The air was shrieking.
Not wind—
The seawater itself was being forcibly dragged toward some bottomless center.
The vortex hung in the middle of the Nether Sea like a gaping mouth, silent and greedy as it swallowed everything in reach. Water, broken stone, wreckage— even drifting currents of energy got yanked in, unable to escape its pull.
It only consumed.
It never spat anything back out.
"If this keeps up…" Ethan muttered, his brow tightening inch by inch, "the whole Nether Sea is going to get drained dry."
He lifted a hand.
[SYSTEM SCAN — ACTIVATED]
A layer of near-invisible blue light rippled outward from deep within his pupils, like rings spreading across a pond, slipping quickly into the heart of the whirlpool.
A few seconds later—
The system returned its result.
And Ethan's breath stalled in his chest.
[Target Classification: Living Organism]
Living.
Not a phenomenon.
Not a spatial rift.
Not a natural disaster.
But—
A creature.
Ethan's pupils tightened.
