{"The sea does not forget who dares to question its Abyssal"}
The doors of the central hall creaked open, heavy with salt-worn age and power. My boots echoed as I stepped inside, the sea-slick stone beneath me gleaming like obsidian under the lantern light. Caelan walked just behind me, silent, composed, but I could feel the quiet electricity between us, humming like a second heartbeat.
Their eyes found us almost immediately. Lady Nerisca stiffened first, her sea-green robes trembling with the subtlest motion. Lord Ardanis's mouth twitched, not in greeting but in alarm. Ellowen's fingers paused mid-incantation over the scroll she always clung to, and even General Kallion gilded and grim shifted his stance like a man expecting a blade to be drawn.
Their surprise was not subtle, and it was delicious. I did not slow. I did not offer a nod or courtesy. I snubbed them, let my silence remind them whose castle this was.
Thalia approached from the far side; her expression unreadable but her presence a balm. She bowed her head just enough to be respectful, then stepped aside. General Lysander was less subtle. He strode in from the side chamber the moment he saw me, falling into pace beside me with practiced ease, his armor glinting with storm-forged pride. No words just a nod, sharp and fierce.
We reached the high seat, the throne carved from the rib of a Leviathan. Smooth as a pearl. Cold as justice. I turned and sat slowly, a deliberate act of how a predator lowers itself to its perch.
Then I looked at them, the so-called leaders. The self-appointed council of the Emerald Gulf.
Then I spoke. "Tell me," I said, my voice low, dangerous, and echoing across the chamber like the first crack of thunder over open sea, "what the hell made you think it was wise to barge into my castle uninvited?"
The shadows coiled behind my words, and I watched their throats work, watched their pride squirm in the gilded light. And I waited for lies, for truths, or for someone foolish enough to think I still answered to them.
It was Ardanis who spoke first, and he stepped forward with that same hollow elegance he always wore, like a man carved from ivory and entitlement. His pale blue robes swept the floor like mist, but I saw the tremor in his hand as he placed it over his chest in mock deference.
"Your majesty, Morkai," he said smoothly, "we meant no disrespect."
I arched a brow, letting my silence do the talking.
Ardanis pressed on. "We came because something is stirring beneath the deep. Dark magic, older than the fae, older than the bones of the sea itself. Our strongest seers—" his gaze flicked to Caelan and quickly away "—confirmed it. Whatever is rising…it will not stay hidden much longer."
I leaned forward slightly, resting an elbow on the armrest carved with siren teeth.
"And that warranted trespassing?" I asked coldly. "Violating sacred water, crossing my threshold with spells and steel?"
Lady Nerisca stepped in then, her voice sharp, crystalline. "We would not have come if the signs were not dire. The tides have turned blood-red in the northern trenches. Sailors vanish mid-sentence. And the whales—" she faltered, just for a heartbeat, "—they've stopped singing, Morkai."
That made the room still, and even Lysander's jaw tensed at that.
I looked from her to Ardanis, then let my gaze settle on Ellowen, who had yet to speak. She looked uneasy. Like she already knew she would regret what came next, and Caelan, who seemed bored and unbothered.
"Say what you mean," I said. "You did not come for diplomacy. You came to use me."
No one denied it, but Ardanis offered a smile like it was all justified. "We came to ask you to face it, Sovereign. You are the only one who can. You were born for it."
Behind him, I felt Caelan shift, and that was when I rose. Slow. Controlled. The air thickened with its power coiling, responding to the threat dressed as flattery.
"I was born for many things," I said, stepping down from the dais, "but being your weapon was never one of them." I reached the edge of the steps. My voice dropped. "Leave now and never come back."
It was not Ardanis or Nerisca who stepped forward next, but Ellowen. Soft-spoken. Brilliant. Always watching more than speaking. Her hair was damp from sea spray, curls clinging to her cheeks, and her fingers were still ink-stained from whatever parchment she had been gripping. But her eyes, those violet eyes, held something the others did not. Fear.
She moved past Ardanis without asking, without waiting for permission, her voice trembling with something rawer than pride. "Your majesty, please." Her tone was nothing like theirs. No posturing. No politics. "You do not understand the danger of what we found. None of us does. The tides are wrong and the patterns are breaking, and it's slipping into the lands."
I tilted my head, watching her carefully, and saw the way Caelan's eyes moved to her and there in them I saw trust and friendship. Ellowen clasped her hands tightly in front of her, as if she could hold back everything unravelling behind her eyes. "There are places in the sea where even my magic falters now. Where silence bleeds through the currents like rot. The dead do not sleep there. They whisper and not in languages I have ever studied."
She looked up at me then, and her voice dropped, softer. "We all felt the changes in the sea and came to see help." Ellowen took a step closer. "This is not just a threat to the coast or the council. This is deeper. Older than the Leviathan bones, we built this castle on. And it is moving, Morkai. Closer every tide."
My chest tightened, not with fear but with recognition. Something inside me stirred. The Abyss, my Abyss, shifting like it was waking, and I felt it.
"I don't care about the past," she said. "But if something is rising from the trench, deep within the waters, something that even the deep fears, we don't have time for pride." Her voice trembled as she finished, "We need you."
Ellowen's words lingered in the hall like salt-heavy mist, sinking into the cracks of the old stone and memory. For a long breath, I said nothing. Just studied her face, tired, earnest, honest in a way the rest of them had long since forgotten how to be.
I let out a slow breath and thought that I needed to keep Caelan in the Pearl castle longer and the only way as pretend to agree to thier demands.
"Fine," I said, the word sharp as a blade tip dragged over coral. "I'll look into it."
I did not say I believed them. I did not say I forgave the trespass. I did not even pretend to trust them. Lady Nerisca's face tightened, her sea-glass eyes hardening into something jagged. I did not need my power to feel the storm that rose behind her stern composure, her fury at being dismissed, at watching me heed Ellowen's voice over her own.
As if sensing my gaze, she stepped forward, barely concealing the venom in her voice. "You listen to the scholar but not the Sea Witch of Silrin Waters? Not to Lord Ardanis, who—"
I turned my head slightly, just enough for her to catch the flicker of the abyss in my eyes. Her voice caught in her throat. She did not finish, but then another voice cut through the tension, low and cold as an unsheathed blade. General Kallion. The old soldier stood with his arms crossed, silver pauldrons dull with dried salt, scars etched across his jaw like the lines of a war map. His eyes, however, were sharp.
"How do we know it is not you, Morkai? That this magic, this threat, isn't of your making?"
"I don't need to raise a beast, Kallion," I said. "I am one." He did not flinch. But he did not speak again either and I took another step forward. "And if I were playing games," I murmured, "you would already be drowning.
And then, shadows near the wall he stood moved, and Tharion appeared, and his clawed hand was wrapped around Kallion's throat, lifting the general like driftwood. It happened in the span of a heartbeat, and gasps rang out. Nerisca stepped back in horror. Even Ardanis looked shaken, hand flinching toward a spell that he wisely did not cast. A vortex of water erupted beneath his feet, swirling with black and teal light, and in a blink, they were gone. Tharion and Kallion swallowed by the Pearl Castle walls.
A distant echo of screaming rang out through the walls, muffled, fading, distant, and somehow wet, as if heard from beneath fathoms of ocean pressure. Then, at last, silence truly returned, and I remained seated, unbothered. My fingers curled against the armrest of the throne, the power in my blood quiet and still.
Across the chamber, Thalia broke into a soft chuckle, and General Lysander snickered beside me, arms folded, as if entertained by a street show. "Well," Lysander drawled low enough for only those nearby to hear, "that's one way to remind them."
Lady Nerisca's face was bloodless, and Ardanis would not meet my eyes, and Ellowen just looked away, not in shame, but as though she already knew Kallion had played a fool's game and gotten a fool's end, but there was admiration in Caelan's eyes.
I rose slowly from the Leviathan throne and swept my gaze across them all. "Thalia, show our guest to their room and with that I moved through the walls as the they gave way leaving everyone gasping in shock and General Lysander amused.