The sky, when it returned, did not feel like a comfort.
The storm had pulled back with the tide, but it left a strange stillness in its wake. The clouds hung low, as if unsure whether they should remain. Shafts of sun speared through in narrow threads, catching on shattered coral and the dying bones of the lighthouse. The sea, once violent, now looked too calm—like a predator waiting for silence to settle before it moved again.
Kael didn't move from where he knelt beside Liora.
She stirred, a faint breath catching in her throat, and her eyelids fluttered open slowly. He could still see traces of the light that had poured from her minutes earlier. It had dimmed, but it hadn't fully gone. Something in her had changed.
Or perhaps, awakened.
Liora blinked groggily. "What happened…?"
"You stopped it," Kael said, brushing a lock of sea-soaked hair from her forehead. "Whatever that thing was… it listened to you."
She sat up, shakily. "I don't remember what I said."
"That might be for the best," he said, though his grip around her hand remained firm. "You were somewhere else. And something else was… speaking through you."
She looked toward the sea with a frown that didn't belong on her small face.
"I wasn't afraid."
Kael exhaled slowly, rising to his feet and pulling her up gently beside him. "You should've been."
They left Shalebreak behind as the tide receded further, revealing more ruins swallowed by centuries. Kael took only what he could carry. They abandoned the maps on the lighthouse table—too dangerous, too loud. Whatever had been hidden under those runes had already responded to her presence, and he feared what else might stir if they lingered.
They walked inland, toward the broken hills and twisted grasslands where storms hadn't yet claimed the ground.
For the first few hours, neither of them spoke. Liora clutched his hand and stared forward, as if watching for another flicker in the wind, another sound below the soil. Kael kept his eyes on the terrain, alert for movement that didn't match the patterns of breeze or birdsong.
And yet, there was a stillness in her now—a quiet Kael had not seen in her since they left the house in the forest. It wasn't fear.
It was weight.
Something had latched onto her soul the way barnacles clung to the shipwrecks.
They made camp beneath a hollowed tree where lightning had split the trunk long ago. The bark had hardened into a shell, curved like ribs overhead, sheltering them from the evening wind. Kael built a small fire using the emberstones from his pack, careful not to let the flame climb too high.
Liora sat cross-legged beside it, poking at a piece of root bread with the tip of a stick.
Kael passed her a small chunk of dried fruit.
"Not as good as honeycake," he said with a slight smile.
She looked up at him. "Do you remember the recipe?"
"I remember burning it three times in a row," he muttered. "The fourth time, it was only half-burnt. You said that made it perfect."
She giggled faintly. The sound cracked the shell of tension that had wrapped around them since the storm. Kael leaned back against the tree and exhaled through his nose, listening to the faint wind.
"Do you think it'll come back?" she asked after a while.
"The creature?"
"No… the voice."
He didn't respond immediately.
"I think," he said slowly, "that voice was always a part of you. You just didn't know it until now."
She poked the fire again, eyes reflective.
"What if I don't want it?"
"Then we'll fight to keep it quiet," he said, firm. "But if it's something important—if it's something the world needs—then we figure it out together. Like always."
She nodded. "Even if I become… strange?"
"You already are," Kael said with a grin. "But you're my daughter. That doesn't change."
The smile that bloomed on her face that moment, flickering between the glow of the fire and the coming night, was something he would carry with him longer than any memory.
At dawn, a shadow crossed their camp.
Not a beast. Not a bird.
A banner.
It fluttered high above the trees, scarlet and gold, pinned to the lance of a rider approaching on a horned stag. The stag's hooves made no sound as it stepped over root and rock. Behind the rider came two more—cloaked figures with veils over their faces, each mounted on lean, furred beasts whose eyes shone like glass.
Kael rose slowly, pulling Liora behind him.
The lead rider raised a hand—not a threat, but a signal for peace.
When he spoke, his voice had the cadence of old stone and harpstrings.
"You carry the mark of the Lost Oath. The sea remembers."
Kael didn't respond.
The rider removed his helm, revealing an angular face with weathered eyes and hair braided in silver strands. Tattoos ran across his brow like lightning scars.
"We are of the Dawnward Kin," he said. "Oathbearers. Wardens of the Forgotten Banners."
Liora peeked from behind Kael, curious. The rider noticed.
"And you, star-bearer… You called the Tideborn back to sleep. The Depth Courts stirred, then recoiled."
Kael stepped forward, tense. "We didn't call anything. She didn't mean to do it."
"But she did," the rider said, bowing his head. "And we are not your enemies. We came to offer protection. Shelter. Understanding."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Where were your oaths when that thing rose from the sea?"
The rider didn't flinch. "Our oaths bind us to watch, not intervene. But now that the Brightfall walks, the bindings fray."
At that word—Brightfall—Liora shivered.
Kael stepped back. "She's a child. Not your myth."
"She is both," the rider said gently. "And neither. That is why you must come with us."
The journey with the Dawnward Kin took them through the Moonshade Hills—long grasslands spotted with white stones and ancient cairns that hummed with magic. Liora listened closely to their stories, to the old songs they sang while riding. She learned their names, one by one.
The lead rider was called Seran.
He spoke of fallen empires. Of the Depth Courts who ruled beneath the ocean trenches. Of the First Dominion's pact with the Brightfall long ago—how it was broken, how the stars fell after. And of a gate sealed not by magic, but by memory.
"What kind of gate?" Liora asked one night, walking beside his mount.
"A gate the world forgot," Seran said. "And in forgetting, made stronger."
He looked down at her.
"But you remembered. And the sea did too."
By the time they reached the edge of the Lanternspire—a massive valley crater where light refracted unnaturally in the air—Kael had seen enough to know one thing:
Their peace was over.
Whatever had waited beneath the waves, whatever names had been written in old blood and starlight, were stirring now. And they had seen his daughter.
They called her Brightfall.
And they were coming.