Volume 2: Shenzhou Academy & The Battle of Venice
The silence over the East Sea fell as abruptly as a guillotine severing the very voice of heaven and earth.
The acrid stench of magetech propellant billowing from the anti-aircraft battery emplacements had barely begun to scatter in the offshore gusts. Aboard the three vessels of the transport convoy, the exhausted battlemages and naval ratings had not even managed to exhale the breath trapped in their throats after driving off the ravenous swarm of Sea Demon Birds when the churning, brine-frothed swells abruptly ironed flat—flattening into a colossal, mirror-like sheet of obsidian glass.
Not a ripple disturbed the surface. Not a single whitecap broke across the expanse. Even the shrieking squalls that had torn across the rigging just seconds earlier vanished without a trace, smothered in an unnatural, suffocating void. The ambient air condensed in an instant, thickening until it felt like liquid lead pressing against every ribcage, as though an invisible, spectral claw reaching out from the nethermost abyss had clamped shut around the windpipe of every living soul.
“What... what is this?”
Aboard the starboard bridge-wing of Escort Cruiser No. 2, an auxiliary naval ensign gripped the cold iron railing until his knuckles went paper-white. Frigid sweat beaded across his forehead, stinging his eyes as he leaned over the bulwark. In the next heartbeat, his pupils constricted into needlepoints of pure horror:
“The sea... The water is draining away!”