The sky trembled.
It wasn't a storm.
At first, the elves of the Aeloria Forest thought it was a distant thunderstorm—just a passing rumble in the clouds. But then the wind shifted, bringing with it an unsettling chill, a darkness that no storm could create.
At the edge of their woodland kingdom, where the trees parted to overlook the vast blue ocean, the elves saw it—the tides. They weren't rising. They were raging.
Queen Arilina stood at the ocean's edge, her eyes wide with sudden recognition. She was a seer, one of the rare few who could interpret the omens of nature. Her ancestors had ruled these lands long before the first humans ever set foot upon them, and they had always warned her of the Deep.
The sea churned with unnatural force.
"Elven ships are anchored in the western cove," Arilina murmured to herself, eyes narrowed. She turned to her council. "We must warn them. They are in grave danger."
A young elven mage, Lyrian, rushed forward. His hands were trembling as he pointed toward the horizon. "My queen… there is something more. Look!"
Through the swirling waters, a massive shadow moved beneath the surface. It was not the typical movement of leviathan-sized beasts—they were too predictable, too primal. This was something different.
Something alive.
Something conscious.
System Alert:
Celestial Signal Detected – "The Crown Below" has awoken.
Seismic shifts detected in the northern ocean.
Warning: Unknown entity, exceeding known leviathan strength.
Back in the forest's heart, the elder elves gathered in silence. Their magic was ancient, rooted in the earth and sky, but it had always been limited to the land. The seas had always been outside their reach—until now.
Across the continent, in the human kingdom of Valdoria, whispers of strange events spread like wildfire. The Ironclad Fleet, the largest naval force in the world, had set sail on an expedition to discover new territories and riches. They sailed far beyond the known waters, far into the Whispering Sea, a region feared by sailors for its unnatural, unexplained storms.
Captain Thorne, leader of the fleet, stood at the bow of his flagship, the Raven's Wrath, his weathered face tight with concern. The sea beneath him wasn't just dark—it was alive.
"We've been sailing for days, and nothing but silence. It feels… wrong," he said to his first mate, Calla.
Calla, a seasoned sailor with a gut that had never lied to her, gripped the rail. Her eyes narrowed. "We're too far out, Captain. This water… it's not natural. It's too still for this deep."
But the stillness broke.
The ocean roared.
A wave, impossibly high, crashed against the Raven's Wrath, throwing the crew to the deck. The water swirled like a living thing, churning with a black aura that seemed to stretch beneath the surface, like a giant serpent coiling, its form shifting in the depths.
System Alert:
Warning: Leviathan-Class Entity Detected.
Designation: The Crown Below.
Immediate Evacuation Recommended.
Meanwhile, high above in the Skyrun Kingdom, a dragon soared through the clouds. Thalrith, an ancient dragon of obsidian scales, had long kept to the mountains—only venturing into the skies when his domain needed defending.
But today, the air felt wrong.
His senses, honed over centuries, buzzed with an unsettling awareness. The winds carried more than just the scent of an approaching storm. They carried a call.
A voice older than the gods.
Thalrith's claws clenched. He had heard stories—the same stories his ancestors spoke of when the dragons were once feared as the rulers of the skies and the seas.
A king had returned.
And his reign would consume all that stood in the way.
Back in the Aeloria Forest, Queen Arilina felt the pulse of the sea's awakening in her very bones. She closed her eyes, reaching deep into the magic of the earth beneath her feet. The sea had always been something she feared—a place where the gods once held dominion, where ancient horrors lived in the dark.
Now, those horrors were coming back.
She called for the High Council of Seers, and the circle formed around her. Together, they began to chant, weaving their magic into the air.
A vision unfolded before them:
The Leviathan—the Crown Below—rose from the depths, his scales a glimmering black, his eyes burning with divine wrath. He was no longer a mere beast of the abyss; he was a king.
But something more followed him. The Shadows of the Abyss.
Creatures of nightmare—beasts that had not walked the earth in eons, now freed to roam once again. The oceans, once silent, were alive with terror.
And the surface would know the price of their neglect.
Queen Arilina's voice shook as she spoke, her eyes wide with terror. "We are all doomed. The gods' curse is true. He is the Sovereign. The sea will rise, and all who stand above it will fall."
Back on the Raven's Wrath, Captain Thorne and his crew barely managed to fight off the first wave of strange sea creatures that began to crawl from the ocean's depths. The waters were now alive, crawling with shadows, beckoning the darkness above.
He stood at the bow, staring into the horizon.
"We have to return to port," Calla said, her voice strained. "If we don't… we won't survive."
But Thorne, staring into the abyss that seemed to call to him, clenched his fists. "We sail on. We sail to the end of the world if we have to."
The Crown Below was rising. And he—like the others—was already caught in its wake.