Fantasy Call of the Deep | kyuri x Darkbloom

[kyuri]

“Before the sky bore stars, before the land had name or shape, there was only the sea—and within it, the First Song of Magic.”
Darkbloom

​

---

Laboured breaths followed slow footsteps across sleek, wooden floors, a slender figure moving through the dark. She’d locked the door–twice–and exhaled only when the click had echoed through the wood. Once at rest by the polished glass, she set an elbow on a slanted window pane, and leaned her chin into her palm.

Outside, the skies were clouded with malice. Lightning from a storm flashed in pale green eyes like bursts of flames. There was no silver moon, and not a single star to behold. Just an endless mist in an endless, obsidian night.

Estephion, proud vessel of the Estyrion Royal Fleet, had tossed bravely to escape the storm's clutches. Thunder had boomed above them all, rattling even the strongest of bones. She'd moaned and swung under their feet, tirelessly making her way through increasingly turbulent waves. Crewmen, cooks, and guards alike had slid across the deck while the weather had roared above.

Taleia was no exception. Her fingers had reddened, and her white hair fell messily over flushed, freckled cheeks. Clothes, damp from exertion, hung heavy and cold over her shoulders. Her skin itched beneath the fabrics.

Escaping a shitshow was only the first feat of the journey. It wouldn’t surprise her if the people of Aorelia spat at their feet upon arrival, though deep down everyone knew a treaty was due. After gruelling years of conflict, and a war looming on the horizon, the kingdom of Estyrion needed to lay their rigorous pride to rest.

There was something so hollow about a crown princess leaving her own kingdom to perhaps never return–regardless of who really knew why.

Had she not forced it forward, the court might’ve left it to rot in silence. The King might’ve kept his most radical opinions behind locked doors, but Taleia knew the hatred that sizzled in that man’s chest.

She also knew that he'd never attempt a kingdom that held his daughter.

She closed her eyes as the storm continued to recede and murmur in the distance. Now was one of those rare moments where the thuds of worker boots rumbled quietly below deck. Silence spread across the horizon, the whole vessel creaking softly above water, finally at ease. Even the chamber guard had taken to the underbelly to inebriate herself, bringing a content smile to Taleia’s face.

Now, the past could drown in the waves that reflected in her eyes.

 

[Darkbloom]

Below the drifting vessel, where the deep forgot the light, the ocean stirred with awareness.


Currents bent and spiraled around something that did not belong to silence. The sea, vast and ancient, held breath as a figure emerged from a crevice between two jagged rocks, scales glittering in the shimmerless dark. Muscles moved like coiled rope beneath sapphire-touched skin. Hair, as red as blood spilled into the tide, flowed like living fire behind him, trailing with every measured motion of his long, powerful tail.


Kaelis.


His name had not been spoken aloud in decades.


Armored at the shoulders and hips in barnacled gold and weathered bronze, Kaelis looked like a remnant of an age the world above had chosen to forget. A piece of history that still remembered its fury. He bore no crown, but the ocean shaped itself around him all the same. Even the distant whales paused their song when he passed.


His gills flared as he neared the vessel, drawn not by light, but by the storm’s remnants in the air—by the foreign rhythm of hearts thundering above, and one in particular that echoed through the water with a quiet, defiant ache.


Her.


Not that he knew her name. Not yet.


But the ocean had whispered of a white-haired girl wrapped in woven duty and soaked regrets. A royal. A danger. A chance.


Kaelis narrowed his eyes. The scent of iron filled his senses—war loomed not only in the land above, but in the sea’s cold veins. Something was shifting. This ship wasn’t just another plank-ridden insult to the depths. It carried a thread tied tightly to fate’s own tapestry.


With a flick of his tail, he rose.


Not close enough to breach—not yet—but close enough to see her silhouette through the water-warped glass of her cabin, far above. He lingered in the dark, unseen, as bubbles curled up around him. One hand rested on the hilt of the long, coral-edged blade strapped to his side, the other curled near a necklace hung from his chest: a shard of the First Shell, pulsing faintly with inner light.


Kaelis didn’t need to speak to know the tides had turned.


He would watch her.


And if she was what the sea feared—and hoped for—then the surface-dwellers weren’t the only ones about to face a reckoning.


Kaelis hovered just above the reef shelf, where the sea dropped into a violet-black void. The warmth of the storm still lingered near the surface, pulsing against his skin like an old scar aching before a fight. He could still feel the vessel above, its wooden bones groaning softly, shifting with the current. It was watching him. Or perhaps he was watching it.


Then, he sang.


The first note slipped from his mouth without thought, shaped by instincts older than language. His voice was not that of the sirens—those shallow-reef temptresses with laughter like baited hooks—but deeper. Older. It resonated through his chest, into the sea, wrapping around coral and wreck and bone.


Kaelis did not sing for love, nor to lure.


He sang to remember.


Each note hummed with loss and warning, drifting through trenches where once his kin had danced in spiraled towers of salt-glass. It carried names unspoken, cities forgotten, the rusted cries of those pulled too far from the current and left to dry beneath a merciless sun.


The ocean shivered in response.


His song reached upward, brushing the hull of the ship like fingertips on a war drum, vibrating through its frame. He didn’t care if any land-walker heard. That was not why he sang.


But part of him hoped they did.


Because the sea had long been silent.


And Kaelis… Kaelis was no longer willing to let it stay that way.

 

[kyuri]

Taleia’s gaze drifted over the foggy remnants of the storm, and the lingering explosions reflected on the ocean surface. There was something soothing about the fury of nature and how it answered to nothing. No matter how strong elven magic became, or how creative it could get, nature refused to bend.

In its own, unpredictable way, it was the only thing a person could truly trust to be real. And Taleia liked the way it made sense when nothing else did.

The air shuddered. Subtly, it crept into the dark confinements of her room, into the crevices of the walls, and the creases in her clothes. The hairs on her arms stood up, as if preparing for lightning to strike.

She snapped her eyes to the door.

It was made to separate her from the others, to give her privacy when her inner peace waned. But now, its intricate etchings flickered in gold, the sturdy ironwood whispering of change.

Only a moment later, the locks clicked again. Taleia emerged from her quarters, leaving the door wide open behind her. The air, still charged, dragged through her unkempt locks as she paced across deck. A goal flashed in her mind, bright, unwavering, and not her own.

The ledge between her and the ocean still shimmered. She stopped and leaned forward, curling her fingers around it. The cold pressed up against her palms. As she inhaled the dying currents of the night, her chest swelled with warmth. Her eyes beamed, as if touched by a forgotten melody.

She couldn’t hear it. But she felt it.

 

[Darkbloom]

Kaelis should not have sung.


And yet, the notes had slipped from his lips like blood from an old wound—slow, inevitable, laced with something far older than pain. He had buried the song long ago, deep beneath a thousand tides and silences. But tonight, as the storm rolled into memory and the stars refused to return, it had clawed its way back to the surface.


The sea had listened. It always did. But this time… so had something above.


He felt it.


The pressure had shifted subtly, the way it only did when something—someone—moved with purpose. Not the drifting steps of a tired sailor or the shuffle of boots on rotting deck. No. This movement was guided. Pulled by something it couldn’t name. Drawn to the water.


Kaelis stayed low, muscles coiled in the shadows of a coral-strewn shelf. He barely breathed. But the sea around him stirred restlessly, charged with something between warning and welcome.


She had come to the edge.


She didn’t see him. Couldn’t. The waves still cloaked him well. But Kaelis could feel her—there, just beyond the veil of surface tension. Fingers curled over the ledge, skin kissing the chill of ocean mist. A heartbeat pulsing faintly against the roar of water in his ears.


She felt the song.


Not the sound, no. That had passed. But its echo had found her. Sank into her bones like salt into old wood. Her presence was alive with it, humming with the ghost of melody.


Kaelis lowered his gaze.


He hadn’t meant for this.


And still… something ancient in him stirred.
Something dangerous.


He did not surface. He did not move.


But beneath the waves, a second note began to rise.

 

[kyuri]

Taleia half folded over the ledge, large pupils drifting across the surface, looking for things she couldn’t see. Her whole body trembled with the memory of lightning coursing through her–electric, rhythmic, alive beneath her skin.

Whenever the storm rolled around, her soul lit up with purpose. Each flash of lightning tugged on a strange tether within her, as if it knew her. And when she guided the golden fury of the skies away from towers and trees, she could feel her blood pulse through every vein.

But the feeling would disappear as quickly as it had come, leaving no answers behind.

Suddenly, something shifted. A muffled gasp erupted from Taleia's throat as her knees buckled. Her fingers uncurled and dropped. The air hissed deep into her ears, her pulse pounding against her temples. Loud. Her face flushed red, eyelids fluttering.

She landed on the deck floor with a thud, twisting in pain. Groaning through clenched teeth, she buried her face into her shaky knees. The world melted, her head spinning. She pressed her nails against her skull, trying to silence the noise racking it. It was like trying to close an open wound with a blade.

---

Echoes of rowdy crewmen spilled from an open passageway. A woman, dressed in golden embroidered sleeves and functional, matching breeches emerged at the door. Her copper hair was tied tightly at the back, and her peach lips still glistened from ale.

“Taleia?”

Leather boots thundered to the bulwark. It hadn’t been too long since the ship had turned silent at top deck, and yet, at this point, it seemed like forever. Plisalia crouched down and without hesitation grabbed a Taleia’s arm.

“What happened?” She asked, her amber eyes clouded with worry.

The princess only mumbled back, her voice disappearing with the winds that carried across the vessel.

“The storm…” she breathed. “I felt…”

Plisalia’s blood ran cold as she spied the open chamber door. She held her own words on her tongue, but her creasing face betrayed the true feelings she carried. It felt wrong. Sour–like a dismissal of everything their companionship was supposed to be.

They came out anyway.

“Have you… taken your meds?”

Taleia’s gaze drifted somewhere distant. She stood, swaying softly against Plisalia’s firm weight as memory and feeling returned like echoes of a lucid dream. A second ago, she’d felt immense pain. And now, she wasn’t sure if the arm she held was real.

Plisalia refused to leave after that. But even after the door had clicked two times, and all was supposed to be forgotten, Taleia still found herself back at the window. As though it would show her something else than what she’d already seen. The mist had calmed, the waves looking stiller now.

Her breath fogged the glass for a long time after. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping to see.

She only knew that something had seen her–and part of her, foolishly, wanted it to return.

 

[Darkbloom]

The sea was not silent. It never truly was. Beneath its ever-moving skin, it whispered in languages long since lost to landbound ears—tongues woven into the sway of kelp forests, echoed in the shuddering groans of deep tectonic plates, and breathed in the solemn hymns of ancient, drifting beasts. Kaelis had heard them all. He had lived a thousand tides listening to voices that spoke without words, and until now, none had called to him like the tremor that stirred the air above.


The first note had been a memory—unbidden, unwise, yet true. The second rose with intention, though not entirely his own. It came with the force of something older than choice, as if the sea itself reached through him to answer what had been kindled above. There was power in it, yes, but not the kind that bent minds or stole hearts. It was a song of recognition, of something shared and yet unfamiliar, as if the girl who hovered over the ledge had brushed the edge of a birthright forgotten by both land and water.


When she fell, Kaelis felt it. Not with eyes, but with the raw sensation that coursed through the deep—like lightning shattering the sky, echoing even through the silt. Her collapse struck the water like a bell, and every school of fish within reach twisted in unison, scattering. She had heard him, even if she did not understand. Her body remembered what her mind could not. And that made her dangerous.


Kaelis remained where the reef met the drop. He did not rise. Did not chase the flicker of presence that now retreated behind shut doors and ironwood. But his gaze, unwavering, pierced the surface long after the girl had gone. In her pulse, in her pain, he had seen the shadow of something once thought lost—a tether between realms that had frayed with the ages, but not snapped entirely.


The ocean around him stilled, listening once more. Kaelis did not sing again. But the note lingered, buried now in the hush of the deep, waiting. For her return. For the moment she stepped near the ledge not as a stranger, but as one the water might one day call kin.

 

[kyuri]

The first day, Taleia tried shaking the strange feeling off. She kept her lips sealed and pretended like nothing had happened. The storm was long gone, the crew collected after the night’s events, and everyone fell back into routines like clockwork. She stood by the Captain, relayed orders, and butted in where it was neccesary. It didn't fulfill her, but it kept her mind busy.

The questions lingered. And the longer they did, the more restless she became. She still walked with the same seamless grace, bearing her title with commanding silence. Nobody was afraid of her, but she knew they whispered of what she could become.

The second day, she threw a tiny, crimson leaf into a candle. The medicine dispersed in the burning hot wax, melting with the regrets she was expected to have. Just a test, she told herself. Nobody had to know.

The third night, she suffered a splitting headache.

Silvery steel gleamed under a moonlit sky. Blades clanged across the deck, laboured breaths and fluttering steps carrying between barrels and masts. Sparring was a common occurrence when the weather was calm. Always had been. Back at the castle, Taleia would walk to the large pavilion in the evening and practice with her chosen blade. When Plisalia was on duty–which as her appointed Knight, she tended to be–they’d go together. Sometimes, they would spar until their legs hurt, but only because Taleia refused to give up.

Plisalia had told her that bladed combat was like dancing. She thought she understood the steps and points to successfully strike–and that time was the only obstacle. She held an undeniable ambition to reach the same skill level as those that worked to protect her.

Plisalia joked that she just needed to accept she was a terrible dancer.

Taleia bent down way too early than normal, blowing out a breath of defeat. The headache pulsed at her temples, drilling into her skull with an unexpected violence. Her sword dangled off to the side, the hilt warm and slippery, as she balanced herself on her thighs.

Plisalia tugged at the hem of her glove, a trained eye taking in the princess's countenance.

“Not as sharp today,” she commented. A soft red bloomed over her long ears, and damp strands of hair clung to her cheeks. Her ivory sleeves were stained with sweat.

“I’m… tired today.”

“You? Admitting you’re tired?" Plisalia raised a brow. "What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Worrying about the treaty?”

“No…”

“The storm?”

Taleia stood abruptly. Hesitation flashed in the knight's eyes, but she didn't notice it.

“Does it fulfill you when I suffer?”

The air thickened with tension. Her gaze was firm, and not a single word broke in her throat.

“You always probe,” she said. “I’m tired of the questions. I’m fine. That’s all I will say. Please leave me alone.”

She dragged her hand across her forehead, a sigh escaping her chapped lips.

Withdrawal weighed on her bones. And it wouldn’t be long before the shores of Aorelia peeked over the horizon.

 

[Darkbloom]

The day was clear and full of the slow majesty that dwells upon the open sea, when clouds are but distant thoughts on the rim of the world and the light falls pure upon the waters. Upon the sun-warmed planks of the deck, among the ropes and the long shadows of the rigging, Sirthalen stood in silence, his hands folded before him as though in prayer, though none could say to what god or power such a man might bow. His robes, drawn of that pale sea-cloth whose threads held the memory of salt and wind, hung in stillness despite the breeze; for he stood apart from the labors of the crew, and the air about him moved strangely—as if reluctant to disturb the hush that clung to his form. His hair, long as kelp and strung with small tokens of coral and bone, drifted about his shoulders like the slow sway of the tide on some drowned shore. He did not speak, for he had no need; the muteness that bound his tongue was not a wound, but a vow, and his silence was of the same kind as mountains keep, or stars. All who passed near cast their eyes elsewhere, and even the gulls seemed loath to cry when they wheeled above him.

He watched the sea—not with the squinting gaze of a man measuring distance or storm-signs, but with the still, sun-blind eyes of one who reads not the surface, but the hidden runes beneath. His opaline gaze, blank and glistening as wet pearl, moved from crest to trough and back again, and though sightless by all mortal reckoning, it seemed that some deeper vision stirred behind them. At times his breath came slow, as though drawn not from the air, but from a deeper well within, and the rise and fall of his chest marked the rhythm of waves not born in this world. A bowl of water, left by a careless hand near the helm, quivered faintly as he passed; though there was no tremor in his step, the liquid stirred to his presence as a harp might to a whispered song. There were those who whispered belowdecks that the ship drifted subtly off-course when he came above, veering not by compass but by some older pull—the ghost-urge of the tides, or the call of ruins far below. He gave no sign that he heard such things, nor that they mattered; his path upon the deck was not for men to chart.

Now he knelt, long limbs folding with the slow inevitability of trees bowing to centuries, and placed his hand upon the planks, fingers splayed wide as though seeking the pulse of the sea through the vessel’s bones. Long he remained thus, unmoving, while above him the wind played idle songs among the lines. Beneath his touch, the wood warmed—or seemed to, as if drawn from sleep—and a faint shimmer passed over his brow, no brighter than heat-haze or the glimmer of fish in deep water. None spoke to him. None approached. But far below, in the dungeons of the sea where old things wait and memory is long, a single current shifted its course. Sirthalen lifted his head, and though he made no cry, no chant, no movement save the turn of his pale eyes toward the west, it was as if the world leaned slightly with him—as if some unseen weight had tilted, some deep axis acknowledged.

And then he rose, as silent as he had knelt, and went on walking the length of the deck, his shadow cast long and broken across the sunlit boards. No one marked him with speech. Yet after he passed, the wind changed. The sails swelled with sudden purpose. And in the bright stillness of that noon, not a soul among the living could say whether it had been an ordinary hour, or the hinge of fate.

 

[Darkbloom]

Kaelis lingered beneath the surface, where the water cooled and thickened into darkness. He did not move, not truly—only drifted, arms loose at his sides, his tail curling with the slow elegance of thought. The ship loomed above, casting long, shifting shadows across his skin. But his attention was fixed not on the vessel itself, nor on the chatter of wood and rigging or the crude boots pacing its spine. His gaze pierced through currents unseen by most, eyes narrowed against the muted glow that bled from its hull like sun through fog.

He had felt the change before the wind had shifted, before even the sails had caught their new breath. It was not the princess—though she glimmered faintly now and then, like moonlight caught in stormglass—but another. A stillness had entered the air, one not born of calm, but of presence. As if the sea, ancient and jealous, had turned its gaze upward to greet an old companion. Kaelis had known such silences before: in the caverns of drowned temples, in the wake of blood spilled under moonless tides, and in the quiet song of those who walked without voice.

He swam a little higher, near enough that the rhythm of the ship hummed in his bones. He could feel the step of the seer upon the wood—not weight, not vibration, but a resonance. Like the final breath of a conch shell, or the low hum of magic before it broke. There was no melody in it, not like his own. It was not song, but presence. Heavy and slow, as if the sea itself had taken root in the shape of a man and now stood aboard a vessel of air and salt, remembering.

Kaelis did not smile, though the corners of his lips twitched. Curious, this one. Not born of the deep, not blessed by its old rites—yet touched by them, undeniably. A pawn, perhaps, but one with the gravity of a stone cast in still water. The ripples might take time to show, but they would come.

He angled his head, eyes gleaming like green flame, and listened—not with ears, but with the marrow of his bones. Something ancient had shifted course. Not fate. Not prophecy. Intention. And that was always more dangerous.

He would watch the silent one. Closely.

 

[kyuri]

Scattered around a large, oval table, the captain's quarters bustled with tactical discussion. Taleia's advisors spoke about where to dock, where to walk, and in what formations, and other details she didn't have the attention span to remember. Only a handful of the people in the room had been to Aorelia before, and it hadn't been for peace arrangements.

The moment the 12 point castle came into full view, they would have exactly an hour to prepare the ship. Dust off the edges, wipe the sweat of their foreheads, and slip into more formal attire.

It would be smooth. Practiced. Perfect.

In the late stages of the meeting, Taleia's attention waned. She slipped away from the darkness, through the reinforced door and began to stride across deck, each step laced with intent. Her casual fabrics fluttered in the winds, sandy color bathing in the sunlight. It was nicer than a ceremonial dress. She’d have to enjoy it while it lasted.

The seer stood, seemingly idle, where the stark light blinded the most.

“Sirthalen,” she called, her voice hovering just above the murmur of the working crew.

She hadn't needed to speak, really. He likely already knew she was coming by her bootsteps, or by the stress that flickered from her aura alone.

”Do you have a moment? Or, I mean, can I have one?”

Her arms were folded over her stomach, her fingers flexing restlessly under her sleeves. It was the fourth day, and while she hadn’t gotten any wiser, it felt as though a part of the world opened up. She could see color where there was none, her dreams unfolding vividly in her memory. But it also came with a sense of delusion, a dread that hovered over her since long ago— one she wasn’t sure if she could carry alone.

She blinked hard.

”I do not rest well,” she admitted, still hesitating, still dancing around what she needed to say. Her gaze flickered in every direction, double checking nobody else could hear.

Many knew the princess held the ocean dear. Not only by the times she spent sailing over it, or the sea creatures she studied rigorously in her free time. But the way her eyes glimmered when it rocked. The calm cloud that fell over her when the waves stood taller than men.

And to Sirthalen, the existential thoughts that left her mouth when she had been close to it.

Little girls seek identity from their first steps. They fall into routines and interests, navigating the world through their parents' lenses. But few stop to question their purpose.

Taleia sighed deeply, as though she was about to say something kept secret for years.

“This storm… It felt different. Wrong, almost.”

 

[Darkbloom]

He did not answer, for there was no need—not in words, not in gesture, not yet. Sirthalen stood where the light was fiercest, on the forward edge of the deck where the sun struck without mercy and the boards gleamed like bone. His robes stirred only faintly in the breeze, but the light caught in the wet sheen of his hair, hanging like sea-thread from his brow. He did not turn to face her, not immediately. He listened—not with ears, but with that deeper sense which marked his presence, that which felt the weight of words before they were spoken, and read the truth that clung behind them.

Taleia’s voice reached him like a line cast from the shore, uncertain but tethered. He knew her step. He had known it hours before she made it. He had felt the moment her mind turned away from the darkened table and the scraping voices of maps and metrics, felt the shape of her unease move across the deck like a low pressure in the bones. Now, as she stood behind him, half-revealed in sun and sail-shadow, the thread between them vibrated—not of blood or vow, but something more ancient, like the pull of tide to moon. She spoke again, her voice colored by doubt and the weight of sleeplessness, and at last he turned.

His eyes, clouded but unblinking, met hers. Not in confrontation, nor in comfort, but in recognition. They were not eyes that offered answers. They did not blink away dread or soften with pity. They reflected her, in the same way tide pools reflect sky—distorted, deep, honest in their silence.

He did not nod, nor did he reach for her, but the sea air around him shifted, cooled slightly, as though in acknowledgment. The silence between them lengthened—not empty, but steeped, like water drawing flavor from leaves. She spoke of the storm. The wrongness of it. He closed his eyes slowly, and for a breathless moment, the very wind faltered. Beneath them, the ship gave a low groan as it settled on the swell, as though in answer.

Then he lifted one hand, long and pale, and drew a slow spiral in the air. It was a sign not of danger, but of descent—of something long-buried rising again. Not all storms came from the sky. Some, he knew, were pulled upward from the floor of the world.

And this one… this one had teeth.

 

[kyuri]

"Spin?"

Taleia tilted her head. "A spiral? Am I spiraling?”

She paused. Fingers moved up to trace over the sides of her face, nestling in her hair as she let her thoughts wander. Of course she wasn’t losing her mind. If anything, the rest of the world was.

Another headache began pulsing, her thoughts like hammers. If it was the withdrawal, she couldn’t admit it yet. Not until she’d figured out what it had to offer.

Before she could press Sirthalen for more answers, soft footsteps approached. She turned to find Elyra--her handmaiden, approaching. In her grasp was a folded piece of clothing with a golden collar shimmering in the daylight. She bowed her head.

“May I?”

Taleia nodded.

“The dress you requested, my lady.”

The piece unfolded before her. Thick raven fabrics lined in gold, and a deep cut at the bust–not at all what someone with a formal peace offering would wear. More the kind that hid blades in her corset.

Taleia gazed straight at it, unmoving–long enough for Elyra’s arms to start trembling. She maintained her expression despite the blood draining from her fingers.

“Would you like it remade, my lady?” She asked at last.

“No… No, it’s good.”

“May I enter your chambers to hang it?”

“I…” Taleia felt her pockets.

“The keys are in your door.”

A glance was sent toward the helm, where the keys dangled from the lock. Taleia held her breath, quelling her itch to frown. She wondered how long they had been there.

“Very well.”

Once the handmaiden had left them, she crossed her arms. In defiance, perhaps, to the uneasiness that crawled up her spine.

“This whole ship thinks I am crazy,” she murmured. “For all of it. Do you agree with them?”

 

[Darkbloom]

She asked, and he did not answer—at least, not as those rooted in the world of speech and surface might expect. The wind passed over him again, stirring the salt-worn fringe of his robes, and the brightness of the sun caught in his opaline eyes like moonlight caught beneath ice. He watched her, not with judgment, nor pity, nor even reassurance—but with the grave, unmoving patience of stone shaped by ages of tide. When Taleia asked if she was spiraling, if the sign he’d drawn was a reflection of her own descent, his gaze did not flinch. If anything, there was the faintest narrowing of his lids, as though acknowledging the word itself held more than she meant it to.

Sirthalen had seen the spiral in many places—in water circling the drain of time, in the currents that passed through the dreams of those who touched deeper truths too soon. It was not a mark of weakness, but of motion. And motion, he knew, could be descent or ascent depending on where one stood. Her spiraling might be a fall. Or it might be the opening of a shell, long sealed. He did not correct her. It was not his place to reshape her understanding—only to witness it unfold.

When the handmaiden came, he stepped back, ever so slightly, his presence thinning like mist drawn into shade. Not out of modesty, nor deference, but to allow the moment its own space. He watched as the dark fabric unfurled, heavy with implication. The shimmer of the collar caught the light, but his eyes lingered instead on Taleia’s stillness—how her body froze not from indecision, but from the awareness of many meanings layering themselves atop one another. The dress was a symbol, whether she wished it or not. A sheath. An armor. A prophecy of its own.

After Elyra departed, Sirthalen let the silence settle again. It clung like salt to skin. When Taleia finally spoke, quieter now, the defiance in her arms betrayed the weight behind her voice. “This whole ship thinks I am crazy,” she said. “Do you agree with them?”

He did not nod. Did not shake his head. Instead, he turned his gaze toward the horizon—where water met sky in a thin, white seam—and slowly drew a line with one finger through the air. A rising path. Not straight, but climbing in coils. A spiral still—but not a fall.

He turned back to her and held that silence gently, like a shell cradling the sound of the sea.

Not madness.

Becoming.

 

[kyuri]

Taleia dropped her gaze.

What if one day, the shapes he drew would materialize? If she kept asking, perhaps she’d gain clarity on her own terms. But until then, they would continue to crash in her mind. Like waves in a storm.

And she didn’t only come for the answers. She came because Sirthalen paused when she did. He didn’t question, or interrupt. He listened.

---

She stood at the bow, cloak drawn tight over her shoulders. Clouds folded over the horizon, where the castle and its many spires stood over the ocean like a mountain range. The structure wasn’t far from the port, she’d been told. If there were many people to see this spectacle, she’d see their curious–or angry–heads flood the paths before long.

The breeze hummed against her skin, salt clashing with the motes of dust from dry, scattered soil. Single strands of white hair tickled the back of her neck. Gold glimmered faintly at the top of her head–not too flashy, but still enough to define her as royalty. From the wrong side of the sea, perhaps, but still royalty.

The letter had promised the arrival of small fleet of three ships, but Talea wouldn’t blame the Aorelians if a whole army stood waiting at the port. So did it truly matter the color of her dress, or the finessing of her hairdo? If hatred swung the sword before judgement did?

 

[Darkbloom]

Upon the high stone rampart of Aorelia’s outer hall, where salt wind met the sharp scent of sun-baked earth, the lords and ladies of the coast had gathered. They stood in silence, robed in heavy silks of sea-foam hue and storm-grey velvet, though no comfort came from their finery. Long had they awaited this hour—not with joy, but with the still breath of watchers uncertain whether omen or herald had crossed their tide. Below them, the ships drew near, proud sails gleaming against the haze of sea-light, and at their forefront, a narrow prow cut the water like a blade through parchment.

“She wears gold,” said Lady Enireth, her voice no louder than the rustle of her fan. She was tall and sharp of speech, with eyes like polished onyx and a face untouched by warmth. “And yet it is not the gold of mourning, nor that of fealty. She comes cloaked, yes—but not veiled.”

“Aye,” murmured Lord Vessan, eldest of the gathered council, whose beard swept his breast like frost on stone. “No veil, no banner. No herald save the wind. And that wind is ill-tempered.”

There was silence again, save for the wind’s moan between the turrets, and the distant cry of seabirds wheeling wide from the harbor’s mouth. The castle loomed behind them, all spires and shadowed stone, a crown of iron against the sky. Before it, the sea had begun to churn—though no storm rode in its heart.

“She was not born in these lands,” said a younger noble, pale of hair and uncertain in his words. “Yet she carries herself as one who remembers them.”

“Memory,” Vessan said darkly, “is a treacherous guide, if it does not bow to truth. And truth, when clothed in strange tides and stranger company, may yet bring ruin to our gates.”

The ships crept closer, their hulls black against the glimmering tide. At the bow of the leading vessel, a figure stood wrapped in shadowed cloak, motionless, as if carved from the mast itself. Behind her, the wind stirred faintly, though the sails bore no strain. The nobles watched, and in each of their hearts stirred a question too old for comfort: whether peace had come at last, or if the old blood was stirring, and the sea had only come to take back what once was lost.