The man raised his hand and made a downward gesture.
The head of the enormous beast beneath his feet silently split open, revealing a deep, dark opening.
Veylin did not look back. He slipped into the darkness without hesitation.
The opening slowly closed behind him, leaving no seam.
Then the enormous beast began to sink.
Its massive body displaced the seawater, raising towering waves that rocked the nobles' swift boats violently, like battered wooden tubs caught in a storm.
The boatmen strained to steady their vessels, but chaos had already broken out aboard.
"He went down!"
"Where is he? Is that it?"
Several nobles turned pale, clutching the gunwales as their stomachs churned.
"My lady Count, where is this demonstration he promised?" The short-mustached knight who had complained on the beach earlier braced himself against the mast, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Are we supposed to admire how this monster dives? Or has he run away again?"
Diana ignored him.
Her attention was fixed on the water below.
This was the deepest stretch of water off the Dawn Territory's coast, yet it was no more than twenty meters deep.
The morning light pierced the emerald seawater, barely revealing the outlines of sand and stones on the seabed.
The beast's enormous shadow moved slowly underwater, like a moving mountain range.
The nobles held their breath and watched that shadow.
It did not swim toward the open sea. Instead, it began at one end of the crescent-shaped bay and slowly made its way along the edge toward the other.
"What is it doing? Surveying the land?" someone muttered, drawing a few stifled snickers.
Just then, an experienced boatman suddenly gave a startled murmur and pointed at the water.
"Look, down there..."
Beneath the shadow, something flashed among the sand and stones on