POV (Diver) Dear SwornSlayer Diary, Scene 1: The Symbiont Selection [Interior, Parasite Pools, Late Evening] Diver: (Strips down to bare skin beside the phosphorescent pools where Depth Crawlers writhe like liquid nightmares, knowing that fabric would just give the parasites more to consume). The water reeks of digested flesh and broken promises, a smell that makes even hardened smugglers retch. Six hours, they remind themselves, watching their reflection fragment across the pool's surface, six hours before I become nothing but appetite. Their fingers shake as they prepare to plunge into voluntary damnation. Saltbriar: (Grabs the Diver's wrist with her barnacle-encrusted hand, her eyes wide with the kind of terror that comes from experience). Twenty years ago, she watched her brother dissolve from the inside after a Crawler infection; she still dreams of his liquefied organs. "There are other ways to reach the Empress," she pleads, though they both know she's lying. The fastest route to the Abyssal Throne requires becoming something the defensive systems won't recognize as human. Diver: (Pulls free from Saltbriar's grip and steps into the pool, feeling the Crawlers immediately investigate their heat signature). The parasites move like intelligent mercury, testing entry points with microscopic boring cilia. Through the ear, they think with detached horror as one finds its path, of course it would be through the ear. The sensation of something chewing through their eardrum makes them bite through their own tongue to keep from screaming. Tidecarver: (Watches from the pool's edge, his young face trying to maintain the stoic expression of a veteran he isn't). At seventeen, he's already killed twelve men for the resistance, but watching the Diver voluntarily submit to parasitic infection makes him vomit into the luminescent water. "I should be the one," he says between retches, though everyone knows his epilepsy would make him seize and drown before reaching the first pressure barrier. His shame tastes bitter as the bile in his throat.

POV (Volta) Dear SwornSlayer Diary, Scene 1: Reactor Prayer [Exterior, Crack in the Ring Road, Twilight] Volta: (Dragging a portable induction coil across broken asphalt toward a glowing crater, her armor's golden circuits flickering with each labored step). She grits her teeth against the weight, sparks cascading from where metal scrapes concrete. Three kilotons of shielding, and I'm still sweating like meat, she thinks, tasting copper in her mouth. The crater pulses orange beneath her, a dying star buried in the city's chest. Volta: (Dropping to one knee at the crater's edge, pressing her palm against the scorched earth to feel the micro-reactor's rhythm beneath). Heat travels up her arm in waves, each pulse stronger than the last. She counts seventeen seconds between surges; too fast for stable decay, too slow for immediate detonation. "Perfect window for idiots," she mutters, already unhooking power cables from her chest plate. Volta: (Jamming the coil's grounding spikes through rubble, angling them toward the reactor's magnetic signature while her left eye twitches from radiation feedback). Static builds in her teeth as she works, the kind that makes fillings sing. Her armor's warning systems shriek about exposure limits, but she mutes them with a thought. Can't save anyone if I'm listening to safety protocols, she reasons, blood already beading at her nose. Volta: (Threading her own power conduits into the coil's intake, effectively making herself part of the circuit while whispering half-remembered physics prayers). The connection burns cold, electricity preferring her augmented pathways to the corroded coil wiring. She becomes a living fuse, regulating flow with breath control and muscular tension. "Mother always said I'd make a terrible electrician," she gasps, vision strobing between infrared and normal. Volta: (Cranking the coil's frequency dial with her teeth while both hands maintain cable tension, hunting for the reactor's resonance point). Each adjustment sends feedback through her skeleton, a xylophone of pain playing up her spine. At 7.3 kilohertz, something deep in the crater responds with a metallic shriek. She bites harder, tasting her own blood mixed with ozone.