The light from Ilryth’s spear strikes against something that isn’t water and rot. There, far beneath the surface of the sea, is a ring of stone pillars. They tower around a paved circle, an empty bowl at its center. The sea floor around the structure is upended, appearing almost like waves carved into the sand and stone.
No…not waves. And not sand or stone, either. Roots. Giant, stony roots, coated in crimson rot that pours from cracks in them like festering wounds.
They are as massive as ships and puncture through the rocky cliffs that converge down toward the bottom of this deep valley. The roots wrap around the lone stone oasis in a way that could be cradling, or consuming.
They must be the roots of the Lifetree, I realize. Dead and rotting in this watery grave. Ilryth heads toward the circle of columns far below.
Rather than swimming into the arched grotto from above, Ilryth takes us down along the roots. A compelling urge to touch them nearly overtakes me, but I cling to Ilryth instead as he swims under one of the archways of the circle and right up to the stone basin in the center of this underground altar.
The basin is much larger up close—large enough for me to curl up within if I wanted. But I don’t release him. Ilryth dips the tip of his spear into the large, chalice-like structure. As he does, I notice spots of rot that cling to his skin, as though he has been splattered with blood. Ghostly ribbons unfurl from the tip of his spear into tendrils that take the shape of leafy vines. They grow at an impossibly fast rate, spilling over the edges of the basin and flowering, winding against each other to weave into a small sapling at the center. As the glow radiates over Ilryth, the red rot on his skin vanishes like dew evaporating in the morning light. My own skin remains clear.
“It’s safe here now. You can relax.” He eases away from the stone bowl, resting his spear against the pedestal upon which it sits.
The last note hangs as I slowly uncurl my fingers. With the slightest push, I drift away from him, looking up at the nothingness above us. The light from the ghost tree illuminates this small circle, but it does little to show much beyond it. Had I not seen the cliffs on either side of us, I wouldn’t know we were at the bottom of a vast trench. I wouldn’t know anything about this location at all.
I’m like a broken compass, spinning with no heading. Screams echo in the back of my mind. They’re all around me. Vertigo claims me and I sway. It’s hard to tell which way is up, suddenly. Underwater, there is no up or down, not really, not in the same way as on land.
I know the way we came, I try to remind myself. The earth itself is beneath me. And yet, my mind doubts itself. I’ve never been in a place so completely void of any markers. There’s no light. No landmarks. Even in a calm sea and empty, blue sky, I have the sun. I have—
“Victoria?” Ilryth says, though his voice seems at a great distance. Are my senses beginning to leave me as well?
A part of me is in the dark bell room underneath the lighthouse. I’m in the tiny closet adjacent, embedded into the thick rock of the island, where it is safe for the cotton to be out of my ears. Where no sound can reach.
Safe to scream and weep without him hearing…
I press my palm against my thigh, where the pocket for my compass would be. But it’s long gone. The thing that always guided me—that I could depend on to lead the way—is gone. I have nothing to lead me from the darkness. I—
“Victoria.” A hand clasps my shoulder. I spin, startled, looking up at a pair of eyes as dark as the void that surrounds us.
Will I be trapped here forever? Will I become one of those things?
His eyes widen slightly. Ilryth heard me. Even through the shell he heard my fears.
“You’re not trapped and you won’t become one of them.” Ilryth shakes his head. “As I said, it’s normal to feel panic, sorrow, or anger in the presence of the wraiths. They feed off life in a vain attempt to steal it.”
“But I don’t see any wraiths.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not still there. Lurking. Waiting to see when we’ll reemerge from this haven, or if they can convince us into doing so,” he says gravely.
“This isn’t from the wraiths,” I murmur with a shake of my head, trying to calm myself.
“It’s perfectly normal—”
“I know my emotions, don’t question me on them,” I interject firmly. When I first began captaining ships, there were a few sailors who would question if I was “too emotional” to helm a vessel. After proving them wrong, that I was quite capable of having emotions and leading a crew, I promptly showed them off my ship at the next port. “How to keep a firm hand on my emotions was something I learned very,verywell.”
“Which makes it all the more terrifying when they’re out of control.” He speaks like he knows the feeling, the terror of finding yourself trapped in a mind you can’t recognize. A maze of nightmares of your own design. “Come. The closer you are to the basin, the better you will feel.”
His arm slides around my shoulders to guide me over. I notice how the inked markings of his bicep press against the tattoos that swirl on my upper arm. As though we are one—meant to fit together.
Ilryth sits on one side of the square pedestal that holds the anamnesis; I sit on another next to him. Both our backs are against the stone. Our hands relax to the ground. Almost touching. With just one shift my pinky would brush against his… Instead, I draw my knees to my chest.
“What happened to this place?” I ask. “How did it get like this if the Lifetree once grew here?”
Ilryth stares out at the darkness, not looking at me as he speaks. Instead, he’s focused on the roots around us, or something beyond. “Some called the Gray Trench the ‘bridge between life and death.’ It was the long march for souls to traverse down to Lord Krokan’s Abyss. They would be guided by the anamnesis, and places like this were opportunities for my ancestors to pay last respects and sing songs of protection on the dead.
“But…we siren slowly forgot the words of the old ones. Lady Lellia’s songs were harder to remember than Lord Krokan’s.” He stares out at the nothingness with a sad expression. I remember in his memory when he lamented not hearing Lellia’s words. “It was postulated that the roots died when we stopped paying homage to her. Then, with Krokan’s rage allowing the forces of the dead to bleed into our world, the roots began to rot; it is now solely Lord Krokan’s domain. The balance is off. This is Death’s grave.”
“Do you think Krokan was the one who killed the roots?”
