Whispers in the salt

The spire had vanished by morning.

The sky was clearer than it had been in weeks, and the ocean lay calm and glassy as if nothing had breached its surface the night before. But Clara and Ashani knew what they’d seen. The image burned in both of them: that impossible pillar of black stone rising from the deep, veined with pulsing green light. A root. A marker. A promise.

Clara stared at the water from the lighthouse kitchen window, her tea forgotten in her hands. She didn’t speak until Ashani sat beside her.

“It’s waking faster than Varethkaal ever did,” Clara said.

“Because it’s older,” Ashani replied. “The codex warned about the deep ones. Those who swam before light touched the sky.”

Clara opened her bag and pulled out her journal. Her handwriting sprawled across the pages—rushed notes, sketches, glyphs she hadn’t yet translated. In the center of one page: the name Marellen, drawn in charcoal, surrounded by symbols that bled when traced with seawater.

“We need to find where the spire came from,” she said. “The base of the old cove. The original Blackhollow temple was said to be built atop something older. We need to dive.”

Ashani blinked. “You mean go into the water? That water?”

Clara met her gaze. “If the seed is waking, we don’t have time to hesitate.”

⸻

Later that morning, they visited the dockmaster, who—after some gentle bribing and subtle coaxing—agreed to rent them a small boat and diving gear. He eyed them strangely as they prepped their equipment.

“You two sure about this?” he asked. “Tide doesn’t behave normal out there. Things pull that shouldn’t pull.”

Clara smiled with practiced calm. “We’ve handled worse.”

The man grunted and turned away, muttering something under his breath in what sounded like broken Latin. Ashani caught a few words and frowned.

“He said, The roots drink from the dead. The sea remembers.”

Clara inhaled slowly. “He knows more than he’s saying.”

⸻

They set off just before noon, the small motorboat skimming across the glassy water. The further they went from shore, the more unnatural the sea became. A silence pressed in—not peaceful, but oppressive. No birds. No wind. Just the steady hum beneath them, vibrating through the hull like a heartbeat.

Ashani adjusted her mask and oxygen tank, glancing at Clara. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

They plunged.

⸻

The water was colder than it had any right to be. Visibility was murky at first, but as they descended, it cleared in strange pulses—like the sea was breathing. Shapes began to emerge: old stones with Yanuwah markings, overgrown with black coral and barnacles that pulsed faintly.

And then, they saw it.

At the base of the sea trench, partially buried under sediment and time, rose the temple.

It wasn’t a structure so much as a wound. Obsidian stones jutted outward like broken teeth, and from its center rose a spiraling shaft of living stone, the spire they’d seen the night before. Green light traced its veins. Symbols glowed faintly.

A tree of bone grew from its summit, its branches stretching through the water with impossible grace.

Clara and Ashani hovered, awestruck. Their lights flickered, but they didn’t notice—too focused on the glyphs along the base.

Clara swam closer, brushing away silt. The symbols were almost identical to those found beneath WildWood.

She reached out—

—and the world vanished.

⸻

Clara stood in a memory.

Not hers.

A storm raged across the sea. Ships tore in half as tendrils of salt and light rose from the depths. On the cliffs above, robed figures chanted in a forgotten tongue. A child screamed as she was held over a pit of glowing seawater. The ground split. The ocean answered.

And from beneath the waves, it rose.

A mouth without form. Eyes that shimmered across dimensions. A voice like rust and lullabies.

Marellen.

Clara felt herself torn open by the vision. Not physically—but soul-deep. Something ancient noticed her. Not just watched. Recognized.

Then she was falling—

Ashani grabbed her, pulling her away from the glyph. Clara gasped, her oxygen mask barely holding. Her vision was blurred, and blood ran from her nose into the sea.

They swam back to the surface, bursting into the air like reborn things.

⸻

Onshore, Tessa was waiting with Isla, who had begun to draw obsessively again. The new sketches were worse. More detailed. One of them showed Clara and Ashani underwater—surrounded by roots. Another showed the spire—but this time, something climbing it.

Clara, still pale from the dive, looked down at the final drawing Isla handed her.

A woman, smiling gently, with eyes like deep water. Familiar. Kind.

“Who’s this?” Clara asked gently.

Isla didn’t answer. But Tessa, seeing the drawing, went pale.

“That’s my grandmother,” she whispered. “She vanished in the Blackhollow flood of 1957. Her body was never found.”

Clara’s mouth went dry.

Isla spoke then, voice distant.

“She’s still down there. But she’s not… her anymore.”

⸻

That night, the fog rolled in thick and black, and something knocked against the lighthouse door three times. No one dared open it.

And far out at sea, unseen beneath the waves, the tree swayed in rhythm with a heartbeat not its own.