The salt spray hit Sophie’s skin like shrapnel, freezing instantly upon contact. She stood at the edge of the Battery Park seawall, looking out over the churning, indigo-lit harbor. The water was no longer liquid. It was a swirling mass of abyssal energy, glowing with the rhythmic, bioluminescent pulse of creatures that had not seen the surface since the dawn of time.
The Council ships formed a jagged semi-circle around the epicenter of the surge. Harpoon cannons, mounted with runic dampeners, rotated with a mechanical whine, tracking the shifting currents beneath the waves.
"They are trying to pin the current down," Valerius’s voice resonated from the frigid air around her, his presence now just a thin, brittle vibration. "If they stabilize the water, they can siphon the pressure. You
