🌊 "Ink remembers what stone dares forget."
đź“Ť Setting: The Leviathan's Spine
A jagged underwater trench far beyond the Pavilion's known grounds. The sea here is darker, denser — where spiritual pressure twists the water itself into silent currents. Old Pavilion records warn that "even dreams drown here."
🧠The Journey Begins
Feng Xian travels aboard a spiritual skimmer — a manta-like construct of water qi — accompanied only by:
A Pavilion beast-guide: Shellback Zinn, a large, shelled creature that responds to Pavilion glyphs.
As they near the reef's edge, visions intensify — shadows of Naelthis's voice flicker like echoes in tide foam:
"Not a weapon… not a vessel… the Crown was a door…"
🌀 The Tear of the Reef
A whirlpool in the open sea, shaped like a slowly turning eye.
The water resists, sensing intention. When Feng Xian raises the Tide-Signature, the whirlpool freezes — and a pale doorway of inked coral unfolds below, glowing with the words:
"This door opens for those who drown seeking truth."
They descend.
🏛️ The Vault of Ink Ward Memory
The trench-vault is like a library grown from coral and shadow, littered with:
Ink ward Shades: guardians formed from Naelthis's final memories, bound by grief and silence.
Memory Pools: shallow tides that replay fragments from Naelthis's past — her defiance, her warnings, her fall.
Glyph-etched spiritual traps that reject those who fear the truth or cling to doctrine.
One such trap nearly ensnares Feng Xian when he doubts his purpose. It is Nai'Esha, projecting calm through her forest spirit mark, who helps him center his intent.
"You came to understand… not to possess. Let the sea show you what stone buried."
"You wear the voice that once shattered silence. You hold the shard that called the Crown. Then listen, Inheritor, to what we were made to forget."
🌌 The First Vision:
Naelthis, standing before an immense void-sea gate, forging the first Seven Crowns as anchors, not weapons.
Vel'Korr, still whole, warns her that one crown — the Seventh — hums with a different pulse… one that draws "something older than the sea."
A burning sky. A drowned palace. Screaming from coral that had mouths.
Then silence.
Feng Xian collapses.
🕳️ Cliffhanger Ending:
As Nai'Esha steadies him, a crack echoes through the Vault.
From the far side of the coral dome, something moves — an intruder?
Feng Xian senses hollow-tainted qi, twisted by ink.
"No… not them… it's him."
Kai'ren, somehow freed — or a shade using his face — steps into the Vault, his eyes black with swirling script.
"The ink remembers you too, brother."
🕷️ Interlude: The Bleeding Salt
đź“ŤLocation: Isle of Salt glass, beneath the Drowned Spire
A half-submerged monolith of barnacle-clad obsidian. Here the Bleeding Salt Sect, one of the Dark Tide Cult's autonomous branches, convenes in absolute silence — for their tongues were ritually removed upon initiation.
Their leader is no mere acolyte — he is:
🩸 Vaen'Xir, Voice of the Bleeding
Once a Pavilion elder.
Banished for delving into forbidden Void harmonics beneath the Leviathan's Spine.
His mouth is permanently sewn shut; he speaks only through psychic salt rituals that burn his mind each time he invokes them.
Commands Salt Wraiths: formless tide-spirits bound by the blood of drowned Pavilion traitors.
He sits upon a throne of cracked coral, surrounded by inverted Pavilion relics — each humming in pain.
🧠The Moment of Revelation
A wraith-echo (a tiny, translucent eel-larva steeped in Void ink) slithers into the Spire, curling around Vaen'Xir's neck.
"He stirs the Crown's drowned half…"
"He holds Naelthis's memory."
"He must be severed, before the Crown remembers us."
🔥 Their Immediate Response
Unseal the Dagger of Hollow Naming – a Void-crafted relic that names its victim into ruin, severing their fate from the Sea's cycle.
Activate their sleeper inside the Pavilion — a low-ranking disciple or groundskeeper secretly bound to the Bleeding Salt. They will mark the location of the Crown's resonance.
🕯️ Their Long-Term Aim
The Bleeding Salt does not seek to wield the Crown. They fear it.
What they seek is to shatter its memories before it reawakens the Great Leviathan of the Sixth Crown, an entity said to exist in dreams alone — bound in a storm yet unborn.
They believe:
"If even one Inheritor hears the Sea's true name, the Gate of Below will open once more."