The Forgotten Trench.
I’d only heard it in whispers—tales traded at night, voices kept low, as though speaking its name too loudly might summon it. Ocean shadows were said to move there. Creatures with too many teeth and eyes that glowed from the deep.
The Tidekeepers always faltered into uneasy silence when it was mentioned. They spoke of cold that seeped into bone, whispers calling to anyone who drifted too near. They warned of a pod that ventured there and returned lifeless—eyes gone, bodies marked with glowing symbols no one could decipher.
A warning.
A place where even the ocean recoiled. And I was sailing straight for it.
Part of me wanted to turn back—to run to the familiar horrors: my mother’s judgment, the Tidekeepers’ suffocating grip, the doctrine that punished anyone who strayed too far from purpose.
Another part—older than obedience—kept me rooted. The part that always questioned. The part that wanted answers more than safety.
Was this bravery? Or recklessness?
I couldn’t tell anymore.
My legs shifted restlessly beneath the blanket Alaric had draped over me earlier. The irony wasn’t lost: a mermaid choosing to stay aboard a pirate ship rather than risking the open sea.
Yet beneath the dread, exhilaration pulsed—proof that I was no longer tethered to the currents that had dictated my life. Water had always been my refuge, my sanctuary.
Now it felt like a line I didn’t dare cross. If I entered the sea, my mother and the Tidekeepers would know. Water was never just water to my kind. It carried presence. Power. Awareness.
I learned that the hard way.
When I was younger, a single outburst sent ripples through the depths. My mother appeared within moments, expression carved from ice, warning me never to let my emotions get the better of me.
The ocean whispered secrets to those who knew how to listen. And my mother?
She had always been listening.
I stopped asking questions she could lie to a long time ago.
By now, she likely knew I was gone. The Tidekeepers would feel the shift—the absence of my presence in the currents. They would be searching.
And they wouldn’t stop until they found me.
A shudder ran down my spine. If they caught me before I had answers—before I understood what I truly was—I would be dragged back into the life I fled.
I couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not ever.
My gaze drifted to the artifact across the room. Its pulse was steady—too steady—synced with my heartbeat. The connection between it and my crescent mark wasn’t subtle. Whenever I focused on it, the glow intensified, brightened, responding with unnerving intimacy.
What was it?
Why did it answer me?
Alaric believed the Forgotten Trench held the truth. Maybe he was right. Maybe we were searching for the same thing.
His motives were murky as the abyss we sailed toward. Did he want the artifact’s power? Did he think I was the key to unlocking it?
Or worse—
Was he lying altogether, sent by my mother to drag me back to Thalassia? My chest tightened.
I would rather face the horrors of the Trench than return without knowing who—what—I was.
A groan from the hull shattered my thoughts, followed by commotion above. Shouts—frantic, panicked.
