The Sealed Grotto is live. Find the fault in The Lower Dark, cross Pilot Level 15, and the sealed contact opens into a vortex map of its own — a colossal, integrity-tracked stone with a console all its own, separate from the rest of the HUD.
Striking it costs one of twelve daily strikes, the same two-press aim-then-throw rhythm as a Specimen Pod, and lands harder with a better claw or harpoon fitted. The stone doesn't drain evenly: at 90%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 10% integrity, a wave of guardians erupts instead, and every wave is hard-gated by mount tier — swing something under-rated and the game says so outright and the wall doesn't move. Clearing a wave, by outlasting it or beating it down, drops materials found nowhere else, which craft the exact mounts the next wall demands.
Breach Shards are the one way to move faster than your own strikes: consumable, earned only (never sold), capped at two a day, and capped so that no amount of spending shortens a season by more than about 37.5% — the walls that make you grow stronger stay for every pilot, paying or not.
What's sealed inside, we're not saying yet. The manual has the whole shape of the siege — see the guide.