The sound of the lock turning was small.
That was what frightened me.
After everything we'd seen in Blackwater—the shattered enclosure, the thing wearing my mother's face, the warnings flashing across the walls—I had expected something dramatic. An explosion, perhaps. A deep rumble from the station's foundations. Anything that would give us a few seconds to prepare ourselves.
Instead, there was a quiet click.
Then another.
Isaac backed away from the sealed door.
"We need to leave."
My father shook his head. "If the chamber opens completely, the pressure will destabilise the entire station."
"And if we stay here, we'll be trapped with whatever's inside!" Isaac snapped.
"Both of you," Korrin interrupted, "stop arguing and tell us how to close it."
Neither man answered.
I looked between them.
"Oh, this is wonderful. Two brilliant scientists, a prince, and me. Surely one of us can figure out how not to die."
"Selene," Korrin said.
"What? I'm trying to encourage teamwork."
Another click came from the door.
This time, the metal frame shifted.
A thin line of blue light appeared along its edge.
Isaac pulled a small device from his pocket and examined its display. His fingers trembled as he entered a sequence of commands.
"The station's emergency system is trying to restore the original seal," he said. "But it's using the remaining energy from the Heart fragments."
"Can it succeed?" I asked.
"Not with the seal this weak."
"Then what do we need?"
He looked at the device again.
"The original stabiliser."
I glanced at the translucent sliver in my hand.
"This?"
Isaac stared at it.
"Where did you get that?"
"My mother left it to me."
He took a step closer, but stopped when Korrin moved between us.
"Don't touch her."
Isaac gave him an irritated look. "I'm trying to identify an object, not attack her."
"Then explain what it is."
Isaac looked at the sliver again.
"My father called it the Tideglass. He believed it was part of the mechanism that held the original seal together. He spent years trying to find it."
My father shook his head.
"He didn't know where it was?"
"No. He thought Lyra had taken it when she escaped."
I looked down at the pendant.
All those years, I'd worn it without knowing what it contained. My mother had left me something that could potentially save an entire underwater station, and I had spent most of my childhood treating it as a sentimental keepsake.
I wasn't sure whether to feel grateful or annoyed.
"How do we use it?" I asked.
Isaac glanced toward the door.
"We have to return it to the original mechanism."
"Which is where?"
He pointed down the corridor.
"Below us."
Of course it was.
Nothing in this ocean could ever be conveniently located beside the entrance.
---
The access stairs descended into a narrow maintenance shaft. Emergency lights blinked along the walls, illuminating rusted railings and cables that disappeared into the darkness.
Korrin insisted on going first.
Isaac followed, still clutching his device. My father came behind him, moving slowly but refusing to let anyone help him.
I brought up the rear, keeping the Tideglass close to my chest.
The deeper we went, the stranger the station became.
The metal walls gradually gave way to black stone. The cables disappeared, replaced by thin channels filled with glowing water. Symbols had been carved into the stone at regular intervals, some of them familiar from the royal archive.
Others weren't.
I stopped beside one of the markings.
It showed two figures standing on opposite sides of a circle. One appeared human, the other unmistakably merfolk. Their hands met in the centre, where three curved lines surrounded a small light.
Below the image were words written in the ancient language.
I recognised the melody of the chant, but the inscription itself was different.
"What does this say?" I asked.
My father came to stand beside me.
"An old promise."
"Between humans and merfolk?"
He nodded.
"Before the kingdoms became separate, both peoples agreed that neither would claim ownership of the Heart. It was meant to remain beyond the control of any single ruler."
I looked at Korrin.
"That sounds like a sensible arrangement."
"It was," he replied. "Until someone decided the agreement was inconvenient."
Isaac gave a quiet, bitter laugh.
"That's usually how it happens."
We continued down the stairs.
At the bottom, we found a circular chamber with a narrow platform suspended above a deep shaft. In its centre stood a stone pedestal, its surface covered in symbols.
A hollow had been carved into the top.
It was exactly the shape of the Tideglass.
I approached it carefully.
The translucent sliver grew warm in my hand.
"Before I put this anywhere," I said, "does anyone know what will happen?"
Isaac examined the pedestal.
"Not exactly."
"Wonderful."
My father looked at me.
"Selene, the Tideglass was designed to stabilise the seal. But if the chamber's original mechanism has been altered, inserting it could have the opposite effect."
I looked at the hollow.
"Can we check?"
Isaac crouched beside the pedestal and ran his device over the surface.
"Someone has modified the mechanism."
Korrin's expression hardened.
"Who?"
"There's no way to tell from this alone. The changes are old, but not as old as the original construction."
I turned toward the stairwell.
"Could it have been Isaac's father?"
Isaac didn't answer immediately.
"I don't know."
For once, I appreciated the honesty.
He examined the markings again, then looked up at me.
"But I know what he intended to do. He wanted to restore the missing fragment and stabilise the seal. He believed the Tideglass could help him reverse the damage."
"Then why didn't he?"
Isaac's gaze dropped.
"Because he disappeared before he could finish."
The words hung between us.
He looked away, but not before I noticed the guilt in his expression.
For years, Isaac had been searching for his father's work. He had stolen a fragment of the Heart, endangered himself, and treated everyone around him as an obstacle.
I had assumed he wanted to prove his father was right.
Now I wondered whether he'd simply been afraid of discovering that his father had died without finishing what he started.
"Isaac," I said quietly, "did you know the Heart could respond to memories?"
He nodded.
"My father recorded unusual reactions during the final experiment. He thought the Heart was storing impressions of people who had come into contact with it."
"Like my mother?"
"Like everyone."
I remembered the creature wearing Lyra's face.
"Then the thing in the chamber might not be my mother at all."
"No," Isaac said. "It might be something that remembers her."
I looked down at the Tideglass.
That was somehow more frightening than the alternative.
If the creature could borrow the faces and voices of the dead, then every familiar thing it showed me could be a lie.
And yet, when it had called me little tide, I had felt something real.
Perhaps the memories weren't lies.
Perhaps they simply didn't belong to the thing using them.
---
We had almost finished examining the pedestal when the chamber lights flickered.
Isaac checked his device.
"Eight percent."
The seal was weakening again.
Korrin moved toward the stairs.
"We need to make a decision."
My father shook his head.
"We can't insert the Tideglass until we know what the altered mechanism will do."
"And we don't have time to investigate every symbol on this wall," Korrin replied.
He was right, which was unfortunate because I was beginning to dislike it when he was right.
I looked at the pedestal.
The Tideglass pulsed gently in my palm, responding to something beneath the stone.
Then I noticed a small inscription along the base.
It was almost hidden beneath a layer of mineral deposits.
I knelt and brushed the surface clean.
The words emerged slowly.
THE SEAL CANNOT BE RESTORED BY POWER ALONE.
Beneath them was a second line.
THE MEMORY MUST BE RETURNED TO ITS NAME.
I read it aloud.
Isaac crouched beside me.
"That's not part of the original inscription."
"How can you tell?"
"The original language uses a different structure. This was added later."
My father examined the writing.
"Lyra."
I looked up.
"You think my mother wrote this?"
"I recognise her handwriting."
He touched the stone gently.
"She believed the seal had been damaged because the guardians had tried to control the Echo instead of understanding it."
"So the answer isn't to lock it away again?"
"Not necessarily."
I stared at the inscription.
The memory must be returned to its name.
I thought about the creature in the upper chamber.
It had said it didn't remember who it was.
My father had called it Seraya, but the creature had rejected the name. It had seemed confused, frightened, almost desperate.
What if the seal wasn't simply holding a monster inside?
What if it was holding a person who had forgotten herself?
"Maybe we shouldn't try to restore the seal yet," I said.
Korrin turned toward me.
"That is a dangerous suggestion."
"I know."
"An extremely dangerous suggestion."
"I heard you the first time."
He folded his arms.
"Explain."
I took a breath.
"The creature said it didn't remember who it was. The inscription says the memory must be returned to its name. What if we can't close the chamber until we understand what happened to Seraya?"
Isaac stared at me.
Then he looked at the symbols surrounding the pedestal.
"That would explain the modifications. Someone tried to change the seal so it could contain the Echo without restoring its memories."
"And it failed," my father said.
"Because the seal wasn't meant to work that way."
Korrin looked between us.
"So your proposal is to open a conversation with the thing that nearly destroyed this station."
"When you say it like that, it sounds unreasonable."
"Because it is unreasonable."
"Do you have a better idea?"
He paused.
"No."
"Then we're making progress."
I turned back to the pedestal.
The Tideglass was still glowing.
I could feel the chant waiting somewhere in the back of my mind, but I didn't know whether it would help.
For the first time, I understood that the words weren't a command.
They were a promise.
I had been treating the ocean as if it were a puzzle that could be solved if I found the right sequence of sounds. But perhaps the chant was meant to remind me of something the people who built Blackwater had forgotten.
The Heart didn't belong to us.
Neither did the memories it carried.
I placed the Tideglass beside the hollow rather than inside it.
Then I began to sing.
Softly at first.
"Nerai vael, thira en sol,
Let the deep remember all..."
The symbols on the pedestal brightened.
Water rose from the narrow channels in the floor, flowing around my feet without wetting my clothes.
Isaac stepped back.
My father whispered something I couldn't hear.
I continued the chant.
"Where the lost and living meet,
Guard the door beneath the deep."
The Tideglass lifted from the stone.
For a moment, it hung between us, surrounded by pale blue light.
Then a voice spoke.
Not from the walls.
Not from the chamber above.
From the Tideglass itself.
"I remember the promise."
The water stopped moving.
A second voice followed.
"I remember the betrayal."
The lights dimmed.
Then a third voice whispered a name.
"Seraya."
---
The chamber disappeared.
I was standing beneath an unfamiliar sky.
The water was gone, replaced by a vast expanse of pale stone. Tall pillars surrounded a circular courtyard, and beyond them lay a city unlike anything I'd seen in Arealis.
It wasn't built beneath the ocean.
It stood at the edge of it.
People moved through the streets, human and merfolk together. Some carried baskets of fruit. Others worked beside strange machines made of metal and crystal. Children chased one another between the pillars, laughing.
There was no fear in their faces.
No guards watching the borders.
No suspicion between the two peoples.
For a moment, I wondered whether I was seeing the world before the first betrayal.
Then I saw her.
A young woman stood beside a fountain at the centre of the courtyard. Her silver hair fell to her waist, and her dark eyes reflected the light around her.
Seraya.
She looked ordinary.
Not a ghost. Not a monster. Just a young woman who seemed tired of being asked to solve problems that should never have been hers alone.
A man approached her carrying a small crystal container.
"The council has agreed," he said.
Seraya looked at the container.
"Agreed to what?"
"To separate the memories from the Heart. They believe the disturbance will stop if we remove the source of its grief."
She stared at him.
"The Heart isn't grieving because it remembers. It's grieving because we broke our promise."
The man lowered his voice.
"People are afraid, Seraya. They want the disturbances to end."
"And what happens when they discover that removing the memories doesn't remove the truth?"
He didn't answer.
Seraya took the container from him.
"I won't help you erase what happened."
The vision shifted.
I saw the same courtyard filled with smoke. The fountains had stopped flowing, and the lights around the city flickered.
People were running.
At the centre of the chaos stood Seraya, her hands pressed against a glowing circle carved into the ground.
The man from before was beside her.
He was holding a fragment of the Heart.
"There's no time!" he shouted. "If we don't separate the memories now, the entire city will fall!"
Seraya looked at him.
"You promised me we wouldn't use it this way."
"I promised to protect the people."
"Then protect them without making them forget what they did."
The man raised the fragment.
The light erupted.
For one terrible moment, the entire city seemed to disappear beneath a wave of white.
When the light faded, Seraya was alone.
Her hands trembled.
Her expression was blank.
She looked around the ruined courtyard as though she had never seen it before.
Then she whispered, "Who am I?"
The vision broke.
I fell to my knees in the chamber.
Korrin caught me before I struck the stone.
"Selene!"
I couldn't answer immediately.
My head ached, and the taste of salt filled my mouth.
The Tideglass lay on the pedestal, dark and motionless.
Isaac was staring at the device in his hand.
"Did you see that?"
I nodded.
"What happened?"
I looked at my father.
He had gone pale.
"I think I saw the beginning of the betrayal."
He swallowed.
"Then we need to find out who that man was."
Before anyone could respond, a sound echoed from the stairs.
Footsteps.
Several sets.
Korrin drew his weapon.
"Who's there?"
A figure appeared at the top of the stairs, carrying a small lamp.
Then another followed.
And another.
The first figure stepped into the light.
Toren.
He looked from Korrin to Isaac, then at my father.
For a moment, he seemed unable to speak.
"What are you doing here?" Korrin demanded.
Toren ignored him.
His eyes had settled on the Tideglass.
"You're too late," he said.
I stood slowly.
"Too late for what?"
Toren looked at me.
"To find the truth before it finds you."
He raised his hand.
In his palm lay a small metal device bearing the royal seal.
"The queen has been arrested."
Korrin went still.
"What?"
"Someone has accused her of conspiring with the humans to destroy the Heart. The council has ordered her confinement until the matter can be investigated."
"Who made the accusation?"
Toren hesitated.
Then he looked directly at me.
"Someone who claims to have proof that your mother was responsible for the original betrayal."
My stomach dropped.
"That's impossible."
"I thought so too."
Toren lowered his voice.
"But the evidence includes a recording from Blackwater."
He turned the device toward us.
The screen flickered.
A woman appeared.
My mother.
She was standing beside the same man I'd seen in the vision, the one holding the Heart fragment.
Then she turned toward the camera.
And spoke words that made the room go silent.
"If anything happens to Seraya, the blame will be mine."
The recording ended.
I stared at the blank screen.
My mother had been involved in the original betrayal.
Or someone wanted us to believe she had.
Either way, we were no longer the only ones searching for the truth.
And whoever had made that recording had just turned my family into the enemy of an entire kingdom.
End of Chapter 37