The ocean did not rage. It did not howl or crash against the shores in protest. Instead, it carried on in quiet defiance, its surface smooth, its current steady. To those who did not listen, it was as if nothing had changed. But beneath the stillness, the sea was watching. The depth carried secrets, just as they always had. Some were buried beneath layers of time, forgotten even by those who once feared them. Others were fresh wounds, open and bleeding into the tides. Something had unsettled the balance. The currents carried no songs from the captured ones, no laughter woven into the shifting tides. Their absence was not marked by sound or fury-it was marked by silence. And silence, in the ocean, was never empty.
Above, on the cliff overlooking the restless waves, Darian stood in the shadows of Blackstone keep. The wind pulled at his cloak, salt-laden and sharp, as it swept inland from the churning sea. The storm clouds gathered, heavy and brooding, a canopy of darkness that mirrored the unease gnawing at him. He had watched the water for centuries, seen it rise and fall, consume ships whole, and cradle the island like lovers. But tonight, the sea was different. It breathed with a slow, deliberate rhythm as if tasting the air for something lost.
Darian's eyes narrowed, the crimson glow of his gaze catching the faint light of the distant horizon. He could feel the shift-not in the winds or the tides but in the very fabric of the world. Something was stirring beneath the surface. It was more than murmurs of vanishing sailors, more than the quiet rumors of strange catches in the fishermen's net. It was deeper, older- a silence that spoke louder than any storm.
His mind drifted back to Everlyne, the way she had fled from him, fear etched into her face. Whatever haunted her it was tied to the water, to the secrets buried within Armand Vayne, and it was also connected to the sea. Darian turned away from the ocean, the shadows of the keep enveloping him once more. He had seen the ocean countless times, but this was different. This was a reckoning.