The pull wasn't gentle.
It was a command.
The moment my foot slipped toward the cliff's edge, the air collapsed around me. Not wind—pressure. Like a hand closed over my chest and spine and yanked me into the sea.
Kael shouted something—my name maybe—but it was already too late. The sky fell away, the rocks vanished, and then—
Cold.
Crushing cold.
It wasn't like falling into a river or a lake. It was like plunging into a world that had forgotten heat ever existed. The silence hit next. Not peaceful silence—absolute silence, the kind that sucked sound from your bones.
For a moment, I was weightless. Suspended.
Then I was dragged down.
The ocean swallowed me whole, pulling deeper and deeper. I twisted, fighting, but not in panic. It was instinct—part of me still hadn't accepted that this wasn't some illusion. That I was really here. That I was really going to face one of them.
And then—
Light.
Blue, but not water-blue. Not sky-blue.
Power blue.
It shimmered up from below, curling around my skin like steam, revealing a shape rising toward me—fast. A silhouette cut from shadow and silver, inhuman in the way lightning is inhuman. Wild. Beautiful. Dangerous.
When it reached me, I expected it to strike.
It didn't.
It watched.
And then the water around me changed.
It stilled.
Warmed.
And for the first time—I could breathe.
I sucked in a sharp breath, shocked. The ocean air was like cool wine down my throat. I blinked, looked down, and realized I wasn't sinking anymore. I was floating. Suspended, as if the sea had accepted me.
And the figure—he—hovered in front of me.
Not fully Merfolk, not fully man. His body moved like water, his form sharp and fluid all at once. Scales shimmered at his jaw and collarbones. Gills flexed at his ribs, but his face—his eyes—those were human.
Almost.
They glowed silver, ringed with deep violet, as if galaxies bloomed behind them.
"You do not belong here," he said.
His voice wasn't sound. It vibrated through the water like a current. Ancient. Measured.
I squared my shoulders, though I was trembling. "I came because the path led here."
He circled me slowly, examining—not with malice, but caution.
"Many have followed paths. Most do not return."
"I'm not most," I said.
A pause.
Then a slow, cold smile.
"No. You are not."
---
He brought me to the city beneath the water.
If you could even call it that.
It wasn't made of stone or wood, but coral and magic, bioluminescent vines wrapping around towers that pulsed with light. Creatures I couldn't name floated silently through the currents, some with fins like silk, others with bodies like glass.
It was beautiful.
It was terrifying.
And it was alive.
As we passed, Merfolk peered out from behind carved shells and reef gates. They didn't approach. They didn't wave. They just watched.
As if I were a myth walking through their sanctuary.
The ruler didn't speak again until we reached the center of the city—an open chamber with a floor like a pearl and walls that shifted like water.
"You are the Vessel," he said. "I did not think you would come so early."
"I didn't think I had a choice."
"You always have a choice. But choice is not freedom."
I was beginning to learn that truth intimately.
He moved closer. Not threatening, just… closer.
"I am Arion, High Ruler of the Tides. One of seven."
I nodded. "I'm here to learn."
"To take," he corrected. "You are here to absorb, to gather what is broken and make it whole again. But you cannot hold an ocean if you are still afraid to drown."
His words struck deeper than I wanted to admit.
"I'm not afraid," I said.
He tilted his head. "Lying to yourself is dangerous in the deep."
He reached out a hand—not to touch me, but to summon something from the space between us.
A sphere of water rose, spinning slowly. Inside it, shadows moved.
"Memories," he said. "Of those who came before you. All chosen. All failed."
I looked into the sphere. A girl with golden hair screaming as the tide tore her soul apart. A boy turning to salt. A woman weeping blood in a palace of ice.
I looked away.
"What happened to them?"
"They were strong," he said. "But they wanted power more than they wanted truth."
"Isn't that what power is?"
He smiled again, but this time it was hollow. "Power is the ability to act. Truth is the reason to do so."
He walked around me once more, eyes narrowing slightly.
"You haven't unlocked your truth yet. But I can help you."
I straightened. "How?"
He turned, beckoning me to follow him again.
"You will stay. You will train. You will face your fear."
"For how long?"
"As long as it takes."
---
Days passed. Or maybe weeks. Time moved differently beneath the sea.
Arion didn't teach like Sable had.
Where Sable had driven me with challenge and brutal honesty, Arion guided with silence. Lessons came through experience. Meditation. Resistance. Pressure.
He made me feel the sea.
Not just float in it.
He taught me to bend it, then let it go. To command tides with emotion—but not let emotion control me.
"Water remembers," he said once, when I asked him why the currents sometimes echoed voices from my past. "Every pain. Every choice. It stores what you ignore."
It explained the dreams I'd started having. Ones of the fire. My mother's voice. The way I used to hide who I was to feel safe.
Arion never pressed. But he knew.
And slowly… I changed.
My body adapted. My breathing no longer needed magic. My skin toughened against the current. I started to move like the water—fluid but unbreakable.
I started to understand.
Not just who I was.
But what I would become.
---
The day I left, he stood with me at the edge of the coral gate.
"You are not ready," he said softly.
"I know," I replied.
"But you are ready enough."
I looked at him. "Will I see you again?"
He looked out at the sea.
"Not as I am now. But a piece of me is already with you."
He reached out, touching my collarbone lightly.
Warmth pulsed through me, and when I looked down, I saw it—a thin, glowing mark curling just beneath the skin. Like a current frozen in time.
A mark of the sea.
A mark of him.
He met my eyes one last time.
"You are still unbalanced. Still learning. But the tide in you is rising. And the next will feel it."
"The next?"
He nodded. "The second."
I swallowed.
"Who is he?"
Arion's eyes shimmered.
"An enemy."