By the third day, the salt gave way to glass.
Fragments of it glittered across the dunes, remnants of storms so hot they had melted the sand into glass. Every step fractured the light, scattering their reflections into a hundred broken ghosts.
Ya Zhen led the way, her cloak drawn close against the wind. "The coast isn't far," she said, though her voice carried no certainty. "You'll smell it before you see it."
Ji Ming walked a few paces behind, gaze fixed on the horizon. Sol followed, her steps slow but deliberate. The resonance between them had quieted since leaving the Salt Fell, but she still felt it, the faint pull beneath her ribs, the echo of Ji Ming's pulse brushing hers whenever he looked her way.
"Do you think the Mirror can reach this far?" she asked.
Ji Ming didn't answer immediately. "If it's inside the bond, distance doesn't matter."
"Then it's hearing this?"
He glanced at her, expression unreadable. "Then let it hear something worth listening to."
Ya Zhen turned her head slightly. "You talk to it as though it were a child."
Sol met her eyes. "Maybe it is. Maybe it's learning the way we did… by accident."
"The last thing this world needs," Ya Zhen murmured, "is another god that learns by accident."
They fell silent after that. The only sound was the wind scraping across the dunes and the faint, crystalline hiss of glass breaking beneath their boots.
When the first trace of sea-scent reached them, it was faint, not saltwater, but a dusty memory of it. Sol breathed it in anyway, a hollow echo of what the ocean must have been before the Emperor drained it.
By dusk, the dunes sloped into a basin of dark sand where the ruins of an old outpost crouched. Stone walls half-buried in salt, wooden beams long petrified by wind. Faded banners of the Red Courier still hung from a broken archway, their sigils bleached almost white.
"This is it," Ya Zhen said. "We'll rest here."
The air inside was cool and stale. Sol traced one of the sigils on the wall. "Your order built this?"
"Before my time," Ya Zhen replied. "When the Couriers still believed secrecy could save them."
"Did it?"
Her eyes softened. "For a while."
They lit a small lantern. Its flame flickered uncertainly, stretching shadows long across the floor. Ji Ming sat beside the doorway, sharpening his blades out of habit. The rhythmic scrape filled the silence between breaths.
Sol watched him for a long moment. The tension in his shoulders had eased, but his eyes remained distant, focused on something she couldn't see.
"You're thinking about what she said," Sol said quietly.
Ji Ming didn't look up. "Ya Zhen's right. If the Mirror learns through us, then every mistake we make teaches it something dangerous."
"And every act of mercy teaches it something different."
He met her gaze finally. "You really believe that?"
"I have to."
The wind howled through the doorway, scattering dust over the lantern flame. The light flickered, then steadied again.
Ya Zhen's voice cut through the quiet. "Stop arguing philosophy and listen."
They did. At first, there was nothing. Then, faint and distant, a sound that didn't belong to the wind. A low hum, rising and falling like a heartbeat.
Ji Ming stood, blades in hand. "The Mirror?"
"No." Ya Zhen stepped to the window, her posture sharp. "Something else. Something moving under the sand."
The ground trembled slightly. Outside, the dunes shifted, waves of dust sliding toward the outpost as though drawn by an unseen tide.
Sol felt her pulse stutter. "Is that—"
"Qi," Ya Zhen said grimly. "Residual. The kind used for binding."
From the direction of the sea came a faint blue glow, spreading across the sand like veins of light. Shapes began to rise, skeletal remains of ships half-buried beneath the glass, their hulls glowing from within.
Ji Ming's grip tightened on his blades. "What is that?"
Ya Zhen's eyes darkened. "A graveyard waking."
Sol stepped closer to the doorway. In the faint glow, she could see faces forming in the glass — not real, but impressions, echoes of sailors caught in the last reflection before the sea vanished.
The hum deepened, resonating in her chest. Her breath synced with it, unbidden. Ji Ming reached for her shoulder. "Sol—"
"I hear them," she whispered. "They're not ghosts… they're echoes."
"Of what?"
"The sea."
Outside, the glowing wrecks shifted, light pulsing like the rhythm of waves returning to shore. The hum built until the glass itself seemed to vibrate.
Ya Zhen backed away from the window. "Whatever this is, it's drawn to resonance. You two need to stay apart."
But it was already too late.
The thread between Sol and Ji Ming flared, bright enough to cast twin shadows against the wall. The hum from the wrecks matched their pulse exactly… heartbeat for heartbeat.
Sol's vision blurred. She felt something vast stir beneath the earth, a memory of tides and thunder and light. The same voice that had whispered through the salt now spoke again, deeper, closer.
You remember me.
The glow surged, flooding the outpost in cold blue light.
Then… silence.
When the light faded, the dunes outside were still again. The wrecks had vanished. Only faint trails of melted glass remained, curling like veins around the outpost.
Ya Zhen's fan closed with a soft snap. "Now the sea remembers too."
Sol exhaled shakily. "What did it want?"
Ji Ming looked toward the horizon, where the faintest shimmer of water now glimmered under moonlight. "It wanted to come home."