But my blade was torn from my hand, vanishing into the abyss. Chains coiled.
Not nets. Not rope. Heavier. Unforgiving.
I fought them. Saints, I fought with everything left in me, feral rage boiling out of my chest, bubbles ripping from my mouth in a useless roar. The curse roared with me, wild and furious, burning through my veins like fire—
Until it sputtered. Faded.
My limbs slowed. My chest burned white-hot, then went cold. The dark pressed in, merciless.
I caught it then—faint, clinging to the water as the black closed in: A sickly sweetness.
Burnt sugar. Iron. Rot.
My lungs gave. The last thing I knew was the weight of the deep closing over me—heavier than chains, heavier than death—
And the certainty that the sea had finally decided to collect what I owed.
60
Nerina
Thalassia
If I didn’t get out of Thalassia—now—there would be no later. I wasn’t just running anymore. I am an escaped prisoner. A traitor.
Each flick of my tail sliced the water clean, carrying me past collapsed towers and statues with eyeless faces. My pulse thundered with every inch I put between myself and the chamber. Beneath my skin, the crescent mark ached faintly—alive, answering the steady thrum of the shards at my hip.
The Oracle’s words still weighed on my mind, heavy as the sea itself, but it was the bag clutched tight against my side that made my heart race. The fabric was frayed, ancient—yet inside it pulsed with light and promise.
All three shards. Mine at last.
I held them close as I slipped through Thalassia’s bones. Coral arches leaned inward like broken ribs. Mosaics dulled by silt and shadow watched me pass, their beauty long buried, their faith long spent.
Treason carried only one sentence here, etched into law and memory alike: death—slow, public, meant to be a warning.
I imagined fitting the shards together, the way their edges had sparked when I touched them. I imagined the rush of knowing—the truth denied to me for a lifetime finally cracking open.
Hope flared in my chest—bright, reckless, unbearably fragile.
The sea has a way of reminding you that nothing is ever truly yours.
Cold rippled over my skin as the crescent mark prickled, burning just enough to warn me. The water ahead stilled. The current vanished beneath me.
I froze. Something felt wrong.
My gaze swept the dark beyond the ruins—
A shape drifted in the deep, suspended just beyond the reach of light. Too still. Too heavy to be debris, yet not moving with the water either. The sea around it was unnaturally calm, like even the current didn’t dare touch it.
Every instinct in me screamed. To turn away and keep going to the surface. But the curiosity in me pulled harder.
The shape below shifted with the current. At first it was only shadow—an interruption in the rhythm of water and light.
Not driftwood.
Not debris.
Too deliberate. Too… human.
