One siren broke the surface outside Maelora's outpost.
Her mouth was sealed with black thread.
She didn't speak. She couldn't.
But the look in her eyes said enough.
It had begun.
---
Back near the cliffs, Dominic gathered the remaining scrolls salvaged from Poseidon's vault.
He unrolled one—this one written not in Olympian script, but in older glyphs—language made of tide patterns and reef marks.
> "What is it?" Varun asked.
Dominic's hand hovered over a single line.
He translated it aloud.
> "The creature that feeds on memory… devours all but the forgotten."
Maelora frowned. "What does that even mean?"
Dominic's eyes sharpened.
> "It eats what's remembered. What's written. What's sung. Anything the sea holds in its heart."
> "So how do we hide from something that eats memory?"
Dominic closed the scroll.
> "We become what the sea forgets."
---
Meanwhile, near the ruins of Orenthis
