The flower grew where the Inverse Spires once pierced the heavens. Its petals, obsidian veined with silver, drank starlight and wept shadows. Sera knelt beside it, her hands trembling. She no longer knew if the tremor came from exhaustion, the Old Ones' whispers, or the weight of what she'd sown.
Finish it. But don't look back.
Malakai's final words coiled in her chest, sharp as thorns. She had done as he asked—unwoven the Seal, reshaped the bleeding edges of reality—but the cost clung to her like a second skin. Her veins shimmered faintly, silver threading through blue, and her shadow… her shadow moved when she did not.
The survivors called her Weaver-Queen.
They huddled in the ruins of the Moon Towers, these last shards of humanity. Some bore scars of the Old Ones' touch: a baker whose hands bloomed constellations, a child whose tears pooled like liquid mercury. Others wore their wounds inward, their minds frayed by the new world's song. They followed Sera not out of loyalty, but because she was the only compass left in a storm of unraveling laws.
"It's happening again," murmured Kael, a former Chronographic Knight whose clockwork heart now ticked backward. He pointed to the horizon, where the sky rippled like pond water struck by stone.
Sera didn't need to look. She felt it in the pull of her silvered blood—a distortion, a fold in reality. The Old Ones were restless, their dreams pressing against the fragile borders she'd stitched from stardust and grief.
"Prepare the Tidecallers," she said.
Kael hesitated. "The last time we used them—"
"The last time bought us three moons' peace. Would you rather spend your final nights unmade?"
He left silently, gears grinding in his chest.
The Tidecallers were not living things. Fashioned from the bones of fallen Starweavers and anchored by shards of the shattered moons, they stood at the city's edge like sentinels. Their song was a low, grieving hum that bent the air into barriers. For now, they held.
But as Sera placed her hands on the nearest Tidecaller, its melody faltered. Visions flooded her—not of the past, but of futures that might be. A shore where waves crashed upward into the sky. A mountain that breathed. A ship with sails woven from shadows, cutting through a sea of liquid light.
And a voice, rough with salt and laughter: "Seek the Last Tide, Weaver-Queen. Where all rivers meet."
She recoiled, gasping. The vision clung, persistent.
The Last Tide.
She'd heard the phrase only once before, scrawled in the margins of Malakai's journals. "The giant-kings' final pact, written in the heart of the storm." He'd dismissed it as legend. But now…
"Sera?"
Verin stood behind her. Or a memory of him—his form translucent, fraying at the edges. The real Verin had dissolved into stardust weeks ago, but fragments of him lingered, echoes trapped between realities.
"You look terrible," he said, grinning his old, crooked grin.
"You're dead," she replied flatly.
"And you're hallucinating. What's your point?" He floated closer, his ghostly fingers brushing the Tidecaller. "The Last Tide isn't a place. It's a promise. The giant-kings' failsafe, in case their precious Seal ever broke."
"How would you know?"
"Because I helped bury it." His smile faded. "Elara and I, before he… changed. We bound it with three anchors: a compass that points to true chaos, a map written in godblood, and a ship that sails the void between stars."
Sera's pulse quickened. "Where?"
Verin's form flickered. "Follow the Moonshadow Fleet. But beware the Drowning City. It remembers—"
He vanished as the Tidecaller's song surged, reality snapping back into place.
The Drowning City
They found it three days later, half-submerged in a sea of liquid time. Spires of black glass rose from the waves, their reflections showing not the present, but moments stolen from the dead. Here, a lovers' quarrel frozen mid-scream. There, a child's birthday party, candles burning backward.
The Moonshadow Fleet circled overhead—phantom ships crewed by shades, their sails billowing with solar winds. Sera's group rowed silently, the Tidecallers' hum muffled by the city's whispers.
"This is madness," Kael muttered, steering their makeshift boat between jagged ruins. "Even if the Last Tide exists, it's probably a trap. Or a metaphor."
Sera said nothing. Malakai's journal lay open on her lap, its pages filled with sketches of a compass rose overlapping a grinning skull—a symbol she'd seen nowhere else in their world. Until now.
Carved into the base of a half-drowned archway, worn by centuries of tides: the same skull, its eye sockets filled with glowing algae.
"Here," she said.
They anchored the boat and waded ashore. The water clung like cold hands, whispering secrets Sera fought to ignore. "You could let go," it sighed. "Let the currents take you somewhere softer."
The archway led to a chamber sealed by a door of corroded metal. Its surface was etched with scenes of the giant-kings' final days: a fleet of ships vanishing into a maelstrom, a crown tossed into the waves, a pact signed with ink that bubbled like poison.
Kael traced the carvings. "This isn't history. It's a warning."
Sera pressed her palm to the door. The metal shrieked as it opened, revealing a vault filled not with gold, but memory.
Ghosts of the giant-kings moved through the chamber, their voices layered like thunder.
"Bind it to the void."
"No—let the tides decide."
"The pact must hold!"
At the room's center sat a chest, its wood blackened by age. Inside lay three objects:
1. A Compass, its needle spinning wildly, pointing to no direction and all.
2. A Map, its parchment blank until Sera's silvered blood dripped onto it, revealing a constellation shaped like a ship.
3. A Ship's Figurehead, carved in the likeness of a woman laughing, her eyes twin stars.
Kael inhaled sharply. "The Argent Whisper. My grandfather told stories—a ship that sailed the edge of reality, crewed by fools and kings."
Sera lifted the figurehead. Power thrummed through it, ancient and reckless. "We need to find the rest."
"Why? Even if we rebuild that damned ship, where would we go?"
The answer came not from Sera, but from the walls. The giant-kings' ghosts turned as one, their hollow eyes fixed on the chest.
"To the storm," they intoned. "Where the First Tide waits."
Above them, the Moonshadow Fleet's song shifted, harmonizing with the Tidecallers' hum. Somewhere in the distance, the sea began to boil.