The ridge drills left my arms numb and my gills stinging, but I didn't stop until the bell sounded. Vonn had worked us hard, harder than usual, and by the time he gave the final signal, half the class was trembling. No one complained. No one dared. We collapsed against the coral troughs and let the current wash off the grime and sting in silence. Siala sat a short distance from me, her fingers twitching with lingering glyph energy, her eyes fixed on some far-off point in the water.
I didn't speak to her. Not yet. My breath was still uneven, my limbs stiff with exhaustion, but I welcomed it. The ache grounded me. It reminded me that I'd survived what others hadn't. The breach. The spawn. Whatever that final thing was that looked at me and didn't finish the strike. I still didn't understand it, not fully, but it stayed with me like a pressure behind my ribs.
I left the troughs slowly, gear in hand, and made my way down the coral spiral toward the storage halls. The light near the archive walls dimmed with the cycle, casting long threads of gold and green across the etched reefstone. Old murals of castes in formation wrapped around the walls, their faces worn but still proud. I caught a glimpse of one—a Watcher, blade raised, defending a cluster of planters holding saplings in their arms, and paused. My own blade felt heavier on my hip.
Down the corridor, younger initiates from the agricultural caste filed into their dorms, their satchels stained with bloom pulp and tangleweed cuts. One of them noticed me and straightened. I nodded. She blinked twice, surprised, and nodded back. I moved on before anyone else could look.
At my dome, I stripped off the dirty harness with effort, each knot feeling harder to reach than the last. The gear was scraped raw from training. My shoulders throbbed. I dropped the armor beside the cot and reached for the soft sponge recessed into the reef wall. My hands ran accross my scales with the sponge, pulling away grit and glyphdust. I kept washing long after it was clean. When I finally turned, my fingers brushed the edge of the cot's base.
The seedstone was tucked beneath the ridge panel, nestled in its bed of woven kelp. I pulled it free and held it in both hands. It pulsed softly, steady, like always. Comforting. The ash coral had finally sprouted a new line, branching out in a curling spiral. It was overgrown. One of the tangleweed vines had twisted too far over the top, tangling with the bloom node.
I stared at it a moment longer than I meant to. Then, slowly, I reached for the trimming knife and cut the vine back. Carefully. Precisely. It wasn't about appearance. It was about balance and Harmony. The coral shimmered faintly once the vine was gone, its edges glowing with slow mana. That small correction, one I'd ignored for cycles—felt more significant than I expected.
I sat for a while after that, legs folded, arms relaxed, seedstone in my lap. I didn't meditate, not exactly. I just… let the reef move around me. I listened to the rhythms of the dome, the tide pulses through the side walls, the distant shifting of sediment across the walkways. It was the first time since the breach that I felt like I was part of the reef again, not just reacting to it.
But peace never lasted.
That cycle, a ripple spread through the watchbays. Quiet at first, then more pointed. Whispered talk of Exile sightings near the reef's edge. At first, no one confirmed it. Just flickers of movement, unusual sonar echoes, harvest rigs missing fruit near the outer bloom shelves. Then came the patrol shards.
Six sightings. Three confirmed Exile identities. One faint glyph trace with no reef authorization. That was enough. The council convened. I wasn't part of that meeting, but I heard pieces, first from Ashekan, who relayed his frustrations through clenched teeth as we sharpened practice blades, then from Yera, whose silence afterward said more than her words ever could.
They'd found something else, too. A second corpse. Not like the one from before. This one was smaller, more degraded, but it bore the same internal tech, the same unnatural fusion of stolen mana and crafted stone. Only this time, it had glyph-burns etched across the outside of its shell.
That meant it had been here longer. That meant someone had fought it before. During the next training block, Vonn said nothing for half the session. He just stood there, watching us drill. When someone asked if the rumors were true, he only nodded. "They were seen," he said. "Closer than they should be."
"Exiles?" someone asked.
"No. Not just them."
We didn't push further, all of us aware it was a touchy subject. Later, as we cleaned the racks, Yel muttered near me, "If the Exiles are working with the invaders…"
"They're not," I said firmly.
He raised a brow.
"They may have left," I continued, "but they're not monsters. Some of them had children, families. They didn't all flee. Some were forced. Others chose it for reasons we'll never understand."
"You've never met one," he countered.
"I have."
He didn't ask for details, but he gave a sideways glance in my direction. That night, I took another path home. I swam along the western ridge, past the old archive lanes and under the shellvine arches near the bloom troughs. It was quiet there, Peaceful even. Until it wasn't.
A low pulse caught my attention, flickering along the southern channel. I veered toward it, keeping low, trailing near the flow-shadow of a reef column. Near the edge of visibility, I spotted a figure.
No strange metalic armor, no glow of an awakened, and not rushing tword me like a vicious shadow beast. it was just… watching. They didn't move. Neither did I. For a moment, we just floated there, two outlines mirrored in the current. Then the figure turned, fins flashing once, and disappeared into the deeper dark.
No threatening words. No physical engagement. Just presence, but i still reported it. too much was happening to not, and that was enough to set the reef on edge.
The next morning, new glyphs were etched near the shellvine lanes. Patrols were doubled. The bloom pools were rerouted to higher ground. A discussion broke out among the shellbinders about reinforcing the demi-god's supply line.
"We can't let the fruit rot," one of them said. "The Exiles haven't tried to take it, but if it falls to shadow…" "It won't," said another. "He guards it."
"But if the pools drain, if we fail to feed him…"
"He'll starve before he harms an egg."
They all agreed, and so did I.
The god might be ancient, but it wasn't cruel. It wouldn't risk the hatchlings. Even the Exiles knew that. They might have forsaken the reef's rules, but they hadn't forsaken the deity that faithfully guards the eggs. The reef still fed them. And through that, the god still guarded their kin. It made me wonder, if they weren't enemies, and they weren't allies, then what were they?
Council reconvened that evening. The elders met under full glyphseal. No one was supposed to hear. But word traveled, it always did. Ashekan said the corpse had been part of a scouting unit. Vonn said it was likely the others were mapping our defenses. Shemril, the eldest of the artisan caste, claimed the mana fusion was too crude to sustain itself long. "They'll burn out," he said. "The organs weren't meant to be used that way."
"They don't care about longevity," Yera replied. "Only function."
"Their next step is full invasion," another elder warned. "They're testing our perimeter. Seeing how far they can push before we respond."
"What of the Exiles?" That hung in the water a long time. "They haven't helped," someone said. "They haven't hindered," came the reply. It wasn't an answer. It wasn't meant to be.
When the next assignment list went live, my name was listed for paired patrols with Ashekan again. I found him near the weapon rack, sorting beacon lines. He didn't look up when he handed me my shard. "You ready?"
"Always." i felt confident we would be able to handle almost any situation paired with Ashekan. We left the bay in silence. This time, we moved along the southern archway, near the place the bloom shelf had cracked last cycle. The coral had begun to regrow, but the scars were still visible. So were the shadows.
"Exiles used to harvest here," Ashekan said finally.
"Used to?"
"Before the reef claimed it. They used to call it Vine Hall. Said the mana fruit grew cleaner here."
"It still does." i replied. "Yeah," he said. "But no one wants to admit they were right." We didn't speak again for a while. Then, suddenly, he stopped. "There," he said, pointing toward a low shelf beneath the ridgeline. I saw the fruit net first. Half full, pulsing with faint light. Then the figure, small and fast, darting away into the current. They dropped the net and vanished between two reef folds.
"Should we pursue?"
"No," Ashekan said. "Let it go."
"Why?" i asked. "Because sometimes," he said quietly, "you have to let people feed the god." His words hit home for me. I started to seriously question if we should be treating exiles like we do. Not all of them are bad. The rest of the patrol went by without incident. we didnt say much else to each other along the patrol either. before too long we were back, and giving our report.
I returned to my dome in silence. The seedstone glowed faintly in the dark, the trimmed vine curling back into place like it had always belonged that way. I set it gently beside the cot, curled around it, and let the current lull me. No dreams. No words. Just the weight of the reef pressing softly around me.