The sixty-meter armored ship cut steadily through the freezing swells of the northern channel.
Above them, the sky had started to open up to a bright blue, heavy with the stench of salt, smoke, and atmospheric mana leaking from underwater gate tears. Far out on the water, the silence felt unnatural, broken only by the chug of the vessel's engines vibrating through the steel hull.
Deep inside the ship's lower bay, the air smelled of copper wire, and stale coffee.
Toma sat hunched over a cluttered bench, his fingers trembling slightly as he carefully recalibrated a portable signal jammer. The anxious furrow of his brow was the exact same as the day he had tripped face-first into the gate.
"You're soldering with too much," a quiet voice noted from the doorway.
Toma jumped, nearly dropping his iron, before spinning around in his swivel chair. "H... Hide!"
