Countless merfolk surged in from all directions toward the bone altar. The vast majority melted into the green pus surrounding it before they could even touch it; only a few fused their bones into the altar and became part of it.
Throughout this process, more and more green pus accumulated. Yet it did not spread outward. Instead, it converged toward the center of the altar, merging into a rust-covered, misshapen metal bar there.
As countless fishmen became sacrifices and endless green pus flowed into it, the metal bar planted in the center of the bone altar slowly began to emit a mottled golden-green radiance.
The altar gradually grew larger, and its speed of absorbing sacrifices grew ever faster. The light on that metal bar intensified as well, until, at a certain moment, the once rust-covered metal bar suddenly shuddered. All its rust vanished as if by magic, revealing the shape of a long spear.
A closer look showed two notches at the spearhead. It was actually a trident whose left and right prongs had both broken off.
As this broken trident revealed its true form, the enormous bone altar began to tremble violently. With the shaking, its shape slowly changed, and it absorbed sacrifices at an even faster rate.
Near the surface of the sea, many aged fishman elders were casting a spell together. They paid no heed to the losses among their kin, chanting obscure, frenzied incantations. As the chanting continued, the corpses of fishmen on the surface, along with many living fishmen, vanished one after another, as though swallowed by something invisible. After an unknown amount of time, strange drumming and singing suddenly echoed through the seawater. Then the void beneath the waves split open, and a strange gray-green thing squeezed out of the crack in space and