Chapter 1: The Lantern Swimmer
The City of Aethelgard was known as the Jewel of the Shallows, but its true heart lay thirty feet down, where the silt settled and the light-wells glowed. Elias knew that heart better than anyone. He was a Lantern Swimmer, one of the few who maintained the subterranean gas network that pulsed life into the city's canals, illuminating the water from below.
The water was always a perfect forty-eight degrees, thick with the slow, ancient memory of the city. For Elias, it wasn't just water; it was the Archive.
He swam with the smooth, rhythmic grace of someone who spent more time in the canals than on the sun-drenched marble above. His suit was heavy leather, treated with whale oil and sealed with brass clasps, and the air hose trailed behind him like a pale serpent, connected to the pump cart driven by his younger, perpetually grumpy apprentice, Pip, who waited somewhere far overhead on the Grand Canal bridge.
Elias was currently working on the deepest, oldest channel—the Stygian Channel, a winding artery beneath the financial district where the memory was heaviest. Here, the water held entire epochs: the faint echo of the first stone being laid, the anxious rush of ancient gold, the cold resolve of old treaties.
He reached the maintenance hatch for Lantern 7-B. The gas jet was sputtering, casting a sickly, pale green light. He gripped the heavy wrench, but as he leaned close, the water pulsed, not physically, but mentally.
Elias froze, his gloved hand hovering over the valve. The Archive was speaking.
Normally, the memories were ambient—a gentle pressure of past emotions. But this was sharp, recent, and entirely out of place. It was like a shouted word in a library.
He stopped breathing, allowing his mind to sink into the cold depths of the Channel. The memory unfolded like black ink dropped into clear water: the smell of expensive tobacco and ozone, the glint of a signet ring belonging to Chancellor Thorne, and the low, tense voice of a woman he didn't recognize. They were on a barge, just hours ago, arguing over ledgers and loyalties.
"The agreement is nullified," the woman's voice echoed in his inner ear, the memory-sound scratchy and filled with fury. "You promised me the votes, Thorne. You promised me the Council."
Chancellor Thorne, the revered leader of Aethelgard's Council, was not supposed to be meeting anyone in the Stygian Channel at midnight. His memory-presence was a wave of pure, cold panic, followed by an act of quiet, brutal finality—a single, heavy ledger, wrapped in canvas and lead, being dropped over the side of the barge.
Elias saw it happen—the ledger sinking rapidly past him, a small, dark torpedo carrying secrets. The memory faded back into the ambient gloom of the Archive, leaving Elias with a residual feeling of dread and the acrid, coppery taste of fear in his mouth.
He was still holding the wrench, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against the thick leather of his suit. He had stumbled upon a high-level treason, a secret recorded not in ink, but in the elemental memory of the city's deepest waterway.
Lantern 7-B was still sputtering. He quickly tightened the valve, the light steadying to a reliable blue-white glow. His mission was complete, but his job as a simple Lantern Swimmer was over. He had seen what he shouldn't have, and the Archive was now dangerously loud.
Elias adjusted the weights on his belt and began the slow, agonizing ascent, leaving the silent truth of Aethelgard's corruption floating in the cold, deep water below him. He was no longer just a swimmer; he was the bearer of a sunken archive, and the light on the surface felt less like safety and more like a target.