They had mastered the oceans, the stars, and even the currents of time. Their cities shimmered not with stone, but with living metal that pulsed in harmony with the thoughts of those who dwelled within.

On the eve of collapse, silence fell across the central spire of Va'resh-Tal—their capital and sanctuary. Above, the heavens boiled with crimson light as gravitational storms licked the planet’s surface. The sea had already begun to rebel.

Inside a vaulted chamber, glowing in hues unknown to the human eye, a single figure stepped forward. Tall and lithe, neither male nor female by human measure, the being placed a hand—translucent and multi-jointed—on the cryostasis console.

“Let them come,” it said aloud, though none answered. “Let them grow. But not yet.”

As the chamber’s crystalline shell began to close around the figure, a second entity—a twin, or perhaps a rival—watched from the shadows.

“They will seek this place,” it warned. “And when they do, they will not be alone.”

No answer. Just the hiss of containment gas, and then—silence.
Seconds later, the ocean claimed the city. A civilization dissolved into myth.

The sea groaned.

More than 800 miles off the coast, on a rocky seafloor previously undisturbed for millennia, a deep tremor shuddered through tectonic plates that should have been dormant.

At a seismic monitoring station in New Zealand, a lone technician spilled his coffee as the readout lit up like a Christmas tree.

“That can’t be right…” he muttered, staring as a mountain—no, a structure—began rising through the sediment.
Something massive. And ancient.

And in the silent darkness below, a chamber long sealed was now... empty.