The ocean did not roar.
It exhaled.
Across every coastline of the continent—north, south, east, and west—the tide withdrew in the same breath. Not gradually. Not as part of any natural rhythm. It receded with surgical precision, pulled backward as if some immense hand beneath the abyss had hooked its fingers into the seabed and dragged.
Harbors emptied in unnatural silence.
Ships groaned as their hulls settled crookedly into wet docks. Anchors clanged uselessly against exposed stone. Fishermen staggered back from shores that no longer held water but miles of revealed seabed—glistening trenches, coral skeletons, and things that should never have known sunlight.
For several terrible seconds, the world stared at what the ocean had hidden.
Shapes writhed in the sudden air.
Colossal spines arched and recoiled.
A ridge like the back of a mountain shifted far below the horizon.
Then the sea inhaled again.
And returned.
Not as a wave.
As a wall.
Miles high.
