The ascent is a blur of physical exhaustion and emotional desolation. I abandon my usual stealth. I ignore the kelp lines, the silent patrols. I let the rising thermal water drag my heavy, useless limbs upward.
When I cross the boundary line, the texture of the water changes. It becomes warmer, sweeter, and thicker. The taste of my home, a taste I once craved, now curdles in my gills. I have to fight the urge to retch.
The shining city is asleep. The bioluminescence dims to a rhythmic, dreamlike pulse.
I swim through the old maintenance tunnel, emerge into the dark shadows of the Silt District, and swim up toward the high residential spires. I expect to be caught. A part of me craves it.Arrest me, I direct the thought at the empty plaza.Put me in a holding cell. Give me a physical reason to stop this ceaseless, agonizing movement.
But no one stops my ascent. The guards are positioned on the outer perimeter, their backs to the city, their faces turned outward into the dark. They are hunting monsters.
They don't know the monster is already inside the city walls, and I'm a broken Vael mourning a shark.
I reach my private quarters.
I slide the heavy stone door shut behind me and collapse onto my woven sleeping ledge. I don't wash the heavy, metallic scent of the trench from my skin. I want to keep this last piece of him with me, even if it is the scent of the place that rejected me.
I curl my body into a tight ball, wrapping my long fins around myself for a fragile, useless sense of security, and I close my aching eyes.
But sleep does not come.
I listen.
I press my ear to the cold stone wall, straining for a low hum. I listen for a deep vibration in the rock. I listen for anything, any sound resembling the deep, heavy voice that has become the center of my world.
There is only the suffocating, perfect silence of the reef.
Days bleed into one another like water into silt. The passing of currents becomes meaningless. I stop marking their shifts. I stop attending the communal meals in the grand plaza, letting the other Vaels' chatter wash over me like background noise.
I exist in a waking fog, a gray fugue where colors have lost their saturation and sounds have become muffled. I go to my mandated restoration shifts, moving through the motions with mechanical precision. I polish the decorative Bone Chimes in the central gardens until my fingertips protest. I nod at the passing elders, my face carefully blank. I force a hollow smile when Taren tells a terrible joke near the armory, the sound of my own laughter like grinding stones.
I'm the perfect, exemplary Vaelis.
But inside my own mind, I'm screaming.
Every dark shadow cast by the coral structures mimics his broad shoulders. Every shift in the water pressure makes my head snap around, expecting a pale face and a scarred, outstretched hand.
He never comes.
"You look terrible," Mira says.
We hover in the back of the armory, organizing the heavy hunting spears. It has been a full week since I left the bone comb on the Anvil. A week since the crushing silence began.
I look up at her. My golden eyes are gritty and swollen from lack of sleep. My scales are dull because I refused to wear the ceremonial pearl dust. I look like a fading ember, slowly losing my light.
"I'm fine," I say, my voice raspy from disuse. "Just tired from the restoration shifts."
"You're not fine," she says, her tone leaving no room for argument.
She puts down her heavy slate clipboard and swims over to my side of the rack. Her expression is strange today. It's soft andpitying, but a hard, nervous edge of frustration hides beneath the surface.
"You haven't eaten a full meal in four days, Vaelis," she says, her eyes scanning my face with clinical precision. "You're losing weight. Your trailing fins are tearing at the edges because you are not grooming them."
"I don't care," I mutter, turning back to the spears, my movements stiff and unnatural.
"You're mourning," she says.
I freeze. The spear in my hand becomes ten times heavier, threatening to slip from my numb fingers.
"What?" The question escapes my lips before I can stop it, my voice barely audible.
