The water here tastes different than Milthar's clean harbor—thick with minerals and something else, something that coats my tongue with the flavor of old copper and forgotten prayers. Weed-ribbons drift through the corridors like banners from a war fought in dreams, their surfaces inscribed with runes that seem to shift and change when I'm not looking directly at them.
I pause at a junction where three passages meet, each one leading deeper into the heart of this drowned city. The walls here are lined with mirrors of slick obsidian, their surfaces reflecting not my image but something else—shadows thatmove independently, shapes that suggest forms I don't want to recognize. My reflection looks wrong in these mirrors, distorted and strange, as if the glass shows not what I am but what I might become if I linger too long in this place.
"Guide me, Zukiev," I whisper, my voice sending ripples through the thick water. "Show me the path to her heart."
I begin to sing—a lead-chant that my ever-patient grandfather taught me, one of the old working songs we used to guide ships through treacherous currents. The melody has power in it, authority earned through generations of sailors who trusted their lives to its rhythm. My voice carries through the water like hands shaping the tide, and I feel the currents respond to my call.
"Through the channel dark and deep,
Trust the song to guide your way,
Where the ancient waters sleep,
Follow music, do not stray."
The water around me begins to move with purpose, silt swirling away from the passages to reveal their true nature. The left corridor shows signs of collapse, its ceiling buckled and dangerous. The right one leads upward, away from where I need to go. But the center passage—that one calls to me, its current flowing in rhythm with my song.
As I swim deeper into the chosen corridor, bone lanterns flare to life along the walls—not the warm yellow flame of the living world, but a cold blue radiance that illuminates without warming. They bow away from my voice as I pass, as if the music I carry burns them like acid. Their light reveals carvings on the walls—scenes of dark elf nobility in their glory days, their faces proud and cruel, their hands raised in gestures of command over lesser races.
But the faces in these carvings are wrong somehow, their eyes too wide, their mouths open in expressions that might besinging or screaming. As my song continues, I see moisture beading on the carved stone—not water, but something that looks disturbingly like tears.
A spectral sentry materializes from an alcove ahead, its form more solid than the drifting shades I've seen before. It wears the remnants of armor that might once have been magnificent—bronze plates green with verdigris, a helm crowned with the antlers of some deep-sea creature. Its eyes burn with the same cold fire as the bone lanterns, and when it sees me, it draws a sword that gleams like captured starlight.
The sentry moves to block my path, its blade raised in challenge. It speaks no words, but I hear its voice in my mind—a demand for passage-price, for proof of worthiness to enter the deeper halls. This was a guardian in life, bound by oaths stronger than death to protect what lies beyond.
I switch my song to a hammering work-song, something with the force of storm waves and the rhythm of ship's hammers shaping bronze. The melody carries the weight of honest labor, of strength earned through sweat and brotherhood, of power that serves rather than dominates.
"Strike the metal, shape the steel,
Forge the tools that serve the just,
Let the hammer's honest peal
Break the bonds of greed and lust."
The sentry staggers as my voice hits it like a physical blow, its spectral form wavering like smoke in a high wind. The sword in its hand begins to crack, hairline fractures spreading across the blade as the music continues. This creature was bound to protect the dark elves' treasures, their hoarded wealth and stolen power—but my song speaks of different values, of strength used to build rather than destroy.
The sentry's form begins to dissolve, its armor falling away like shed scales. But as it fades, I see something unexpected inthose burning eyes—not anger or hatred, but relief. Perhaps it was tired of standing guard over the greed of the dead. Perhaps it wanted to rest at last.
As the last echoes of the work-song fade, the sentry crumbles into bubbles that rise toward the distant surface. Where it stood, a trail of ancient coins lies scattered on the passage floor—bronze and silver pieces bearing the faces of long-dead dark elf kings. I gather a few, not for their value but as proof of passage, tokens that might serve me in the trials ahead.
The corridor opens into a vast chamber whose ceiling disappears into darkness above. Gardens of black coral and bone-white anemones line the walls, tended by smaller shades who flee at my approach. The water here moves in slow spirals, carrying with it the sound of distant music—not the harsh laments I expected, but something softer, almost familiar.
As I swim toward the far side of the chamber, following the current my song has created, I catch sight of something that causes my heart to jump with desperate hope. There, snagged on a outcropping of coral, flutters a strip of red silk—the same color as Eurydice's dress, the same shade as the ribbon she wove into my mane just hours ago.
I grab the silk with shaking hands, pressing it to my face and breathing in her scent. She was here. She passed this way, alive enough to leave a sign for me to follow. The fabric is still warm with her touch, still carries the faint fragrance of lavender soap and hope.
"I'm coming, my love," I whisper, tucking it carefully into my belt. "I hear your voice in the darkness. I follow your light through the shadow."
Ahead, the passage forks again, but this time the choice is clear. The current flows toward the left, carrying with it the sound of children's voices raised in song—not lament, but something that sounds almost like joy. And threading throughthat chorus, faint but unmistakable, I hear Eurydice humming a melody I know by heart.
Our festival song. Our dance. Our promise of love that endures beyond winter's darkest night.
I swim toward that sound, my own voice rising to join the distant chorus, the shell-bell in my hand chiming soft as falling snow.
8
EURYDICE
