For seven nights, the mist did not lift.
The sun came and went unseen, its light swallowed whole by a sky that no longer remembered day. The people of Elaria barred their doors and sealed their windows, whispering prayers to gods who no longer answered. The air was heavy with the taste of brine and silence.
And on the seventh night — the night of the white moon — the tide began to sing.
The sound came first as a murmur, a soft vibration that shuddered through the stone foundations of the castle, through the roots of the willow trees, through the bones of every living thing. Then came the rhythm — slow, measured, and vast, like the heartbeat of the world itself.
Lyrielle stood at her balcony, the silver hairpin glinting faintly in her hand. Her reflection in the glass door shimmered — her hair had turned paler still, and her eyes held within them the glow of something that was not wholly human.
She could hear Seloria's voice more clearly now, woven through the tide's song.
"The way is open, my love. The sea has remembered."
Her breath caught. The air around her shimmered faintly, rippling like heat above sand.
Below, the waters of the bay had risen beyond the edge of the cliffs. The ocean no longer lapped gently at the stone; it pulsed, swelling and retreating like a living creature. Within it, pale lights spiraled, taking the shape of forgotten forms — arms, faces, fragments of memory suspended in the current.
Lyrielle stepped forward until the mist curled against her skin like fingertips. "Seloria," she whispered, "I am not afraid."
"You should be," came the faintest answer — not cruel, but tender. "Fear is the last breath of the living."
She left the balcony and walked through the silent halls.
The walls glistened faintly with condensation, as though the sea were breathing through the stone. When she passed the grand mirrors, they no longer showed her image alone; sometimes Seloria's eyes appeared beside hers, or the faint trace of her hand upon Lyrielle's shoulder.
The castle had become a memory of itself.
At the great doors, Lyrielle paused. Beyond them, the fog pulsed with pale light. She pushed them open and stepped out into the night. The air tasted of salt and rain, and above her, for the first time in months, the clouds parted.
The moon hung enormous and white — not silver, not crimson — but pure, ghostly, and cold. Its reflection stretched across the water like a bridge.
And from the heart of that reflection, the sea began to rise.
Not as a wave, but as a shape — a woman's figure sculpted of light and foam, her gown flowing like mist, her eyes radiant with sorrow and longing. Seloria.
Every part of Lyrielle's body trembled at the sight of her. She could no longer breathe; the air itself seemed to hold her still.
"Seloria…"
"You called me back," Seloria said, her voice like the hush before a storm. "And now the sea remembers you, too."
Lyrielle took a step forward, the hem of her gown brushing the water's edge. "Then let it take me."
"If you come, there is no return," Seloria warned. "The world you know will fade. Your breath will belong to the tide."
Lyrielle smiled faintly, tears trembling in her eyes. "It already does."
She waded into the water. It was cold — a piercing cold that stole her breath and replaced it with stillness. The glow from beneath the surface brightened until it seemed she stood upon liquid light.
Seloria reached out her hand. For the first time, their fingers met without resistance. Flesh to flesh. Warm. Real.
And when they touched, the world changed.
The tide surged, not in fury but in release. The cliffs trembled. The bells of Elaria rang one final time, the sound drawn deep into the waves.
The moonlight widened, and the sea opened — not downward, but inward — a vast doorway of shimmering silver leading into the depths of eternity.
Lyrielle turned once, gazing back toward the sleeping city, its rooftops vanishing beneath the rising mist. "Forgive me," she whispered. "I could not forget her."
Then she stepped through.
The water closed behind them, silent as breath.
In the morning, Elaria was gone. Only the endless sea remained, smooth as glass beneath the pale white moon.
And sometimes, when the wind was still, a faint voice could be heard across the water — singing of love that would not die, and of hearts that remembered too deeply.