The reef had stopped singing.
Not entirely, water always carried sound, but the rhythms were off. No chimefish clicks. No duskcall from the ridge vents. Just the long, slow murmur of current against coral and the distant hum of mana glyphs regulating flowpaths.
I stood near the outer wall of my old planter dome, watching two apprentices drag away unused harvest rigs. My name had already been scraped from the entrance shell. Someone had etched it out quickly, the marks still sharp.
I wasn't a planter anymore. The cast was quick to record the new title.
No one said it, but everyone knew. Once you donned Watcher gear, even once, you didn't go back. It changed how people looked at you, like you were touched by something not quite clean.
I didn't linger. The corridors felt thinner now, less like home and more like memory. I pushed off into the current, letting it carry me toward the ridge lanes. Just as the dome fell out of view behind me, a tide-runner streaked up from below, her fins flicking sharp and tight. She had purpose in her posture.
"Direct to you," she said, handing me a sealed glyph shard. "Marked urgent."
I cracked the edge seal and scanned the line:
"Southern trench scan team breached. Runners unresponsive. Secondary unit deployed. Report immediately to glyphbay six. –Yera"
No signature. None needed. There was only one person who would have given me an order shard like this anyway.
The urgency coiled through my chest like a tight knot. I turned and swam hard, my hands curled into fists as I cut through the middle channels toward glyphbay six.
The glyphbay pulsed with layered runes when I arrived, defense, coordination, resonance sync. Yera stood near the central pillar, fitting her armplate beneath a coil-thread gauntlet. Two other Watchers joined us, both older than me, both armed with full crescent-blades etched in shellbone patterns.
"You'll flank center," Yera said, barely glancing up. "Keep line formation. Do not engage unless I signal. If we lose contact, pull glyphthread and flare twice before retreat."
I nodded, adjusting the shoulder band of my shellplate. It still didn't sit right on me, as if the armor itself knew I hadn't earned it yet.
Moments later, we launched into the current, the water parting around us in streaks of turbulence. I fell into rhythm with the squad's pattern, gliding just behind and to the left, watching the glow from their weapons pulse faintly with each kick.
As we descended, the reef changed around us. The kelp curtains faded into jagged coral veins. The light narrowed. Scar-lines etched into the reef like forgotten script. Somewhere above, I could feel the pulse of the city, the hum of life and memory, but it was slipping away the deeper we dove.
This was the proving ground. Many hatchlings found their final chapters written among these reefs. The place of trials, of choices that cut deeper than bone.
The breach marker shimmered just beyond a sunken reef shelf. The glyph that placed it had already begun to dim, meaning the scout team had placed it, but not reinforced the ward.
We slowed as one. I made sure to pay close attention, shadowing behind.
The trench opened into a wide basin, half lit by highbeam tideglow, half shadowed by overhanging shellrock. Stray fruit pods floated among the rubble, half-rotted, likely fallen during the last tidequake.
I moved forward, letting my eyes adjust to the dim. The silence here wasn't normal. It felt stretched, forced, like something had told the reef to be quiet.
"What is that?" one of the Watchers asked, gesturing to a tangled driftvine net hanging from the upper coral spires.
Yera swam closer.
"It's a rig," she said. "Salvage-grade. Someone was collecting fruit."
"No runner reported a second harvest attempt," I said. "They wouldn't be cleared for this zone."
We knew before we saw him.
A flicker of motion at the far edge, subtle. Controlled. Not fleeing. Watching.
The Exile stepped forward into view from a crevice between shell formations.
He wore a fraycloak, a patchwork mesh of barnacle thread, fruit stalk, and silt-dyed scaleplate. His eyes were hidden behind a dull, smoked lens rig, cracked at the rim. In his hands he held a net of bruised fruit pods, half-pulped, oozing faint mana vapors.
He didn't raise a weapon.
Yera did.
"Identify yourself," she said, blade glinting.
"I'm not here for you," the Exile replied, voice flat but clear. "I came for what your reef is too proud to salvage."
"You're trespassing," the Watcher on my left said. "You know the consequence."
The Exile's mouth tightened. "I know what you'd prefer, that we let the fruit rot rather than touch what once was ours."
"You abandoned the reef," Yera said coldly. "The gods' protection, the rites."
"No," the Exile said quietly. "Only the city. Never the god. Never the fruit."
That gave me pause.
"You still feed it?" I asked.
He looked at me then, really looked. His lenses shifted slightly, revealing pale, reflective eyes beneath. Tired. Not wild like we were taught. Not vengeful.
"Someone must," he said.
He turned as if to leave.
The younger Watcher beside me moved too fast. Fired a warning bolt, nicked the Exile's shoulder just as he twisted away. The fruit pods scattered, spiraling through the water like ruptured lungs.
The Exile flared his fins, spun, and threw a shard of coral with practiced speed. It cracked against the younger Watcher's mask, fracturing but not breaking through.
"Enough," Yera shouted.
But the Exile was already gone, slipping into the silt folds with unnatural fluidity, trailing a faint line of blood behind him.
We hovered in silence.
The broken fruit drifted down to the trench floor like bruised stars.
Yera cursed under her breath and activated a scan flare. "We'll mark this zone and return with a shellmaster. There'll be questions."
She glanced at me once, unreadable. "You… alright?"
I nodded.
But I wasn't.
The swim back was quiet. Heavier.
I should've been tired, but I wasn't. My limbs ached, but not from exertion. Something deeper had settled there, conflict, confusion, guilt. All mixed into a kind of weight that didn't press down, but inward.
By the time we reached the glyphbay again, I could barely feel the coral beneath my palms. My head buzzed with too many thoughts. Too many questions I couldn't shape into anything useful.
I sat beneath the resonance vent for what felt like half a tide cycle, letting the hum wash over me. The coral glow soothed the pressure across my gills, but it couldn't touch what sat behind my ribs.
"They still honor the god…"
That part wouldn't leave me.
That night, the reef shook.
Not a quake, not a drift collapse.
A pulse.
I sat bolt upright in my cot, heart racing. The walls vibrated with low-pressure distortion. Outside, red glyphs flared in every current lane. Sirens pulsed in burst patterns, Watch-grade alerts.
I didn't think. I just moved. it was something that was drilled into all of us early on. the shadows are real, and we had to be ready.
I raced to the outer gate.
The reef was alive with movement, Watchers, guards, even runners from the Artisan sector all swam toward the southern channels. Tidecaster signals bloomed in every direction, painting the flowpaths with stuttering bands of warning light.
I passed a pair of shellbinders pulling shutter glyphs across a nursery dome, their hands trembling as they sealed the coral folds. Inside, hatchlings stirred in their tidepods, unaware of the shift around them. One pressed a tiny hand to the glass.
Further down the current, an elder crouched beneath a speaking reef, muttering fractured chant-rhythms through a voice flute, old hymns meant to call calm into the reef's heart. The tones crackled, uneven, like the reef itself didn't know how to answer anymore.
Near the lower spire, a group of apprentices fumbled with defensive flares, glyphlight flickering erratically as they tried to sync activation strands. A runner barked at them to focus. Another swam past, bleeding from one fin, eyes wide.
I tightened my grip on the cot-harness I'd grabbed in my rush, blade still at my hip. The water felt thicker now, dense with fear. Every sound echoed sharper. Every shadow stretched longer.
This wasn't a drill.
This wasn't another failing glyph or false alarm.
This was real.
Corruption and rot itself, taken form into repulsive life.
And they were already inside the reef.