{"Some places are not built but remembered—shaped by longing, held together by grief, and left behind by time."}
The Emerald Gold waited for us at the docks like a patient predator, sleek and gleaming beneath the overcast sky. The council leaders moved through the harbor like rulers of their domains, distant, formal, and sharply aware of my presence as a complication best kept at arm's length.
They spoke around me, their voices weaving a wall I could not cross. Lady Nerisca's eyes flicked over me now and then, calculating, unreadable. Ardanis's posture was rigid, like a knight guarding secrets. Kallion said little beyond what was necessary, his gaze sharp but cold.
Only Ellowen spared me more than a glance, and she lingered beside the railing, watching the tide shift beneath the ship's prow.
"You're an enigma," she said quietly, not looking at me.
I shrugged. "I'm not sure that's a compliment."
She smiled faintly, a ghost of old warmth. "It is not a curse either. Just what the world cannot accept."
I leaned against the wood beside her, feeling the pulse of magic humming through the ship's bones. "You do not think they are right? "
Ellowen's eyes darkened. "You don't belong in their world."
"They're afraid of what I might be." I caught her gaze then, searching for something in the depths of her pale eyes. "And they are right to be. I know Lord Ardanis tagged me along because he wants to use me."
Her hand brushed the rail near mine, close but not touching. "You are stronger than you know. And they will learn that soon enough." The wind tugged at her silver hair, loose strands catching the fading light. "But strength alone won't keep you safe."
I nodded, swallowing a bitter truth and behind us, voices rose again, sharp, clipped, and distant. I knew the others were deciding how to contain me, how to keep me useful but controlled.
"I don't want their protection," I said, voice low. "I want to be part of this."
Ellowen turned fully to face me then, her expression hardening just a little. The wind tugged at Ellowen's silver hair as she leaned closer, voice low enough that only I could hear.
"What do you think of Lady Nerisca?" she asked, eyes sharp and searching.
I hesitated. The question was a net, and I could feel the tension beneath her words—the hope for an answer, or a test. I said nothing at first and Ellowen did not press, just waited.
Finally, I exhaled, letting the silence fill the space between us. "She's dangerous," I said quietly. "More than any of us want to admit."
Ellowen nodded slowly, folding her arms against the chill. "She is like the sea itself. Calm on the surface but full of storms you cannot see until they break."
I glanced away toward the horizon, where the sky blurred into the restless ocean. "The council is hiding something," I said, my voice dropping even lower. "Why else would they send us here? Not just to deal with whatever is killing the sea creatures… but to seek something in the Pearl Castle."
Ellowen's gaze sharpened. "Morkai."
I met her eyes. "If Nerisca insists on asking the Abyssal Sovereign for help, then they must believe this is bigger than any of us know or have something else in mind.
Ellowen's jaw tightened. "Morkai is no ones Ally"
I nodded. "And yet here we are."
A brief pause stretched between us, the salt air thick with unspoken fears.
"Do you trust any of them?" Ellowen asked, voice barely a whisper.
I looked back at her, surprised by the sudden vulnerability. "I'm not sure trust is a luxury we have."
She gave a half-smile, rough around the edges. "Then we'll have to watch each other's backs."
I returned the smile, the faintest flicker of hope amid the gathering storm.
The mist rolled in thick as breath across the surface of the Emerald Gulf, swallowing the horizon whole. The Emerald Gold moved like a shadow through the grey silence; her sails heavy with sea-glass thread shimmering faintly beneath the fog's ghostly veil. The wards Lady Nerisca had placed hummed beneath the deck, twisting the ship's shape in the eyes of any who might watch shifting mirage of salt-streaked rocks, drifting kelp, and ghostly hulls. To the outside world, the Emerald Gold was nothing but a trick of light and sea.
Ellowen stood near the prow, silent but watchful. I joined her, letting the damp cold seep through my cloak, grounding me in the uneasy quiet. "We're ghosts now," she murmured. "Hidden between tides."
I nodded, eyes tracing the swirling mist. "This is for the best, to travel unnoticed. "
She glanced at me, eyes sharp beneath the hood. "You're still not telling me everything."
I said nothing. Some things were better left beneath the waves. The hours dragged on. The crew moved silently, every face set with the weight of what awaited us. I could feel the pull in my bones again, a deep thrumming, like the heartbeat of the sea itself.
When dawn broke, the mist thinned to a heavy grey curtain, revealing the waters around us turning darker, colder the air tasting of salt and old sorrow. Ahead, jagged cliffs rose like broken teeth from the sea, black stone veined with glowing coral that pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of some ancient beast.
Ellowen's voice broke the silence. "We have come far. And yet, I feel like we have only just crossed the threshold."
I swallowed hard, staring at the haunted fortress. "This is where the tide turns."
We rounded the last jagged outcrop of reef, and then we saw it.
The Pearl Castle rose from the sea like the ghost of a forgotten god. Built into the face of the cliffs and spilling out over black stone ledges, its towers gleamed with an iridescence that defied language, not white, not silver, not blue, but all of them at once, as if the ocean itself had sculpted it from moonlight and memory.
Walls of coral-glass curved like the inside of a seashell, every surface slick with brine and shimmering. Balconies jutted like wings from its sides, draped in hanging gardens of bioluminescent seaweed that swayed in the wind as if still submerged. Archways were etched with ancient tide-runes, glowing faintly beneath the rising sun, and the great central spire twisted upward like a horn of polished pearl, crowned with a beacon that pulsed with slow, steady light.
The gates themselves where a marvel two towering halves of a shell split clean down the middle, engraved with churning waves, leviathans, and storm-walkers lost to time. A thousand shards of sea-glass had been embedded in the surface, casting rainbow fire across the waves as the light caught them. Wind-chimes of bone and mother-of-pearl whispered overhead, their voices soft and eerie, like distant singing from beneath the waves.
We all remained silent, even Nerisca, ever poised and composed, had gone still. Her gaze lingered on the glowing veins of coral snaking through the walls, and I saw something like reverence flicker across her face.
General Kallion stood with his arms folded, head bowed slightly as if in the presence of something sacred and dangerous. Ardanis exhaled quietly beside him, and for a breath, he was just a man again, not a lord, not a leader, just someone who had reached the edge of the world and did not know what was waiting on the other side.
Ellowen whispered, "It's beautiful."
I could not answer. My chest ached with the weight of it. There was sorrow in those walls. Majesty, yes, but also silence and longing, coiled around the heart of this place like kelp around a sunken anchor. And in that quiet, I felt it again. Morkai. The castle was more than stone and enchantment. It was his memory that made manifest his prison and his throne.
Our thoughts were interrupted when the Emerald Gold stopped moving, and then a voice rose in the sea, "Who dares approach the Pearl Castle?"