Stirring in the Depths. The Beasts Awaken

He descended inward — not with force, but with the practiced breath of stillness, like a diver slipping beneath the surface of memory and meaning.

The inner world greeted him.

A vast sea of light and silence, where threads of his affinities glowed in slow constellations. Here, the layers of his soul stretched like a dreamscape — ordered, contained.

Until now.

There — at the deepest edge — something pulsed.

Five pulses.

Old. Familiar. But stirred.

Ethan approached them. Slowly.

Each beat held weight.

Galeno was first — the Divine Tortoise — his vast presence like a mountain beneath the ocean, unmoving but suddenly restless. Cracks of golden light rippled across the inner realm floor as his shell shifted.

He was awakening.