Chapter 4 Salt and Stormlight

Some places in the ocean breathe differently. The Drowned Temple was one of them. I could feel it long before I saw it. A slow, rhythmic pulse, not unlike a sleeping heart. The water grew colder the deeper I swam, heavy with memory. Faint voices drifted along the currents-echoes that hadn't spoken in centuries.

They didn't frighten me. Not exactly but they reminded me that what I was about to do had consequences.

The seaweeds parted as I glided through, revealing the ruin at last. The temple lay nestled between two underwater ridges, carved into the seafloor itself. Moss grew over half-buried statues-gods forgotten even by the Maelora. Giant pillars, cracked and leaning, rose like the spines of a sea beast long dead.

I hovered before the entrance, whispering a melody only the stone would recognize.

"Memory knows. Let me in." The doorway pulsed once and parted.

I slipped inside, the silence pressing against me like velvet soaked in shadow.

It wasn't fear that crawled along my spine. It was reverence. The temple didn't just hold history-it was history. A vault of secrets the sea itself couldn't bury. I followed the winding halls, trailing my fingers over the carvings. Symbols of the elements in harmony. Spirals. Flames. Wings. Waves and at the heart-half-broken, but still pulsing-was the first fragment.

A stone tablet carved into the wall. It shimmered as I approached, its etched lines glowing faintly with blue light. My heart pounded as I raised a hand toward it.

Then I heard a splash behind me. I spun fast-fins tensing, hair whipping like a current. He was there.

Aeron.

Dripping. Shivering. Still bruised. But alive and very much here.

"How-" I started, but he cut me off with a tired smirk.

"Followed the song," he said. "You left it behind like a breadcrumb trail."

I scowled. "You shouldn't be here."

"I don't take orders from mermaids."

"I'm not just a mermaid," I snapped. "This is sacred. You could have desecrated something ancient."

His eyes drifted to the glowing tablet.

"Looks like I'm just in time then."

Before I could argue, the temple shifted.

The water grew dense. Heavy. The currents reversed and then it woke up.

A low rumble echoed through the chamber. The ground cracked and from the shadows behind the relic, something massive slithered free.

It looked like stone-living coral fused into the shape of a beast. Eight long limbs. Glowing eyes the color of molten sand. A guardian.

"A sea sentinel," I breathed. "It's protecting the fragment."

"Well that's poetic," Aeron muttered. "Got any tips on how to fight it?"

"Don't die."

He rolled his eyes. "Thanks."

The creature lunged. I darted left, Aeron right. The sentinel slammed into the wall where I'd stood a heartbeat before, sending shards of ancient rock spiraling through the water.

I sang quickly-sharp and commanding.

"Hold. Sleep. Memory bind."

The beast hesitated.

Only for a breath.

Then its tail whipped around and sent me spiraling.

I barely had time to right myself before Aeron was there-hand out, wind spiraling in his palm even underwater.

That should've been impossible but it wasn't. He hurled the compressed air like a dagger. It struck the beast's eye, and it reeled with a high-pitched screech.

"You're using wind beneath the sea?" I gasped.

"I'm improvising." I didn't know if it was brilliant or suicidal. But it was working.

We moved as one.

He summoned bursts of stormlight in flashes, distracting the sentinel while I sang-words laced with ancient power that disrupted its rhythm. Its movements grew sluggish, offbeat.

"Keep it busy!" I shouted.

Aeron dodged a claw, gritting his teeth. "Trying not to get impaled, thanks." I surged toward the relic, placed both hands on the stone. It glowed brighter. Hummed. The melody in my head sharpened. Then the words came-rising unbidden in my throat like breath returning after drowning.

I sang them aloud.

"The balance cracked, the heart did break, Five once danced, but now they ache. Reclaim the breath, the flame, the tide Or let the world be swept aside."

The temple responded.

Light exploded from the stone and shot through the water. The sentinel shrieked-caught in the pulse-and shattered into pieces of dead coral and dust.

Silence followed.

My pulse roared in my ears.

Behind me, Aeron floated-eyes wide, chest heaving.

"That was... a lot," he finally said.

"I warned you," I said breathlessly.

He drifted closer, slow and cautious, like I might vanish if he moved too fast.

"So that's the first fragment?"

I nodded. "The Prophecy of Harmony. Or part of it. It's incomplete."

"Will it help?"

"It's a verse," I said. "A key. But it means nothing without the others."

He nodded slowly.

"And what do you think it means?" I turned to him fully, the water glowing softly around us.

"I think the prophecy doesn't want to be restored," I whispered. "It wants to be rewritten."

A shiver rippled through the water.

We were quiet for a long time.

Then Aeron said, voice low and surprisingly gentle, "That's what happened, isn't it? The first fairy and mermaid who tried to save the world... they broke the prophecy."

"Yes."

"And now we're following in their wake."

"Yes."

He moved closer, close enough that I could see the flecks of stormlight still caught in his lashes. "You think we'll end up like them?"

I didn't answer because I wasn't sure because every part of me wanted to believe we could change the ending but the sea remembers everything.

Even heartbreak.