Chapter 41 - The Deep Script Homework
** Mist-Space Orchard, timeless**
The salt-water-that-isn't-wet swirls around my ankles, tugging like it's curious.
I'm still bleeding from the palm onto the black tablet, and the Deep Script is drinking it like wine.
Dacia watches me, ancient eyes narrowed.
I smirk inside my own head, loud enough for her to hear.
**Celeste (mental voice, deadpan):**
You know the whole "blood is thicker than water" thing?
Turns out it's still a liquid.
And according to sophomore biology, it's like… 83% water.
So technically, family is mostly ocean.
Dacia actually snorts (an eight-thousand-year-old queen making a sound like a teenager who just won an argument).
**Dacia (dry, fond):**
*Brat.*
*Poseidon is going to hate you.*
**Celeste (grinning):**
Good.
Hate keeps people honest.
The tablet pulses, almost like it's laughing.
A single Atlantean glyph rises off the stone and brands itself onto the inside of my wrist (liquid silver, moving like a wave).
The crown above my heart flares in approval.
```
Language Mastery: 40% → 41.3%
Deep Script acquired: 1 / 48 lines
Current mood: chaotic aquatic petty
```
I flex my hand.
The glyph ripples, ready.
**Celeste (out loud, to the orchard, to the sea, to whatever gods are listening):**
"Come at me with your floods and your tridents, fish-dad.
I've got family that's 83% seawater and 100% done with your drama."
Dacia actually laughs this time (real, bright, proud).
**Dacia:**
*Keep that attitude.
You're going to need it.*
The tide rises higher.
Class is just getting started.
And I've got a new cheat code:
Turns out blood really is thicker than water…
but it still knows how to swim.**STEAM & SHADOW**
**Book 4: The Mountains That Kneel**
**Chapter 8 – The Deep Script**
**Celeste POV – Mist-Space, timeless (real-world date: June 7, 2028 – 3:11 a.m.)**
The orchard is gone.
In its place is an ocean that hangs upside-down above me, black water full of stars.
I'm standing on nothing.
Dacia is beside me, but she's not the queen I know.
She's younger—my age—hair wild with salt, wearing nothing but a leather cord around her neck holding a single shark tooth.
Her eyes are storms that have never seen land.
**Dacia (voice like drowning bells):**
*This is where it began.*
*The Deep Script isn't learned.*
*It's remembered.*
*And it remembers you.*
She touches my forehead.
The bloodstone cracks open like an egg.
Liquid starlight pours out, but instead of falling, it rises into the upside-down ocean.
The water answers.
It crashes down—not as a wave, but as words.
Forty-eight lines of Atlantean script, each one a living sentence made of pressure and salt and the memory of drowning.
They slam into me one after another.
I scream.
The first line:
**"The sea was lonely before it learned to bleed."**
I feel every creature that ever died in the ocean, every ship that sank, every tear that fell into salt water.
The second line:
**"Blood is water that learned to love."**
I taste Poseidon's regret—the day he gave the script to a mortal girl who looked too much like the daughter he lost to his own pride.
The third through the twentieth:
Stories of queens who tried and failed, cities that rose and fell, loves that turned to coral and bone.
I'm crying blood and starlight.
My body in the real world is convulsing—I feel it distantly, like a dream.
But I don't stop.
Twenty-first line:
**"The crown is a cage until the queen chooses the key."**
I understand.
The crown was never the power.
The choice was.
Twenty-second through fortieth:
Every time a bearer chose wrong.
Every time the sea won.
Every time the world paid the price.
I'm on my knees in the nothing, lungs full of salt that isn't salt.
Dacia kneels with me.
**Dacia (whisper):**
*Forty-one to forty-eight are the ones that break you or make you.*
*Poseidon's final gift.*
*He wrote them the day he realized even gods can be wrong.*
Forty-first:
**"Forgive the tide that tried to kill you.
It was only trying to bring you home."**
I think of the Forty-Eighth.
Of the girl in the mirror who wanted to be whole so badly she was willing to erase me to do it.
I forgive her.
The crown above my heart flares white-hot.
Forty-second through forty-seventh:
The words that drowned Atlantis the first time.
The ones Poseidon hoped would never be spoken again.
I speak them anyway.
Not to destroy.
To **heal**.
The upside-down ocean flips right-side up.
The stars fall into me like rain.
When the last syllable leaves my tongue, the mist-space is quiet.
Dacia is crying (real tears, for the first time in eight thousand years).
**Dacia (voice small):**
"You did it.
One hundred percent.
Deep Script and Vinča both.
The first since… since before the flood."
The HUD explodes across my vision, then settles into something new.
```
LANGUAGE MASTERY: 100%
DEEP SCRIPT: 100%
CROWN INTEGRITY: 47 / 47 (Transcended)
Title Unlocked: QUEEN OF SEA AND STORM
New Reality: The Forty-Eighth is no longer your shadow.
She is your mercy.
```
I look at my hands.
They're glowing with symbols that move like living water and living fire both.
Permanent this time.
Not on my skin.
In it.
Dacia hugs me (the first time she's ever done that).
**Dacia (whisper):**
"Poseidon's going to be insufferable when he finds out a sixteen-year-old girl just surpassed him with kindness."
I laugh until I cry again.
When I step out of the mist-space, it's dawn in Shambhala.
My crew is waiting, eyes wide.
Remy takes one look at me and drops to his knees.
Not in fear.
In awe.
**Remy (voice shaking):**
"Celeste… you're glowing."
I am.
Every symbol I've ever learned is visible under my skin like galaxies in marble.
I smile, and the crown above my heart spins once, slow, content.
**Celeste:**
"I finished the homework."
Seras whistles.
**Seras:**
"Remind me never to piss you off again."
Kayo bows (actually bows).
**Kayo:**
"The sea itself would kneel now."
Rowan's coffee mug slips from his fingers and shatters.
**Rowan (whisper):**
"Impossible."
I walk over, pick up the pieces, and hand them back whole.
**Celeste (soft):**
"Not impossible.
Just love doing its job."
The mountains outside the window tremble once.
Then they bow.
Atlantis just felt its oldest enemy wake up gentle.
And the queen who could drown the world?
She's choosing not to.
For now.
That's the scariest part of all.
**Shambhala, dawn, June 7, 2028**
The symbols under my skin answer my heartbeat.
One soft pulse, and they sink back beneath the surface like tide going out.
The glow fades.
My skin is just skin again (Porcelain, silver scar, faint tan lines from Hot Springs sun).
Only the crown above my heart still spins, quiet and content.
I look up.
Remy is still on his knees, gold eyes wide, breath caught somewhere between fear and worship.
I step forward, slide my fingers into his thick black Caddo hair (silk and cedar and summer nights), pull him up to me, and kiss him like the world isn't watching.
Deep.
Slow.
Like we have all the time the oceans tried to steal from us.
He makes that low, broken sound he only makes when he forgets words exist, hands finding my waist, pulling me flush against him.
The crown flares once (happy, warm, approving).
When we finally break apart, foreheads still touching, his voice is rough.
**Remy (whisper):**
"You taste like lightning and salt water."
**Celeste (smiling against his mouth):**
"Good.
Means I did it right."
Seras fake-gags dramatically from the sidelines.
**Seras:**
"Get a room, Your Majesties.
Some of us are still processing the fact our best friend just out-godded a god."
Kayo's tails curl, amused.
**Kayo:**
"I ship it."
Rowan just picks up his newly-repaired mug, refills it from thin air, and mutters:
**Rowan:**
"Children.
I'm surrounded by children who can drown Atlantis."
I laugh (real, bright, sixteen).
The symbols stay hidden.
The power stays ready.
And the boy who's been my heartbeat since I was fifteen holds me like I'm still just Celeste.
Not the queen.
Not the storm.
Just his girl.
Perfect.
Atlantis can wait another day.
Right now, the only ocean I'm interested in is the one in his eyes.
** Shambhala dawn, June 7, 2028**
I'm still half tangled in Remy, foreheads pressed together, the blackbird bead warm against my scalp, when Seras clears her throat dramatically.
**Seras (grinning like a cat who just discovered arson is legal):**
"So… while we're speed-running god-tier powers and making out on mountaintops, when do I get to meet Kōjin, sis?"
She spreads her arms, and the Blazing Wukong outline flickers around her like a living solar flare, nine tails of pure plasma fanning behind her.
**Seras:**
"I mean, you just full-combo'd Poseidon's DLC.
My turn.
I've got a fire god who owes me a family reunion."
Kayo's ears twitch.
**Kayo (dry):**
"Kōjin is… particular.
He once set an entire island on fire because someone served him lukewarm sake."
**Seras (eyes lighting up):**
"Perfect.
I like my gods with commitment issues."
Remy snorts against my neck.
**Remy:**
"Pretty sure the last person who called Kōjin 'dad' got turned into a torch."
**Seras (shrugging):**
"Worth it.
Besides, I'm ninety-percent sure he's been leaving me Post-it notes in my dreams for the last six months.
They're all on fire.
It's flirting."
Rowan finally recovers from his shattered-mug incident and sighs like a man who's about to regret everything.
**Rowan:**
"Kōjin and I have… history.
He still hasn't forgiven me for the 1622 incident with the volcano and the very expensive tea ceremony."
**Seras (clasping her hands):**
"Road trip to Japan after we finish terrorizing Atlantis?"
I laugh so hard the crown above my heart does a happy little spin.
**Celeste:**
"Absolutely.
Family reunion tour.
First we drop in on an ancient empire, then we go yell at fire dad."
Seras pumps a fist; actual suns erupt from her knuckles.
**Seras:**
"That's the spirit!
I'm bringing marshmallows."
Kayo mutters something about "insurance premiums" and "international incidents," but she's smiling.
Remy kisses the corner of my mouth, voice low and warm.
**Remy:**
"Storm queen, sun queen, and whatever chaos Kayo is.
The gods never stood a chance."
I look at my ridiculous, perfect, world-ending family (glowing, grinning, ready to burn or drown anything that looks at us wrong).
The symbols stay hidden under my skin.
The power stays ready.
And the next god who wants to test us?
They're about to learn what happens when love finishes its homework.
Bring it, Kōjin.
Your daughter's got questions.
And a lighter.