The black water lapped at their boots like a living thing—cold, insistent, tasting of salt and forgotten names.
Shade and Lira stood at the shore of the Drowning Choir.
Behind them, the white city of Auralis sank completely beneath the waves. GONG… GONG… Bells tolled underwater, distant and distorted. The sea stretched before them—endless. A mirror of polished obsidian beneath a dying sun.
At the horizon, the Astral Tower rose—a needle threading nightmare into waking.
Lira's hand was steady in his. Shade's trembled.
The half-sword at his side still hummed with the Choir's dying song, the broken edge dripping faint constellations.
Reunion should have been peace.
Instead, silence pressed down—thick, listening.
The tower's whispers coiled like breath against his neck:
"One heart. One door. One oath."
Shade looked at her. The blue glow of the apple tree tattoo pulsed against Lira's wrist, veins of light weaving through her skin like roots through earth. Her eyes burned with the Wrathhound's fire—defiant, alive.
And all he could think was: If the Door demands one heart… will it take hers?
Lira: "You fell."
Her voice was quiet. "I felt it. Like the world cracked."
Shade: "The sword's half gone. And Vesper…"
RIPPLE—
The sea shimmered.
Not water—memory.
Steam rose from the surface, curling into forms: a boy in a sunlit courtyard, laughter sharp as broken glass. The vision wasn't theirs—the tower was forcing it through them.
A shard from the mask Shade had destroyed.
Vesper's Childhood — SFX: Tink… Plink… (Water Drips)
A boy—no older than eight—with hair the color of wet sand. Eyes too wide for secrets.
Around him, Auralis thrived—white marble, gold banners, markets humming with the scent of dreamfruit and starlight dust.
In the plaza, pools mirrored not the sky, but possibility.
A harvest.
A kiss.
A blade.
Elias—before he was Vesper—dropped a pebble into the nearest pool.
RIPPLE…
Visions bloomed: himself, older, crowned in light.
The city's savior.
He laughed, splashing again.
From the balcony, his mother smiled. The Oracle's handmaiden—eyes gentle, voice carved of tide and lullaby.
"One day, Elias," she whispered that night, tucking him into a bed of cloud-silk,
"the reflections will speak your truth. Listen when they do."
But the pools changed.
At ten, one showed the tower—bleeding black water into Auralis.
He woke screaming.
His mother soothed him.
"The sea dreams, little mirror. Give it your story, and it will spare the city."
At twelve, he received the mask—made from the Oracle's shattered reflection.
He wore it with pride.
He was blessed.
Until the day he saw the truth.
The heart-pool showed him the tower's summit.
His hand on the Door.
And his mother's face—melting into water.
Stay, the reflection mouthed.
Or drown us all.
He shattered the pool with a stone.
CRACK—!
Glass and blood and tears.
That night, the tide rose.
Not rain—the sea itself.
It swallowed the city.
His mother's song became the first verse of the Choir.
"Elias—reflect true."
He climbed the tower.
Died in the Glasswood.
Returned as Vesper—face masked, name devoured—hunting to delay the next verse of the hymn.
The vision bled away.
The sea stilled.
Shade dropped to his knees, the half-sword falling from his grip. CLANG—
Shade (hoarse): "That was… him. Before."
Lira knelt beside him, arm curling around his shoulders.
"The tower twists everything," she murmured. "Even hunters were children once."
Her words steadied nothing.
Vesper's pain was too familiar—echoing his own.
His family's faces flickered behind his eyes: his father's stony silence, his mother's trembling kiss.
And the whisper—
One heart.
Was it his? Hers? Both?
He clenched his fists.
Shade: "What if I open the Door and it takes you? What if—"
Lira seized his face, forcing his gaze to hers.
Lira: "Then I stay too. We break it together."
For a heartbeat, the fear cracked.
Her pulse thrummed against his chest.
The apple tree tattoo flared—a living bond.
The sea quieted.
But only for a moment.
SFX: WHOOOOOM—
A deep hum rippled across the water.
The obsidian surface parted, revealing a staircase of black pearl descending into the depths.
The Black Sea's Secret
They descended—hand in hand.
The water sealed overhead with a soft SHLUP—
Yet they did not drown.
They breathed the sea.
Bubbles drifted upward—each one a memory.
A drowning city.
A dragon's ribcage.
A girl's scream echoing across glass.
The seabed gleamed beneath them—a vast mosaic of mirrors, each tile a reflection stolen from another world.
At its center: a heart.
Not flesh—liquid obsidian, pulsing with the tower's rhythm.
THUMP… THUMP… THUMP…
Black veins fed into it, carrying voices like blood.
Then came the vision—pressed against the glass skin of the sea.
The Black Sea was no curse.
It was the tower's lungs.
It breathed in the unwritten stories of the dead—
And exhaled them as trials for the living.
Every drowned soul became a serpent, a storm, a song.
Every failure—another verse in the Choir.
But beneath it all—the heart hid a key.
Forged from the First Hunter's tear.
Maria's tear.
A relic strong enough to unmake the tower—
If sung to by two voices:
One of Reflection (Vesper's).
One of Naming (Shade and Lira's).
The heart pulsed faster.
THUMPTHUMPTHUMP—!
Shadows gathered—faces without eyes, mouths whispering without sound:
"Sing with us. End the hunger."
Lira's tattoo flared, blue veins of light dancing.
Shade's sword hummed in reply.
Lira: "It remembers."
Shade: "Then so will we."
Rage. Grief. Love.
Everything he'd buried ignited.
He saw Elias's mother.
He saw his own.
No more cages.
Shade (roaring): "We take it. For Vesper. For all of them!"
The sea howled.
Visions crashed against him—Lira sinking, her hand slipping from his.
He screamed back.
"NOT HER!"
They reached the heart.
Lira placed her palm upon it.
Shade pressed the broken sword's tip beside her hand.
SFX: THRUMMM—!
The obsidian rippled—liquid turning solid—rising, reshaping into a chain of black pearl.
A necklace heavy with the sea's sorrow.
Then the sea itself exhaled.
WHOOSH—!
They burst to the surface, gasping.
The shore was gone.
The sea lay calm—a glass lagoon at the tower's base.
Above, chains groaned—Maria's gate parting.
And there, waiting—Vesper.
The mask gone.
A boy's face beneath—scarred, tear-streaked.
Vesper: "You saw. The hymn ends with three."
Shade met those eyes.
Elias's eyes.
He nodded. "Then let's finish the song."
They joined hands—Shade, Lira, and Vesper—
and stepped through the threshold.
The tower shivered.
The Door listened.
The final ascent began.