The days that followed were unlike any before.
Elaria no longer slept in silence. At night, faint voices drifted through the streets, carried by wind and tide alike — half-song, half-prayer, echoing the melody Lyrielle had first heard beneath the moon.
Children murmured in their sleep. Fishermen woke weeping, claiming they had seen women with eyes like stars walking beneath the water. The bells of the chapel began to toll without touch of hand, each strike resonating like a heartbeat through the bones of the city.
And Lyrielle, ever since she looked into the crypt's well, had ceased to dream of anything else.
Each night she found herself walking the ocean floor, her gown trailing like smoke through lightless depths. Beside her, Seloria walked too, her hand sometimes brushing Lyrielle's, sometimes dissolving into foam. In that world beneath the waves, sound carried differently — each word stretched and deepened, echoing endlessly until it folded back into itself.
"The world above is thinning," Seloria said, voice soft as the shifting tide.
"Each time you listen, you open another door. The sea remembers through you."
Lyrielle turned toward her, hair streaming in slow motion around her pale face. "Then let it remember. Let it bring you back."
Seloria smiled faintly, sorrow shadowing her beauty.
"It may bring something back, my love. But not as it was."
When Lyrielle woke, she found herself standing at her balcony, the sun long risen. Her gown was damp. In her hair were strands of seaweed, still wet with salt.
She could no longer tell when she had walked in dreams and when she had walked in waking.
By the week's end, the mist had grown so thick it blanketed the city even at noon. The markets were silent. The bells tolled again, softer this time — like a heartbeat fading.
From her balcony, Lyrielle watched as the sea glowed faintly beneath the veil of fog, its rhythm pulsing in perfect harmony with her own. When she pressed her palm to her chest, she could feel it — the ocean's steady, sorrowful cadence, moving through her veins like a second pulse.
The castle itself seemed to change. The corridors lengthened; their shadows deepened. In certain corners, the stone walls glistened faintly as if damp, and faint murmurs could be heard within them — whispers shaped like her name.
She began to write less, and wander more. Each time she passed a mirror, she glimpsed something strange: a second reflection just behind her, always out of focus, with eyes far too bright.
The servants had fled by then. Only the silence remained — and the song.
That evening, Lyrielle went again to the willow garden. The air was heavy with mist, glowing faintly from within. The tree's long silver leaves brushed her shoulders as she passed beneath.
"Seloria," she whispered. "They are afraid. The city is dying in its sleep. What have I done?"
The air trembled. From the mist, Seloria's form appeared once more — clearer now than ever before, her outline shining like the edge of the moon.
"You have answered what was buried," Seloria said gently. "The sea does not take without reason. You have loved with a heart that dared not forget — and so the world remembers through you."
Lyrielle's throat tightened. "Then tell me how to stop this."
Seloria stepped closer. Her presence filled the air like the scent of rain.
"To end the song is to end the bond," she whispered. "Would you forget me, Lyrielle?"
For the first time, Lyrielle hesitated. Her heart ached with the weight of the question — the choice between her beloved and her people. The sea's call throbbed faintly beneath her ribs, like a living tide awaiting her answer.
Tears welled in her eyes. "I would never forget you. Even if it costs me the world."
Seloria's gaze softened, though her form flickered.
"Then the world will drown with us."
The mist coiled around them. The last thing Lyrielle felt before the vision faded was Seloria's hand against hers — warm, alive, impossibly real.
That night, as the city slept, the waves rose higher than they ever had before. The bells tolled once, twice, then fell silent.
And from the heart of the sea came a single haunting chord — the sound of a world remembering too deeply.