's birth did not stop at the edge of the continent. The biological shockwave traveled outward, rolling across the continental shelf and plunging deep into the crushing, pitch-black depths of the Sunken Sea.
Miles beneath the surface, ancient things felt the warmth.
One of those things was a heavily scarred, colossal deep-sea Leviathan. Five years prior, this very creature had been critically injured by a dormant pre-war cosmic mine and saved by the Warlord's heirs in a desperate, makeshift hydrostatic operating room.
Since that day, the beast had remained in the abyss. But when Rowan's pulse of pure life magic hit the ocean floor, the Leviathan did not interpret it as a threat. Its ancient, sluggish biology interpreted the warmth as a beacon. It felt a magnetic, irresistible pull toward the surface, drawn to the sheer, overwhelming abundance of vitality radiating from the coast.
It began to swim upward.
