Days — if they could be called days beneath the sea — passed in a quiet not quite peaceful.
The waters had stilled since the Deep's stirring. The remembered dead floated once more in serene silence, their faint light rippling gently like candles sheltered from wind. Yet something in the ocean had changed.
The sea breathed through Lyrielle now.
When she walked across the seabed of glassy sand, she could feel the pulse of the tide move through her veins, her heartbeat echoing the rhythm of the currents. She could hear voices that no one else could — memories that had been silenced, drifting like leaves across the water.
At first, she thought them dreams. Then she realised: they were calling her name.
Lyrielle… Lyrielle…
Each time she heard it, she saw flashes — a girl weeping by a window, a mother reaching for a child swallowed by the storm, lovers parting at the edge of a pier. The sea carried them all, and now, so did she.
Seloria watched her with a gaze both loving and uneasy.
Lyrielle had grown more luminous since that night — her skin faintly translucent, her hair flowing with streaks of light. The water seemed to bend toward her when she moved, as though recognising its kin.
"Do you hear them?" Lyrielle asked one day, her voice distant.
Seloria shook her head. "Only you do. The sea speaks through you now."
Lyrielle looked down at her hands. They shimmered faintly, as if touched by moonlight even in darkness. "It remembers everything, Seloria. Every sorrow, every vow broken or kept. I can feel it all."
Seloria reached out, her fingers brushing Lyrielle's cheek. "That burden isn't meant for one heart."
Lyrielle smiled faintly. "It's already within me. I only need to learn how to carry it."
That night — or what passed for night — she wandered alone toward the far edge of the remembered realm, where the sea grew thin and pale. Here, the light faded into stillness, and the water seemed to hum with memory unspoken.
She sank to her knees and touched the sand.
Instantly, the world around her flickered. Shadows took form — moments replaying themselves in the water: a child laughing, a woman singing, a storm tearing a ship in half.
Lyrielle gasped as the images blurred together — thousands of memories, each alive, each aching to be seen.
Then one memory caught her — a single thread of light among the storm.
It was Elaria. The kingdom she once knew, long before the sea swallowed it. The towers shone in gold sunlight, the air filled with music. And there, on the balcony, stood two girls.
Herself — and Seloria.
Their fingers touched as the wind carried laughter between them, pure and young and unaware of the sorrow that would follow.
Lyrielle reached out to touch the image — and it shattered.
The sea dimmed. The voices around her stilled.
In their place, another voice rose — deep, cold, and infinite.
"You have taken what was mine to bear."
Lyrielle froze. The water trembled.
"The sea cannot forget," the voice continued. "You would spare it sorrow — yet sorrow is its soul."
From the depths, a shape began to take form — a figure draped in black water, its face hidden by shadow. It had no eyes, only a shifting veil of darkness.
"Who are you?" Lyrielle whispered.
"I am the oldest memory," it said. "The sea's first grief. Before it learned to remember, it learned to mourn."
The figure moved closer, its shape bending the water around it. "You have touched what even I feared. The sea will love you, Lyrielle — but it will never let you go."
Lyrielle stood tall, her light flickering but unbroken. "Then let it love me. I will not be its prisoner — I will be its voice."
The figure's form shuddered, as if smiling beneath the waves.
"Then you must pay the price every voice pays — to be heard, you must first be hollow."
It reached forward, touching her chest with a hand made of shadow.
Lyrielle gasped — the touch burned cold, pulling the air from her lungs. The water trembled with her cry, and light erupted from her skin, swirling upward in a spiral of pale flame.
When the darkness receded, the figure was gone.
But Lyrielle felt it — a hollowness within her heart, a space carved by something vast and eternal. She fell to her knees, trembling, her breath shuddering through the water.
From afar, Seloria came running — her glow cutting through the gloom. She caught Lyrielle in her arms, her expression stricken.
"What happened?"
Lyrielle's voice was faint. "I think… I became part of it."
Seloria's eyes widened. "Part of what?"
Lyrielle looked up — her eyes now mirrored the ocean itself, vast and filled with light and shadow both.
"The sea," she whispered. "It remembers through me now."
From that moment, the water moved differently.
Wherever Lyrielle went, the current followed. Forgotten fragments began to rise — songs lost to centuries, names long erased, faces half-remembered. She had become the memory-bearer, the one who carried what the sea could no longer contain.
But as her power grew, so did the distance between her and Seloria.
The more Lyrielle remembered for the sea, the less she remembered of herself.