The Silverwood's oppressive gloom began to thin, the twisted trees giving way to salt-scrubbed pines and wind-bent shrubs. The air, once thick with the cloying scent of decay and desperate life, was now cut through with a sharp, salty tang. The ground softened underfoot, becoming sandy. After two days of walking, the sound reached him-a constant, low roar that was not the wind through leaves, but the crash of waves on a shore.
He had reached the coast.
The town of Seabreeze was a sorry cluster of weather-beaten wooden buildings clinging to the edge of a cliff. The air here wasn't just salty; it was wrong. It carried a foul undercurrent of rot and something metallic, like old blood. The few fishermen mending nets on the dock had a hollow, haunted look in their eyes. They watched him approach, their gazes lingering on the staff and the B-rank badge, but there was no curiosity, only a weary hope.
"The water's poison," one of them rasped as Kaito drew near. He was an old man, his face a roadmap of wrinkles and sun damage. "The fish... they come up twisted. Eyes in the wrong places, too many fins. Some of 'em... scream." He spat onto the stones. "And the song... you'll hear it. Don't listen."
Kaito looked past him, to the sea. It was not a healthy blue, but a sullen, bruised grey-green. A thin, iridescent scum clung to the rocks along the shore. The "bad taste" in the air was overwhelming here, a suffocating blanket of corruption that felt ancient and deep.
"I'm here to help," Kaito said, the words feeling useless.
The old fisherman just grunted, pointing a gnarled finger east, down the coast. "The old shrine's that way. Where the Coral-King used to answer. Now there's just the black water and the song."
Kaito left the town behind, following a narrow, crumbling path along the cliff's edge. The further he went, the stronger the feeling of dread became. It was a physical pressure, pushing him back. The white flower the Dryad had given him, tucked safely in his tunic, remained dormant.
Then, he heard it.
It started as a faint, melodic hum, woven into the sound of the waves. It was beautiful, in a way that made his chest ache. A lament for lost homes, a promise of peaceful depths. It called to the deep, quiet part of him that was tired of the noise and the pain on the surface. Come down, it whispered without words. Come down where it is quiet. Where the weight is gone.
[Auditory hallucination detected. High-level empathic and compulsion magic. Source: Aquatic, origin unknown. Recommend mental fortitude.]
But it wasn't attacking his mind. It was offering a seduction. It was offering an end.
He shook his head, pushing the melody aside. He focused on the corruption, on the "bad taste." He was not here to rest. He was here to work.
He rounded a final bend in the cliff path and saw it. A natural stone archway led to a hidden inlet. In the center of the inlet, the water was not grey-green, but perfectly, utterly black. It was a void, a hole in the world filled with poisoned sea. This was the source.
And on the shore before it, kneeling in the wet sand, was a figure.
It was a young woman, or something shaped like one. Her skin had the pale, pearlescent sheen of a seashell. Her hair was long and dark, tangled with strands of glistening seaweed. She was humming, the source of the enchanting, sorrowful song. And she was crying tears that were not water, but a thick, black fluid that stained her cheeks.
She was beautiful, and her beauty was a monument to despair.
She sensed him and her song faltered. She turned her head, and her eyes were pools of the same absolute blackness as the water behind her.
"You are not one of the fishermen," she said, her voice echoing, as if coming from a deep well. "You are... loud. Your silence is so loud." She was sensing his contained power, the void within him that mirrored the one in the water.
"What are you?" Kaito asked, his grip tightening on the Leviathan Staff.
"I was the Singer of the Coral-King," she whispered, black tears flowing freely. "I sang the tides to sleep and greeted the dawn on the waves. Now... now I sing his requiem. And I sing for the others to join him." She gestured to the black water. "The silence down there is... peaceful. You could have peace, too. Just let go."
She was not a monster. She was a guardian, like the Bone Sentinel, like the Dryad. But where the Dryad had fought and adapted, the Singer had been broken. The corruption hadn't twisted her into a feral beast; it had hollowed her out, turning her purpose into a weapon of despair. She was the last, sad lighthouse of a sunken city, and her light now beckoned ships onto the rocks.
Kaito looked from her tormented form to the stagnant, black pool that had once been a place of power. This was not a foe he could simply pacify with a wave of his hand. This was a tragedy he had to undo.
The A-rank quest had begun.