The coast greeted them with silence.
After the choking fog of the marshlands and the ever-watchful eyes of the Hollowing Pines, the open horizon felt alien—vast, unblinking, and cold. Kael stood on the ridge overlooking the inlet, wind tugging at his cloak, eyes narrowed against the salty air.
Below, the sea rolled in sluggishly, dark and slow, as though unwilling to let the land forget it. The tide reached lazily over the ruins of what had once been a small port town—half-drowned and rusted through. Barnacles clung to doorframes. Moss choked the cobblestones. Ships hung broken in their moorings like skeletons of birds that never learned to fly.
Liora stood beside him, squinting into the gray.
"Why did we come here?" she asked, the first full sentence she'd spoken since leaving the marsh.
Kael didn't answer at first. He adjusted the strap of his satchel and began the descent down the crumbling slope. Liora followed.
There were no birds.
Only the groan of the sea and the low whisper of wind through hollow homes.
"We're not safe inland anymore," he said, his voice low. "The marsh changed something. I don't know if it was us… or the world."
They moved carefully through the shattered port. Every alley felt like a throat about to close, every door a warning. Yet Kael pressed on, guiding them toward the center where a spire rose, crooked and rusting, from the remnants of a central plaza. It had once been a lighthouse—now more a wound torn into the sky.
He stopped at the base of it.
"This place had a name once," he murmured. "I think… I think it was called Shalebreak."
Liora tilted her head. "You remember it?"
"No," he said, looking at her. "But it remembers us."
She didn't ask what he meant.
Neither of them needed to say that the walls were listening.
The lighthouse had survived more than time. Its foundations were riddled with claw marks, and the upper levels were blackened from fire—not of wood or oil, but something arcane and old. Still, the staircase remained intact, and Kael led the way upward with a hand on the rusted rail and the other gripping his spear.
At the top, they found it waiting.
A room encased in glass—some cracked, some stained with salt—but still intact enough to see the coast stretch endlessly to the east and west. Inside, long-forgotten navigational charts hung from corroded pegs, and a circular table dominated the center, its surface etched with runes that pulsed when Liora stepped near.
She didn't touch them.
"I dreamed of this place," she said quietly.
Kael raised an eyebrow.
"Before the marsh. Before the statues. I saw a tower on the edge of the world. I was watching stars fall into the sea."
She walked slowly to the window and placed a palm against the glass.
"And I was waiting for someone. Not you… not then. But now I think it was always going to be you."
Kael turned toward the table. The runes had begun to shift, forming a pattern that looked like a map. Coastlines appeared in molten gold, rivers like veins of fire, and strange sigils glowing where cities used to be.
At the center of it all pulsed a name in a forgotten script—its letters jagged and half-erased, but Kael knew its meaning the moment he saw it.
Calrenhollow.
The capital of the First Dominion.
Gone for a thousand years.
And somehow, still burning.
They camped in the tower that night.
Kael had blocked the entrance with shards of driftwood and wrapped Liora in a cloak lined with dry furs from their pack. He didn't sleep—not really. His body rested, but his thoughts paced like wolves behind a gate.
He remembered cities.
On Earth. Places filled with sirens and neon, with cracked sidewalks and too many memories. And now here he was—stranded between ruins and prophecy, trying to protect a girl born of starlight and silence.
He looked over at her.
She slept curled like a cat, fingers still stained with faint sigils from the marsh. Even in dreams, her brow furrowed. She carried something she didn't understand, and it was growing heavier.
He wondered how much longer she could carry it.
And how much longer he could pretend he knew how to help.
Morning broke in quiet silver.
The storm came without warning.
One moment the coast lay calm, the next it was shrieking with wind and water. Waves slammed against the lighthouse base, and the very stones groaned under pressure. Kael grabbed their packs, slinging Liora onto his back as he darted down the tower steps.
But halfway down—
A scream.
Not from the wind.
Not from Liora.
Something else.
It came from beneath the plaza. From the drowned ruins below the city. It rose like a blade drawn from flesh—wet and echoing, sharp with hunger. Kael stumbled as the stairs trembled beneath his feet.
And then he saw it.
A figure rising from the sea.
No—not rising.
Unfolding.
It had no true form. Its limbs were ropes of kelp and bone, its torso a shifting mass of shipwrecks and armor. Its face—a void of flickering sails and barnacled iron.
Its voice thundered across the city.
"BRIGHTFALL."
Kael didn't wait.
He ran.
They made it to the eastern ridge just before the plaza exploded into brine and splinters. The creature clawed its way from the sea, dragging parts of the ocean floor behind it—an old altar, shattered icons, and a host of skeletal figures that clung to it like parasites.
Kael threw himself and Liora behind a slab of coral-stone just as the lighthouse cracked in half, its top spiraling into the waves.
From behind them, Liora sat up suddenly, eyes wide with glowing white.
Kael tried to hold her, but she moved faster than he expected, stepping around him with the calm precision of something older.
She raised her hands toward the sea.
And spoke in a voice not her own.
"This place is sealed."
The wind froze.
The rain halted in midair.
Even the creature hesitated.
"The Oath remains unbroken. Return to your slumber, Scourge of the Deep."
For a long breath, nothing moved.
Then—
The creature howled, a sound that shattered the glass still clinging to the ruins. It sank back into the sea slowly, resisting every step. As it vanished, the waves retreated with it, pulling debris and bones into the black depths.
When it was gone, time resumed.
Liora collapsed, gasping.
Kael caught her before she hit the stone.
Her eyes fluttered open.
"Did it… go back?"
Kael nodded, though his heart thundered with dread.
"You sent it away."
"I didn't… I didn't mean to…"
He held her tighter.
"I know."
But deep down, he knew it wasn't over. The creature had heard the call. Something beneath the waves had woken with her words.
And whatever it was, it wasn't the only thing that had been waiting.
Far across the sea, in a fortress carved from bone and storm, a council of tide-priests turned their eyes inland. They had seen the lighthouse fall. They had heard the name spoken. Their diviners wept salt and blood as the currents whispered a single truth.
"The Brightfall walks."
And soon, the Depth Courts would rise to claim her.