The Dawn Observatory was not on any map of modern Arealis.
That should have been our first warning.
Korrin had found its coordinates buried in an old navigation archive, while Isaac used the Tideglass reader to confirm that the location matched the signal recovered from Blackwater. According to the archive, the observatory had been built centuries before the current royal palace, back when humans and merfolk still shared their discoveries openly.
It had been abandoned after the Blackwater incident.
Nobody had bothered to record why.
I was beginning to suspect that the merfolk had a very particular approach to history: if something became inconvenient, seal it behind a door, erase the records, and hope nobody asked questions for another few hundred years.
Unfortunately for them, I had inherited my mother's curiosity.
And possibly her terrible sense of timing.
"You're staring at the map again," Korrin said.
We were travelling in a smaller submarine, one designed for narrow passages rather than long journeys. My father rested in the rear compartment, wrapped in a thermal blanket, while Isaac adjusted the navigation controls.
"I'm trying to understand why an observatory needs to be hidden."
"Because it was abandoned."
"That explains why nobody uses it. It doesn't explain why it disappeared from the maps."
Korrin considered that.
"Perhaps the council wanted people to forget it existed."
"That's a very convenient habit your council has."
"I've noticed."
He said it so seriously that I almost laughed.
Almost.
I turned back toward the window. The landscape had changed considerably since we left Arealis. The luminous gardens and tall coral towers had disappeared behind us, replaced by uneven rock formations and stretches of pale sand. Farther ahead, the seabed sloped toward a wide ridge where the water grew brighter.
There was something unsettling about the region.
It wasn't the darkness. I had grown accustomed to that.
It was the silence.
Even the submarine's gentle hum seemed intrusive here. No small fish darted past the glass. No glowing plants swayed in the current. The water looked empty, as though everything living had quietly agreed to stay away.
"Do you feel that?" I asked.
Korrin looked at me. "Feel what?"
I pressed my palm against the window.
A faint vibration travelled through the hull.
It came in intervals, almost like a heartbeat.
Isaac glanced at the instruments.
"We're picking up a low-frequency pulse. It isn't coming from the submarine."
"From the observatory?"
"Possibly."
My father sat up.
"Don't follow the pulse directly."
Isaac turned around. "Why?"
"Because the original observatory wasn't built to observe the stars."
Nobody spoke.
I looked at my father.
"What was it built to observe?"
He rubbed his forehead, searching his memory.
"The Heart's reflection. The researchers believed that certain light patterns could reveal changes in its condition before the changes became visible in the water itself."
"Like an early-warning system?"
"Something like that."
"And you knew about it?"
"I knew the research existed. Lyra never told me everything she discovered there."
He looked toward the window.
"She was frightened of what the council might do with it."
The submarine continued forward.
I wondered how many more places my mother had left behind, each containing another piece of a life I had never known.
It was strange to miss someone whose secrets seemed endless.
Sometimes I wanted to be angry with her. Other times, I wanted to believe that every secret had been kept for a good reason.
Neither feeling made the journey any easier.
---
We found the observatory beneath a natural arch of black stone.
At first, I thought it was another rock formation. Then the submarine's lights swept across the surface, revealing a curved glass dome embedded in the seabed.
Its outer structure was covered in pale mineral deposits, and several of its supporting pillars had collapsed. A narrow entrance remained open on the eastern side, though its protective doors hung crookedly from their hinges.
Above the entrance, a faded inscription had survived.
WHERE THE FIRST LIGHT FALLS, THE TRUTH REMAINS.
I read it twice.
"Subtle," I muttered.
Korrin gave me a sideways glance. "Would you prefer a sign that says, 'Secrets kept inside'?"
"Honestly? That would save us a lot of time."
Isaac parked the submarine beside the entrance. We checked our equipment, secured the Tideglass, and stepped through the opening.
The observatory was colder than the surrounding water.
Thin streams of light passed through the cracked dome, falling across the floor in long, shifting lines. The place had once been beautiful. Even beneath centuries of neglect, its architecture retained a strange elegance. Curved walls surrounded a central platform, and narrow channels ran beneath the floor, carrying water through a system of glass tubes.
At the centre stood a circular table covered in symbols.
I recognised three of them immediately.
The same curved lines engraved on the control key.
The same markings that had appeared on the Tideglass reader.
And the same symbol I had seen in my mother's notebook.
I approached the table.
"How do we activate it?"
Isaac examined the controls.
"Carefully."
"That's not an instruction."
"It's the only one I have."
He crouched beside the platform, brushing away a layer of sediment. Beneath it lay a series of recessed spaces, each shaped differently.
Four small circles surrounded a larger one.
I took out the case containing the fragments.
The moment I opened it, the three shards began to glow.
The fourth light, which had appeared in the case back in Arealis, flickered beneath them.
I stared at it.
"That fourth fragment still isn't physically here, is it?"
"No," Isaac said. "It's a resonance pattern. The case is detecting something that corresponds to the fourth position."
"So the display isn't showing us another shard."
"Correct. The actual fourth fragment may be somewhere else entirely."
I nodded, relieved that someone had finally answered one of my questions without introducing three more.
Korrin placed the royal access key in the central recess.
Nothing happened.
He turned it.
A soft click echoed through the observatory.
Then the entire platform lit up.
Lines of pale blue light spread across the floor, connecting the four circles to the central symbol. The water inside the glass channels began to move, and a low hum rose from beneath our feet.
A voice emerged from the walls.
"Royal authorisation recognised."
Korrin stepped back.
"That was easy."
The voice continued.
"Identity verification required."
A beam of light swept across the room.
It passed over Korrin, then Isaac, then my father.
When it reached me, the beam stopped.
The light turned silver.
"Bridgeborn identity recognised."
My heart lurched.
Isaac slowly stood up.
"That's new."
"You're welcome," I muttered. "Apparently, I'm a key now."
The central table opened.
A small projection rose from its surface, revealing a woman with long silver hair. Her face was unfamiliar, but her expression carried the same quiet determination I had seen in the vision at Blackwater.
Seraya.
She stood in front of a much younger version of the observatory, speaking to someone outside the frame.
"The Heart is not a vessel for grief," she said. "You cannot remove what it remembers and expect the world to remain unchanged."
A second voice answered.
"The memories are destabilising it."
"Then help it bear them."
"We have tried."
"And you have decided that forgetting is the same as healing?"
The projection flickered.
For a moment, Seraya looked directly at me.
Not at the room.
At me.
"If you are seeing this, then the seal has begun to fail. Do not trust the first account you are given. The one who ordered the separation did not act alone, and the one who carried it out was not the only person responsible."
The recording stuttered.
"Find the original witness. Return her name to the Heart. Until then, the Echo will continue to borrow the faces of the lost."
The projection disappeared.
I stood completely still.
"Her name," I whispered.
"Seraya," Korrin said.
"No. She said return her name to the Heart. We know her name already. What if that's not what she meant?"
Isaac stared at the empty projection.
"Perhaps the Heart no longer remembers her as an individual. The memories were separated, scattered, and mixed together. If the Echo has absorbed them, the name alone might not be enough."
"Then what is the original witness?"
My father had moved closer to the table.
He looked troubled.
"I think we need to see the rest of the recording."
I looked at him.
"There's more?"
He pointed toward the platform.
A new message had appeared beneath the central symbol.
ARCHIVE INCOMPLETE.
PRIMARY RECORDING STORED BELOW.
Naturally.
Because apparently, the ocean's favourite pastime was making us earn every single answer.
---
The stairs descended beneath the observatory, winding around a narrow shaft.
Korrin went first, followed by Isaac. I stayed close to my father, keeping one hand on the railing while the light from our equipment swept across the walls.
The deeper we went, the stronger the vibration became.
At the bottom, we found a circular chamber containing a single glass cylinder. Inside it rested a small black device, no larger than my hand.
A red light blinked on its surface.
Isaac examined it.
"An old recording unit."
"Can you access it?" I asked.
"Probably, provided it hasn't been damaged."
He connected the reader from Blackwater.
The device came alive.
A man's voice filled the chamber.
"I am recording this statement under the authority of the royal council. The separation of Seraya's memories has been approved as a necessary measure to preserve the Ocean's Heart."
Korrin stiffened.
The voice continued.
"The procedure will be carried out under the supervision of the council's appointed representative. Dr. Elias Voss will oversee the human equipment. Lyra has been assigned to stabilise the seal."
My father closed his eyes.
It was the first time we had heard the original account spoken so plainly.
Not an edited recording.
Not a damaged message.
A statement made by someone who had known exactly what was happening.
Then the speaker said a name.
"Lord Vaelor has confirmed that the operation will proceed at the next high tide."
Korrin went completely still.
I looked at him.
"That's the same Vaelor who's running the council now."
"Yes."
The recording continued.
"Seraya has refused to cooperate. If she attempts to interrupt the procedure, she is to be restrained. Under no circumstances is the original memory core to be destroyed."
The voice paused.
"Her cooperation is no longer necessary."
My skin prickled.
"Who is speaking?" I asked.
Isaac examined the device.
"The name should be in the recording metadata."
He tapped the controls.
A line of text appeared.
RECORDED BY: KING AERON.
Korrin's face lost its colour.
His father.
The king who had sealed the archives.
The king who had known about the research.
The king who had never told him the full story.
I wanted to say something, anything, but every possible sentence felt cruel.
Korrin stared at the recording device as though it had become something dangerous.
"My father approved the procedure."
My father stepped closer.
"That doesn't mean he understood what it would do."
"Did you hear him? He knew Seraya had refused. He knew they planned to restrain her."
"He may have believed the seal would hold."
"And if he did, does that make it acceptable?"
My father had no answer.
Neither did I.
Korrin turned away from us and walked toward the far wall. He stood there for several seconds, his hands clenched at his sides.
I wanted to follow him, but I knew better than to demand that he speak before he was ready.
Instead, I turned back to the recording.
There was another section.
Isaac had discovered a second file hidden beneath the first. It had no title, only a timestamp from the night of the incident.
He played it.
At first, there was only static.
Then my mother's voice emerged.
"Vaelor, you promised me the seal would remain intact."
A man's reply followed.
"The council has made its decision."
"You told me Seraya would be protected."
"She will be."
"Then why have you locked the chamber?"
Silence.
Then a metallic crash.
My mother's breathing became uneven.
"Open the door."
"Lyra, step away from the controls."
"You are going to destroy her."
"We are going to save the Heart."
"No," my mother said. "You're going to make it forget what you did."
The recording shook violently.
There was a sound like glass breaking, followed by a burst of static.
Then my mother spoke again, much more quietly.
"If anything happens to Seraya, the blame will be mine."
The file ended.
I felt as though someone had reached inside my chest and pulled everything loose.
There it was.
The sentence that had condemned my mother.
But now I understood what had come before it.
She hadn't been confessing to harming Seraya.
She had been accusing herself of failing to stop it.
Perhaps she had helped create the conditions that allowed the procedure to happen. Perhaps she had trusted Vaelor when she shouldn't have. Perhaps she had believed she could protect Seraya from a decision she had no power to reverse.
The recording didn't absolve her.
It didn't condemn her, either.
It simply showed that the truth had been much more complicated than the council wanted people to believe.
Korrin returned to the table.
"There's more," he said.
He had found a final section of the file.
A few seconds of static passed before another voice emerged.
This one was unmistakably my mother's.
"If Daniel is listening to this, then I failed to get the original memory core out."
My father gripped the edge of the table.
"Lyra..."
Her voice continued.
"The Heart has begun to absorb the memories that were removed from Seraya. The Echo is no longer contained within the chamber. It is learning to imitate the people we remember."
A pause.
"I don't know whether Seraya is still alive in any form we can recognise. But I know the Echo is not her. Whatever it shows you, whatever voice it uses, don't mistake a memory for the person who lived it."
My throat tightened.
I thought of the face in Blackwater.
The pale, star-like eyes.
The way it had called me little tide.
My mother's voice.
My mother's memories.
But not necessarily my mother.
The recording ended with one final sentence.
"I am taking the Tideglass to the place where the first light falls. If the seal fails, someone must return it to the Heart. Someone who can remember both worlds."
The chamber fell silent.
Everyone looked at me.
I looked down at the silver pendant around my neck.
The Tideglass.
My mother had hidden it inside the pendant before I was old enough to understand what it meant. She had carried the responsibility for Seraya's fate, the failure of the seal, and the secrets of two worlds.
And somehow, she had left the last part of that responsibility with me.
I wasn't sure whether I felt honoured or furious.
Possibly both.
"She knew I would come here," I whispered.
My father shook his head.
"She knew someone might."
I looked at him.
"That's not the same thing."
"No," he said quietly. "It isn't."
I wished he would tell me she had planned everything. That she had known exactly what she was doing and that every choice had been made to protect me.
But he didn't lie.
For the first time since we had found him at Blackwater, I was grateful for that.
---
A sharp alarm interrupted us.
Isaac turned toward his reader.
"The seal."
The display showed a new reading.
SEAL INTEGRITY: 5%.
The number changed.
4%.
Korrin moved toward the stairs.
"We have to return to Blackwater."
"Not yet," Isaac said. "The Tideglass is the stabilising component. If we return it to the lower chamber without restoring the missing memory, the system may consume the remaining shards trying to compensate."
"Then what do we do?"
Isaac looked at me.
"Your mother's recording says the Tideglass must be returned to the Heart. She didn't say Blackwater. She meant the original Heart chamber."
"The one beneath the ancient city?" I asked.
He nodded.
"The place Seraya was taken from."
Korrin looked toward the ceiling.
"That chamber is sealed beneath the oldest part of Arealis. The council controls access."
"And Vaelor controls the council," I said.
We had found the truth, but it had left us with a problem we could no longer ignore.
The seal was failing.
The queen was under arrest.
The man responsible for the original procedure was now in a position of authority.
And the Ocean's Heart was losing the memories that might explain how to save it.
I slipped the pendant beneath my collar.
"Then we stop waiting for permission."
Korrin studied me.
This time, he didn't argue.
He picked up the recording device and secured it inside his coat.
"We need to get this evidence to the queen."
"Can we reach her?"
"Not through the palace. But Toren knows a passage beneath the eastern gardens."
Isaac closed his equipment case.
"And after that?"
Korrin looked at the map, his jaw tightening.
"After that, we find out what my father ordered, what Vaelor changed, and why the Heart was forced to carry Seraya's memories."
I glanced at the inscription above the stairs.
Where the first light falls, the truth remains.
For centuries, someone had tried to bury that truth.
Now we had it.
And somewhere beneath Arealis, the Ocean's Heart was waiting for us to decide what to do with it.
I only hoped we weren't already too late.
End of Chapter 39