The call beneath

After Varethkaal is sealed, Clara and Ashani uncover evidence that WildWood was only one node in a network of ancient, sleeping powers. The roots of these dark entities—known to the Yanuwah as the Deep Ones—spread beneath ley lines and forgotten places. Now, something has begun to stir in the northwest, near a coastal town where strange weather, disappearances, and madness are creeping inland. Emily’s spirit lingers, tethered to the new node… and a child, born near the ruins, may carry a seed of the old darkness.

———-

The sea had never looked wrong to Clara before.

She stood on the edge of Blackhollow Cove’s narrow pier, her coat pulled tight against the wind, staring out at the grey horizon. The waves didn’t roll or break like she remembered from childhood vacations. They pulsed. Like veins.

Ashani stood beside her, arms crossed, eyes locked on the fishermen’s shacks scattered along the shoreline. A light drizzle tapped against their coats, misting their hair with salt.

“Still think this place isn’t cursed?” Ashani asked, barely above a whisper.

Clara didn’t answer right away. She reached into her bag and pulled out the artifact that had brought them here—a stone shard wrapped in kelp, mailed anonymously to her with no note, only a return address from this town. It wasn’t just stone. It was bone. She could feel it humming beneath her fingers, a low vibration like it remembered screaming.

“This was found in a fisherman’s net,” Clara said. “He was dead three days later. Blood drained through his eyes. Locals blamed a stroke.”

Ashani muttered a curse. “Subtle.”

The local police had said he “fell overboard,” but his boat was still tied to the dock, and the amount of blood they’d found made drowning unlikely. No one wanted to talk about it—not the mayor, not the sheriff, not even the dead man’s brother. Clara knew that silence. It was the same kind that smothered Terrell after the WildWood incident. The same kind that came when people had seen something they could never explain.

“Come on,” Clara said, tucking the artifact away. “Let’s meet the girl.”

⸻

The girl’s name was Isla.

Eight years old, black curls always tangled, eyes too old for her face. Her mother, Tessa, lived in a converted lighthouse just north of the main cove, a towering silhouette against the storm-washed sky. Clara and Ashani arrived just before dusk, the sky a bruised yellow behind shifting clouds.

Tessa was thin, wary, and clearly exhausted. “You’re the folklorists?” she asked at the door, eyeing their soaked boots and wind-chapped faces.

“Folklore investigators,” Clara said smoothly. “We’re looking into mythic anomalies for a grant project. And we’d love to ask Isla a few questions—if she’s up for it.”

Tessa hesitated, then stepped aside. “She hasn’t spoken much. But she draws.”

The lighthouse interior was sparse, filled with the scent of brine and old wood. Clara noticed driftwood charms above the doors, hanging like wards, and a thin line of salt across the windowsills.

“She said something’s watching her,” Tessa explained. “From the sea. She wakes up screaming. Sometimes sleepwalks to the water.”

Clara and Ashani exchanged glances. They knew the signs.

Isla sat in a corner near the fireplace, crayons scattered around her. She was drawing something—again and again—the same image, distorted slightly each time: a great black tree rising from the ocean, its roots made of tentacles, its branches of bone.

Ashani knelt beside her. “That’s beautiful,” she said gently. “What’s its name?”

Isla didn’t answer right away. Her fingers paused mid-sketch. “I don’t know its name,” she said. “But it lives below. It’s older than the water. It dreams me.”

Clara’s breath caught. Not “I dream of it.” It dreams me.

“What else does it do?” Clara asked, crouching beside Ashani.

“It’s waiting,” Isla whispered. “But not for me.”

⸻

That night, Clara reviewed everything.

The Yanuwah codex she’d translated over the last year had mentioned Neth’Yanuwah—a concept she hadn’t fully grasped until now. The Weeping Veins. Ley lines not as paths of light or life, but as old wounds in the earth where things had once entered—or been banished.

Varethkaal had been one such entity. But Marellen, as the fisherman’s dying scrawl suggested, was another. Salt-bound. Sea-fed. And Isla was its beacon.

Ashani came in from the lighthouse balcony, shaking off rain. “The clouds over the cove—Clara, they aren’t moving. They’re just… watching.”

“There’s a convergence here,” Clara said, flipping open her notes. “Like Hollow Hill. But older. There’s something buried in the seabed. A temple, maybe. Something the cult once worshiped before it sank.”

Ashani looked uneasy. “You think they’re still here?”

Clara didn’t answer.

⸻

The next day, they went to the local records office—one of the few buildings untouched by mold or salt decay. An old man named Harold, skin like parchment and breath like tobacco, gave them access to the archives.

They weren’t surprised to find the town had suffered a near-total collapse in the 1890s. A string of mysterious disappearances. Reports of madness. Ships dashed to pieces just beyond the lighthouse. The church, built inland, had burned down during a ritual gone wrong. No one had rebuilt it.

Ashani ran a finger along an old journal entry. “Listen to this: The sea gave back what we cast into it. But it was changed. Marked.”

Clara looked up. “There’s more than one seed.”

“And we just found another.”

⸻

That night, as wind howled against the lighthouse, Clara dreamed.

She stood on the seabed. No air, no light, just pressure and cold. Before her, a massive tree grew from a sunken temple of obsidian, its roots pulsing with green and violet light. Its branches swayed without current.

And at its base, Isla stood.

She was not afraid.

“I can hear Emily,” Isla said, her voice strange, distant. “She’s trying to help. But she’s being hunted.”

Then the roots snapped toward Clara, wrapping around her arms, her legs, her throat. She couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe.

Then—

She woke.

Ashani was shaking her. “Clara, come outside. Now.”

She stumbled out of bed, still dizzy. They climbed to the lighthouse balcony.

Far below, the ocean glowed faintly. And from its center, miles offshore, a black spire had risen.

A root.