For one ridiculous second, I thought my mother had come back.
I knew it made no sense. I'd seen her photographs, heard her voice through the Ocean's Heart, and spent years imagining what I would say if I ever got the chance to see her again. None of those imaginings had prepared me for the sight of her standing on the other side of a shattered glass enclosure.
She looked exactly as she had in the old photograph.
The same dark hair. The same delicate features. Even the small scar near her left eyebrow was there.
But my mother had warm brown eyes.
The thing standing before us had eyes that shone like pale, frozen stars.
"Selene," Korrin said sharply.
I couldn't answer.
The figure tilted its head. Its expression was almost curious, as though it were studying an unfamiliar animal.
Then it smiled.
My mother's smile had always been slightly crooked. This one was perfect, and that made it worse.
"Little tide," it whispered.
My breath caught.
That was what my mother used to call me.
I remembered sitting beside her while she combed my hair, listening to her hum the strange melody I'd only recently remembered. I remembered asking her why she called me that.
Because the tide always finds its way home, she'd told me.
The figure took one step forward.
"Come here."
My feet moved before I realised what I was doing.
Korrin caught my arm.
"That's not your mother."
"You don't know that."
"I know what I'm looking at."
"No, you don't!"
The words came out louder than I intended. I pulled against his grip, furious that he could stand there and dismiss the only familiar thing I'd seen since entering this place.
Then the figure moved again.
It crossed the broken glass without making a sound. Not a single shard shifted beneath its feet.
My anger faltered.
Korrin drew his weapon.
The figure looked at him, and its smile disappeared.
"Royal blood," it murmured. "Still guarding doors that should have remained closed."
Korrin went completely still.
I glanced at him.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know."
For once, I believed him.
The thing turned back to me.
"Your father has kept me waiting."
Behind it, Daniel was struggling to his feet. He looked weak, but his eyes were fixed on the figure with a mixture of fear and exhaustion.
"Don't listen to it, Selene!"
The figure's face changed.
Not physically. Its features remained my mother's. But something moved beneath the skin, like a reflection disturbed by a passing shadow.
"Daniel," it said softly. "You always did have a talent for ruining reunions."
My father stumbled backward.
I had never heard anyone speak to him like that. Not with familiarity. Not with that particular kind of contempt.
"You know what you are," he said.
"Of course."
"And you know what happens if you leave this chamber."
The figure glanced toward the open doorway.
"Then perhaps you should have done a better job keeping me here."
The lights went out.
I heard Korrin shout my name. Something struck the metal walkway, and the entire platform shook beneath my feet.
I reached for the railing.
A cold hand closed around my wrist.
For a moment, I thought it was Korrin.
Then a voice whispered beside my ear.
"Your mother was afraid of the dark, too."
I tore my hand away.
The emergency lights flickered on.
The figure stood several steps away, watching me with those impossible eyes.
And Korrin was on the ground.
He had been thrown against the railing. One hand pressed against his side, while his weapon lay several metres away.
I ran to him.
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine."
"You say that every time you're injured."
"And you ask the same question every time."
"Because you keep getting injured!"
Despite everything, he almost laughed.
Then his expression changed as he looked past me.
"Get behind me."
I turned.
The figure was no longer standing near the enclosure.
It had moved to the centre of the chamber, directly above the shaft. Thin strands of blue light extended from its body into the surrounding cables.
The station was responding to it.
No.
Not responding.
Feeding it.
The figure raised its hands.
Every remaining light in Blackwater turned blue.
And somewhere far below us, something answered.
---
"Selene, the pendant!" my father shouted.
I looked down.
The silver pendant around my neck had begun to glow. Its light pulsed in time with the strange blue strands stretching from the figure into the walls.
I pulled it free of my collar.
"What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Don't let it touch the fourth fragment!"
I stared at him.
"You said that about the other shards!"
"No. I said the fourth fragment wasn't part of the Heart. I should have explained."
"Then explain now!"
He looked as though he wanted to answer, but the figure turned toward him.
"Still giving orders, Daniel?"
My father flinched.
The figure's voice softened.
"You should tell her what happened to Lyra."
"I know what happened to my mother," I snapped.
"No," it replied. "You know what they told you."
The words hit harder than I wanted them to.
I looked at my father.
He couldn't meet my eyes.
That was answer enough.
"Tell me," I said.
"Selene, not now."
"When, then? After another ten years? After the entire ocean falls apart? I'm standing in a research station with a thing wearing my mother's face, and you're still deciding what I'm allowed to know!"
My voice echoed through the chamber.
For a moment, even the figure seemed interested.
My father closed his eyes.
"Lyra came here to save me," he said. "But she didn't come alone. She brought the original seal with her."
"The seal?"
He nodded toward the pendant in my hand.
I stared at it.
"This?"
"Not the pendant itself. The object inside it."
I turned it over. The silver casing was worn smooth from years of handling, but I had never noticed the tiny seam around its centre.
My fingers shook as I pressed the sides together.
A small compartment opened.
Inside lay a thin, translucent sliver that looked almost like a piece of glass.
Except that it wasn't reflecting the light.
It was absorbing it.
The figure stopped moving.
For the first time, its expression changed to something I could recognise.
Fear.
"Where did you get that?" it demanded.
My father pushed himself upright.
"From the person who created the seal."
The figure's face twisted.
"That person is dead."
"Perhaps."
My father looked at me.
"But the seal isn't."
The sliver grew warm in my palm.
I remembered the chant that had come to me in my sleep.
Nerai vael, thira en sol...
I whispered the first line.
Nothing happened.
The figure began moving toward us.
I tried again, forcing myself to remember the melody rather than the exact words.
The notes came more easily than the language.
As I hummed, the light around the figure faltered.
It stopped.
I continued.
The words rose from somewhere deeper than memory.
"Nerai vael, thira en sol,
Let the deep remember all.
Where the lost and living meet,
Guard the door beneath the deep."
The chamber trembled.
The blue strands snapped one by one, releasing sparks of light that dissolved before reaching the floor.
The figure screamed.
It wasn't a human sound. It was a chorus of voices layered together, rising and falling as if an entire crowd were crying out from somewhere far beneath the ocean.
I stumbled backward, but I kept singing.
The translucent sliver in my hand brightened.
A symbol appeared across its surface.
Three curved lines surrounding a circle.
The same mark we'd seen throughout Blackwater.
The figure lunged.
Korrin reached me first. He pulled me aside, and the creature's hand struck the railing where I'd been standing.
Metal buckled.
I nearly lost my footing.
Korrin caught me around the waist and dragged me behind a support column.
"Whatever you're doing," he said through clenched teeth, "keep doing it."
"That's the plan!"
"Good."
"Unless you have a better one!"
"I don't!"
For some reason, that made me want to laugh.
Perhaps I was losing my mind.
I continued the chant, quieter this time. The figure staggered toward the centre of the platform, its borrowed face flickering between my mother's features and something I couldn't look at for more than a second.
Then my father shouted a name.
"Seraya!"
The figure froze.
The chant died on my lips.
It slowly turned toward him.
For the first time, its expression looked almost human.
"Don't call me that."
My father stared at it.
"Then tell me your real name."
The figure's mouth opened.
No sound emerged.
Its eyes flickered.
Then it whispered, "I don't remember."
The words were so quiet that I almost missed them.
Something inside me shifted.
I had expected a monster. A creature that wanted to destroy the station, escape its prison, perhaps even kill us.
I hadn't expected something that couldn't remember who it was.
The blue light around its body dimmed.
For a brief moment, I saw a different face beneath my mother's.
A young woman with silver hair and dark eyes.
She looked frightened.
Then the image vanished.
The creature dropped to its knees.
The lights went out again.
This time, they stayed out.
---
We found the emergency lamps in a storage compartment and managed to restore enough power to see.
The figure had disappeared.
The enclosure was empty, and the doorway behind it had sealed itself. Only a thin blue line remained around the edges, pulsing faintly beneath the metal.
I didn't know whether the creature had returned to whatever lay behind that door or whether it had simply ceased to exist.
I wasn't sure which possibility I preferred.
Korrin sat against the wall while I examined the injury on his side. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, although the armour had cracked where he'd struck the railing.
"You're going to need medical attention," I told him.
"After we leave."
"That's not a sensible answer."
"It's the answer I have."
I tightened the bandage around his side.
He winced.
"Sorry."
"You don't sound sorry."
"I'm not. Perhaps next time you'll avoid throwing yourself in front of something that looks like my mother."
His expression softened.
"I wasn't going to let it take you."
I looked away, suddenly unsure what to say.
The silence between us felt different now. Not comfortable, exactly, but less hostile than it had been when we'd first met.
I returned to my father.
He was sitting near the shattered enclosure, staring at the sealed door.
For a moment, I simply looked at him.
I'd spent so long imagining what it would be like to find him that the reality felt strangely unfamiliar. I wanted to run to him, to demand answers, to ask why he had left me.
I also wanted to shake him until he explained every secret he'd ever kept.
Unfortunately, neither option seemed particularly productive.
So I sat beside him.
"Are you really my father?"
He turned toward me.
The question hurt him. I could see it.
"Yes."
"How do I know?"
He reached into the pocket of his torn uniform and pulled out a small photograph.
It was old and faded, its edges worn away.
A baby lay in a woman's arms. My mother was smiling down at the child, while my father sat beside her, looking exhausted and ridiculously happy.
On the back, someone had written a date.
My birthday.
I traced the words with my thumb.
"You kept this?"
"Every day."
I stared at the photograph for a long time.
Then I asked the question that had been waiting behind every other question.
"Why didn't you come home?"
My father looked toward the sealed door.
"Because I couldn't."
"That isn't enough."
"I know."
He swallowed.
"After Lyra brought the seal here, we discovered that the chamber beneath Blackwater wasn't simply holding an ancient creature. It was holding the memories of something that had existed before our two worlds were divided."
"Memories?"
"Fragments of a consciousness. The people who built the original seal called it the Echo."
I remembered the face wearing my mother's features.
"Was that thing the Echo?"
"Part of it."
"Then what is Seraya?"
My father looked at me sharply.
"You heard that name?"
I nodded.
"She said she didn't remember who she was."
He lowered his head.
"Seraya was one of the original guardians of the Heart. According to the oldest records, she volunteered to remain behind when the seal was created. But the ritual went wrong. Her memories were separated from her consciousness and scattered through the Heart."
"Why would anyone do that?"
"Because the Echo was becoming unstable. It had begun absorbing the memories of anyone who came near it. The guardians believed that separating its memories would prevent it from escaping."
I thought about the creature wearing my mother's face.
It hadn't merely copied her appearance.
It had known the words my mother used to call me.
Perhaps it had taken that memory from the Heart.
Perhaps the memories of thousands of people were trapped inside it.
"What happened when Isaac's father removed the fragment?"
"The seal weakened. Seraya's memories began returning to the Echo, but they didn't return in the right order. The creature started confusing the people it remembered with the people standing in front of it."
"So it thought I was my mother."
"At first, perhaps. But when it saw your pendant, it recognised the seal."
I looked down at the translucent sliver.
"And my mother disappeared because she was trying to save you?"
He nodded.
"She used the remaining power of the seal to close the chamber. I was trapped on the other side when the station collapsed. Lyra managed to escape the lower chamber, but I don't know what happened to her afterward."
"You said she came here to save you."
"She did."
"And you let her go alone?"
His face crumpled.
"No. I tried to follow her."
He looked at me, his eyes shining with tears he didn't seem willing to shed.
"I failed."
I didn't know what to do with that answer.
Part of me wanted to blame him. Another part wanted to believe him so badly that it frightened me.
I had spent years wondering whether my parents had abandoned me.
Now I was learning that they might have sacrificed everything to protect each other.
And somehow, that didn't make the pain disappear.
It only made it more complicated.
---
A sharp sound came from the corridor.
Korrin stood immediately, ignoring my protest.
"Someone's coming."
We extinguished the emergency lamps and moved behind the nearest support wall.
Footsteps echoed through the station.
Not the slow, uneven movements of the creature we'd encountered.
These were deliberate.
Human footsteps.
A light appeared around the corner.
Then a familiar voice called out.
"Selene?"
I stepped into the corridor.
Isaac stood beneath the emergency light, one hand pressed against his injured shoulder. His face was pale, and his clothes were stained with dust and seawater.
When he saw me, relief crossed his face.
Then he noticed my father.
Everything changed.
He stopped walking.
For several seconds, he stared at Daniel as though he were looking at a ghost.
"You're alive," Isaac whispered.
My father rose slowly.
"Isaac."
Isaac shook his head.
"No. You can't be here."
"I've been here for a long time."
"My father said you died."
My father looked at him.
"Your father lied about many things."
Isaac flinched as though he'd been struck.
"Don't."
"Isaac—"
"Don't talk about him as if you knew what he went through!"
His voice echoed through the corridor.
I stepped between them.
"Both of you, stop."
Isaac looked at me, anger and confusion fighting across his face.
"You found him."
"Yes."
"And the Echo?"
"Temporarily contained, I think."
His eyes widened.
"You saw it?"
"It looked like my mother."
He closed his eyes.
"Oh, no."
I grabbed his arm.
"What do you know?"
Isaac hesitated.
Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small data drive.
"My father left me a recording. I didn't understand it until I came here."
He handed it to me.
"Whatever happens next, you need to know why he removed the fragment."
I took the drive.
"What was he trying to do?"
Isaac looked at the sealed chamber.
"He wasn't trying to steal the Heart."
His voice cracked.
"He was trying to put something back."
Before I could ask what, the station shuddered violently.
A red warning flashed across the corridor.
SEAL INTEGRITY: 8%.
From behind the sealed door came a sound like thousands of people whispering at once.
Then a single voice rose above the rest.
My mother's.
"Selene, don't let them open the door."
The lights went out.
And somewhere in the darkness, a lock began to turn.
End of Chapter 36