The crushing weight of the Atlantic Ocean descended upon them like a tomb.
Swallowed by the ink-black depths, Leon locked his grip around the icy, runic chains anchored to the Leviathan’s hide.
Beside him, Garrik held fast, his scarred face contorted as the creature descended deeper into the sunless abyss.
The temperature plummeted, and the intense water pressure began to compress their lungs.
Neither wizard could speak, but both were battle-tested enough to act without vocalizing.
Raising his free hand, Leon cast a silent Bubble-Head Charm, sealing a sphere of breathable air around his head while surrounding his body with a subtle Impervius layer to stave off the crushing pressure.
Garrik executed the same silent magic a second later, a faint shimmer of magic flaring around his scarred face.
Yet, survival was only temporary.
Their magic could not withstand the pressure of the abyssal zone forever, and swimming to the surface from hundreds of meters down without a broom was impossible; the undertow and rapid decompression would kill them long before they reached sunlight.
‘Think,’ Leon commanded himself, his mind processing the vectors of their descent.
‘We need anchor-ground.
An air pocket.
Any physical anomaly.’
Suddenly, the Leviathan’s bioluminescent hide flared with a soft, aqua-blue pulse, illuminating the deep-sea topography below.
A hundred meters to their left, resting on a subterranean oceanic ridge, lay a shadow that did not belong to the natural sea floor.
Massive, stone structures—decayed, covered in abyssal flora, and half-buried in silt—loomed out of the dark.
It was a vast complex of ancient ruins.
Garrik met Leon’s eyes through his air bubble, pointing urgently toward the stone structures.
Leon nodded once.
On a shared silent count, both wizards released their grip on the Leviathan’s chains.
The kinetic momentum of the plunging beast threw them sideways.
Immediately, Leon channeled magic through his limbs, utilizing a silent propulsion charm to propel himself through the freezing water like a pike.
Garrik kicked aggressively alongside him, his heavy form cutting through the dark ocean.
They sprinted through the water toward a colossal, cracked stone archway.
Beyond the archway lay the structural maze of the sunken city.
The architecture was completely alien to European design—massive step-pyramids of dark, volcanic stone, intricate geometric relief carvings worn smooth by a millennium of tides, and wide plazas now silent under the ocean’s weight.
Leon tracked the subtle flow of underwater currents.
‘Where there are structural domes, there can be air traps,’ he calculated, scanning the cavernous stone ceilings above them.
Recognizing a rising passage that curved upward into the belly of the main temple structure, Leon gestured to Garrik.
They swam hard into the sloping stone tunnel, rising rapidly as the ceiling inclined.
SPLASH!
Their heads broke the surface of a dark pool.
Leon dragged himself out of the water onto solid, damp stone, coughing violently as his lungs accepted the stale, dry air of an ancient subterranean chamber.
Next to him, Garrik hauled his heavy body onto the stone floor, collapsing on his back with a ragged groan.
For several long minutes, the only sound in the massive, pitch-black chamber was the harsh, echoing breathing of the two wizards.
Leon sat up, his analytical eyes quickly adapting to the dark.
He drew his walnut wand, casting a non-verbal Hot-Air Charm followed by a swift Tergeo.
The moisture vanished from his clothes and dragon-hide coat in a cloud of warm steam.
Garrik rolled onto his side, using his own wand to dry his dark leather gear with a low grumble.
Garrik cleared his throat, his raspy voice echoing off the ancient stone walls.
“Still alive, kid?”
Leon adjusted his collar, his blue eyes cold as he locked sight with the scarred leader.
“No thanks to you,” Leon replied, his voice flat and devoid of any respect.
“If you hadn’t let your madness get the better of you, trying to harpoon an eighty-meter sea monster, we wouldn’t be rotting at the bottom of the Atlantic.”
Garrik’s dark eyes narrowed, a dangerous glint passing through them.
He pushed himself up to a standing position, his towering frame casting a long shadow under the faint glow of Leon’s wand.
“Watch your tongue, boy,” Garrik growled softly, though the usual thunder in his voice was tempered by a rare, tacit admission of error.
“You’re standing on solid ground because I had the nerve to anchor us to the beast. Remember who commands this outfit.”
Leon didn’t push further.
He didn’t need to; Garrik’s restrained reaction confirmed the man knew his obsession had nearly cost them everything.
“Lumos,” Leon murmured, raising his wand higher.
The light flared, revealing a vast stone hall.
The architecture clearly belonged to an ancient, pre-colonial Caribbean wizarding civilization—predating European contact by more than a thousand years.
The walls were lined with massive obsidian panels, carved with deep relief pictograms and stylized figures.
Leon stepped closer to the perimeter wall, trailing his fingers over the carved stone.
“What is this place?” Garrik asked, stepping up beside him, his heavy hand resting near his wand holster.
“Pictographic records,” Leon said, his eyes scanning the glyphs with lightning speed.
While the script was entirely foreign, Leon’s eidetic memory and vast academic study of ancient runes, combined with his hyper-analytical mind, allowed him to rapidly cross-reference structural patterns, contextual symbols, and regional magic markers.
“It tells a story,” Leon said aloud, his voice echoing in the dry chamber.
“A millennium ago, a fanatical sect of sorcerers inhabited a volcanic island in this region. They practiced a primitive, highly concentrated form of sacrificial magic.”
He moved along the wall, tracing the relief of figures standing over stone altars.
“They performed massive, bloody ritual sacrifices—sacrificing magical beasts and non-magic tribes alike—to draw raw, unrefined magic directly into their own bodies. It gave them terrifying power, allowing them to dominate the surrounding archipelagos.”
Leon stopped before a massive central carving.
The detail was striking: a colossal marine entity, depicted with obsidian skin and glowing, geometric lines.
“Then, they encountered the beast,” Leon continued, his finger outlining the carved fins.
“It’s the exact same Leviathan we fought outside. Trait for trait.”
“Did they worship it?” Garrik asked, leaning in, fascinated.
“At first,” Leon replied, stepping to the next panel.
“Then their ambition got the better of them. The sect believed that if they could slay the Leviathan and harvest its heart in a grand sacrifice, their magic would become absolute. They believed they could ascend to godhood.”
Leon paused at the final section of the wall.
The grand, meticulously detailed carvings abruptly ceased.
In their place was a single, crude inscription, etched into the stone in apparent haste and terror.
It depicted the Leviathan rising beneath the island, channeling the raw fury of the sea and sky.
“The attempt failed,” Leon said quietly.
“The Leviathan wasn’t just a creature; it was a force of nature. In its wrath, it summoned the sea to shatter the island, sinking their entire sect to the ocean floor in a single night.”
Leon looked down.
Resting directly beneath the crude carving was a skeletal human frame, half-crushed by fallen masonry, its bony fingers still clutching a leather pouch against its sternum.
Garrik stared at the crude carving of the Leviathan destroying the island, his scarred jaw tight.
He let out a long, heavy breath.
“Well,” Garrik rasped, running a hand over his dragon-burnt face.
“I suppose we ought to drop the idea of hunting that bloody whale. Some prizes aren’t meant to be taken.”
Leon didn’t answer.
He knelt beside the ancient skeleton, carefully pulling the rotten leather pouch from its ribcage.
Inside, wrapped in preserved sea-silk, was a smooth, teardrop-shaped stone of deep crimson obsidian.
The moment Leon’s fingers touched it, a heavy, rhythmic pulse of ancient magic radiated through his arm.
It was distinctly magical, hummed with a dormant, blood-bound frequency, but neither he nor Garrik possessed the immediate framework to identify its exact function.
“Keep searching,” Garrik ordered, turning away to inspect the rest of the ruins.
“There has to be more than just dead bones down here.”
They navigated through the collapsed stone corridors, moving deeper into the complex.
Leon maintained a keen awareness of their surroundings, calculating structural weight points to ensure their spellwork didn’t trigger a cave-in.
At the terminus of a long, reinforced hallway, they came upon a massive set of double doors.
Unlike the rest of the decayed ruins, these doors were remarkably preserved—crafted from heavy, dark metal alloy inlaid with shimmering jade and golden runic bands.
It was sealed with heavy, passive warding magic.
In the center of the seam sat a circular indentation matching the exact shape of the crimson stone.
Leon stepped forward and slotted the stone into the recess.
The ancient runes on the door flared with a dull, crimson light.
A heavy, mechanical click echoed through the corridor, followed by the deep groan of stone and metal moving after a thousand years of silence.
The doors swung inward.
Beyond lay a grand vault.
Garrik threw his wandlight into the room, and both men froze.
It was a treasure room untouched by time, completely sealed from the ocean’s decay.
But it bore no resemblance to a European hoard of galLeons or royal crown jewels.
This was a treasury of an ancient Caribbean powerhouse.
Piles of raw gold ingots stamped with tribal suns, intricate pectorals of beaten gold inlaid with raw emeralds and turquoise, heavy ceremonial daggers crafted from obsidian and magical sea-bone, and rows of pristine, polished jade masks filled the floor.
Shelves of dark stone held clay urns containing rare, preserved magical ingredients, strange alchemical powders, and dozens of bound scrolls made of treated bark and dried sea-drake hide.
Garrik stepped into the room, his eyes wide as the light reflected off the sea of gold.
A low, booming laugh escaped his throat, echoing off the vault walls.
“Ha! Look at this!” Garrik threw his head back, his dark eyes sparkling with uncharacteristic glee.
“Destroyed the ship, killed half the crew… but by Merlin’s beard, this expedition wasn’t a waste after all!”
Leon stepped past him, his own breath catching slightly.
The sheer volume of wealth and lost magical knowledge was staggering.
They spent the next hour meticulously cataloging the vault.
Leon prioritized the written records, scanning through the bark scrolls with sharp, cataloging precision.
Among the preserved texts, Leon uncovered a heavy tablet bound in sharkskin.
The pictograms and glyphs detailed the complete codex of the sect’s forgotten art: the mechanics, rituals, and incantations of their ancient Sacrificial Magic.
Before Leon could analyze the structural logic of the text, Garrik snatched the tablet from his hands.
“I’ll be taking that,” Garrik said, a broad, sinister grin spreading across his scarred face as he tucked the codex into his heavy coat.
Leon watched him, noting the dangerous ambition flaring in the man’s eyes.
‘He wants the power they used,’ Leon thought.
‘A dangerous toy for a man like Garrik.’
After finishing their sweep, Garrik turned to Leon, his tone returning to business.
“We can’t carry even a fraction of this out,” Garrik noted, gesturing to the piles of gold and artifacts.
“Neither of us has enough expanded containers on hand. We leave it sealed, navigate back to the surface, and return with a dedicated recovery team.”
“Agreed,” Leon said calmly.
“And the Cartel?”
Garrik spat on the stone floor.
“Alejandro and Mamá Socorro don’t get a single coin of this. This stays strictly between the Wyrm-Breakers. We keep it buried until we can haul it out ourselves.”
Standing in the quiet vault, half a step behind the scarred leader, Leon’s hand hovered inches above his wand holster.
‘If I strike now,’ Leon calculated.
‘A point-blank Diffindo to the neck while his back is turned.’
He analyzed the variables in milliseconds.
‘No.’ Leon dismissed the thought, slowly relaxing his posture.
Garrik was a veteran warlord who had survived decades of combat against Ministry Aurors and dragons.
The fact that Garrik wasn’t taking a defensive stance against Leon wasn’t carelessness—it was self-confidence.
If Leon failed to kill him in the first strike, a full-scale duel between two high-level sorcerers inside an unstable, thousand-year-old underwater vault would inevitably cause the ceiling to collapse, burying them both under thousands of tons of rock and ocean water.
‘Garrik’s death will come,’ Leon thought coolly, keeping his expression neutral.
‘But not here.
And not today.’
“We’re done here,” Leon said aloud, stepping back toward the vault entrance.
“Now that we’re out of the sea currents and in a stable air pocket, our spatial orientation is clear.”
Garrik nodded, pulling his own wand.
“Aye. Time to leave the grave.”
Focusing their minds on the coordinates of the open sky above the ocean surface, both wizards turned on their heels.
With two sharp, synchronized CRACKS of Apparition, they vanished from the subterranean vault, leaving the ancient treasure back in the dark.