The deepest trenches of the abyss had no name.
There, beneath stone and pressure older than nations, a single will lingered.
It was vast, hungry, and patient, a mind sharpened by ten thousand years of captivity.
She was the last Abyssal, the mother of Thalassaria, imprisoned beneath the depths by her own daughter in a rebellion fought long before mortal memory.
She had been shackled in black strata and wards woven by her own bloodline, she had endured for countless lifetimes, whispering through cracks in her cell, mocking her daughter's reign.
Mockery cost nothing.
Time meant nothing.
She would break free in the end.
Or so she had believed.
Lately, the currents had shifted.
A resonance vibrated through the abyss, faint at first, like a heartbeat stirring in a long-dead corpse.
She had assumed it was the boy, the mortal lordling Thalassaria had stolen.
His blood smelled of ancient stock, of primordial sovereignty once thought lost to time itself.
