The Ocean stopped fighting him.
It didn't pull. It didn't whisper. It didn't scream.
It simply moved out of his way.
Ren felt it happen not with his senses, but in the stillness between moments.
As if something enormous had turned its attention elsewhere, or bowed its head in acknowledgment.
He was no longer trespassing.
He was expected.
And then he saw it.
The arches came first.
Massive curves rising from the Ocean like bone spears.
White, cracked, etched with grooves that shimmered faintly like veins beneath translucent skin.
They rose high, curling above him like ribs from a sleeping god long buried.
Some were shattered at the tips, broken by time or pressure or some other kind of violence.
Between the arches drifted shadows thin veils, moving like cloth through water.
But when he looked closer, he saw faces in them.
Blurred. Shifting. Layered. Some screamed. Some wept. Others stared back at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
One whispered his name.
He didn't stop.
The ground beneath him changed. It grew solid not like stone, but like the idea of stone.
Something stable, imagined into place. His hands touched rough texture now.
Fractured shapes. A path forming where none had been.
The air grew cold.
Not biting. Not cruel.
Ceremonial.
That was the word that came to him. The silence took on weight. The shadows around him bent inward.
The Ocean curved tighter not like a cage, but like an invitation being folded open.
Then the wind returned.
It didn't make sound.
It didn't blow from any direction.
But it moved.
Like breath.
He looked up.
The arches ended in towers faint outlines at first, then sharper, more real.
They rose from the darkness like spires drawn in hesitation. Their shapes didn't obey physics.
Some bent at angles that defied structure. Others shimmered in and out of solidity, like they weren't convinced they were supposed to exist.
And in the center of them, a gate.
Massive.
Closed.
Its surface looked like stone but only from a distance. Up close, it was something else.
A wall of unmoving faces layered one atop another. Not screaming. Not crying. Just waiting.
Ren stepped onto the base of the rise.
There were no stairs. No slope. Just intent his and the Ocean's.
Each step forward felt like pushing through fog that didn't want to be disturbed.
The closer he came to the Temple, the more real it became.
Its towers bled shadow down their sides like ink running from ruined paper.
Its windows blinked shut the moment he looked at them, and reopened once he passed. The entire building seemed to breathe around him deep, steady inhalations of forgotten things.
He stopped ten paces from the gate.
And felt something shift.
Not in the Temple.
In himself.
His spine tightened. His throat dried.
A truth, not a word, pressed against his thoughts like a hot coin:
The Death Sovereign Temple.
He didn't know how he knew.
He just did.
As certain as breath. As certain as fire.
This place had been built not as a home, but as a grave.
A grave for something divine.
And he was not the first to arrive.
The path behind him was marked by others souls who had tried, crawled, reached.
But none of them had made it this far. He saw traces in the stone.
Fingers that had melted into the floor. Eyes embedded in the pillars, still blinking, still watching.
He didn't look away.
He didn't kneel.
He stepped forward again.
His legs were shaking. His breath shallow.
But his body held.
He had come this far.
And the Temple knew it.
From behind the gate, something breathed.
A soundless exhale.
And in that breath, the pressure returned.
Not the Ocean's.
Something older.
Something buried.
And Ren realized
He was not alone.
Not anymore.
He stood before the gate, unmoving.
The pressure in the air was unbearable now, but not painful. Not like fire. Not like drowning.
This was pressure that came from meaning. From history that had waited too long to be noticed.
Ren's hands trembled. Not from fear. From memory.
He'd forgotten how heavy his body was. How real bones felt inside flesh. How weight made breath matter.
The silence deepened.
It was not absence.
It was expectation.
Something behind the gate was waiting.
And then light.
Soft. White. Soundless.
It didn't come from the Temple. It came from above.
Ren looked up.
The air split like skin peeling away from old bone, and a new projection carved itself into the sky.
19 JUNE 2135
He blinked.
Once. Twice.
He whispered, "No…"
His voice cracked. His throat was dry, but the words still came out.
"One hundred years…"
He reached for the stone wall beside him, steadying himself as the number burned above.
A hundred years since the Ocean gave him back his voice.
A hundred years since he crawled toward this moment.
A hundred and ten years since he died.
The realization struck harder than any flame.
He hadn't clawed his way through this nightmare in days or months.
He had endured it for a century.
And the Ocean had tracked every second.
The date didn't fade.
It lingered. A monument in the dark sky. The second mark in silver fire.
The first date had been a death sentence.
This one was a summons.
The gate responded.
Not with sound.
Not with movement.
With breath.
Ren heard it inside himself before he felt it on his skin. A rush of air that didn't exist.
A shift in pressure that rippled through his chest like a bell being struck inside his ribs.
The silence surrounding the Temple cracked not into noise, but into structure. Like glass turning into crystal.
A low vibration passed through the ground beneath him.
The gate began to open.
Slow. Deliberate.
The faces carved into its surface did not move, but they aged as the door split open.
Some rotted. Others withered. One crumbled entirely into dust, leaving only a hollow indent.
Ren stepped back instinctively.
But the door did not stop.
It opened wide enough to reveal only darkness inside. Thick, dense, and unmoving.
Not shadow.
Not void.
Just… absence.
An interior that refused to reveal itself. As if what waited inside was not yet ready to be seen.
Or as if he was not yet ready to see it.
He looked up again.
The number still hung in the sky:
2135.
One century. A lifetime he never lived.
A century spent climbing through silence, screams, and madness—just to reach this doorway.
And the Temple had counted every step.
This wasn't just a gate.
It was a threshold.
A border between what the Ocean had become… and what still remained hidden behind it.
The air no longer felt like air.
It felt like breath from something large. Something asleep. Something stirring.
Ren placed one hand on the gate's edge.
It pulsed under his fingers.
Like skin.
And from the dark inside, something responded.
Not a voice.
Not a whisper.
A single thought pressed against his own, foreign and heavy:
"Come in."
He didn't hesitate.
He stepped across the threshold.
And the Temple swallowed him whole.