POV RUBY
The silence of the abyss was no longer empty. It was pressurized, heavy with the presence of the thing tailing us through the subterranean currents. On the sonar screen, the signature was a pulsing, ethereal violet—a mirror image of the light that lived in my own veins. The Cónclave hadn't just built a hunter; they had engineered a bloodhound that could track a soul through four hundred meters of rock and freezing water.
Nevan’s hands were no longer shaking. The breakdown in the dark, the weeping of the boy he used to be, had been cauterized by the sudden return of a tangible threat. He was back in the pilot’s seat, but the energy flowing through the neural bridge was different now. It wasn’t a wall of ice; it was a focused beam of obsidian.
"They’ve synchronized with the child
