The morning the silence broke, the sea was different.
For weeks, its rhythm had been constant — gentle and steady, like the breath of a god dreaming beneath the waves. But that morning, the air was alive with tension. The gulls screamed and fled inland. The water glimmered not silver, but steel.
Callista sensed it before she saw it. Something had shifted. The air tasted of metal and storm. She descended the temple's worn marble steps, her bare feet brushing against moss and salt.
The temple stood at the edge of the world — beside the shore, yet beyond mortal reach. Jagged cliffs walled it off from the realm of men, and the seas that surrounded it devoured any ship that dared to approach. Only the chosen, or the cursed, could stand upon this sand.
And she had been both.
Once, the sea had claimed her — pulled her from the mortal coast, wrapped her in darkness, and delivered her here. Since that day, she had lived alone within the marble husk of the temple, listening to the tides breathe and the wind whisper her name through its hollow corridors.
No mortal voice had reached her since.
And loneliness, when left too long in silence, becomes its own kind of prayer.
She had spoken to the sea sometimes, half in jest, half in despair — told it her secrets, her fears, her forgotten laughter. But lately, even the sea had grown quiet, as if the god beneath it had turned his face away.
The silence had grown so vast it hurt to breathe.
And somewhere beneath those endless depths, something ancient heard her ache.
The god who was the sea — who had not known rest since losing the one soul that could calm his storm — felt the pull. Her longing, soft and human, rippled through the water like a forgotten melody, and the tide itself turned toward her.
He did not remember choosing to go. The ocean simply carried him.
Through the mist, she saw it — a dark shape drifting closer across the restless foam. The sea, usually violent near this shore, moved strangely calm around it, as though guiding it rather than swallowing it.
Her pulse quickened. She moved closer, the waves licking her ankles as she peered down.
A man.
Through the mist, she saw something — a dark shape drifting closer across the restless foam. The sea, usually violent near this shore, moved strangely calm around it, as though guiding it rather than swallowing it.
Her pulse quickened. She moved closer, the waves licking her ankles as she peered down.
A man.
He floated facedown, limp as seaweed, the tide carrying him with unnatural gentleness toward her feet. She hesitated — she should have turned away, should have let the sea reclaim what it had brought. No mortal man could set foot here.
Yet something in the stillness pressed her forward.
She knelt, her robe soaking through as she rolled the figure onto his back. His skin was pale, his lips faintly blue, and around his wrist gleamed a silver band etched with runes that shimmered faintly beneath the sun — alive, breathing.
She pressed her ear to his chest. A heartbeat. Faint, but there.
"You shouldn't be here," she whispered. "No one can reach this place."
His eyes opened. Not slowly — sharply. They were gray, not the gray of storm clouds, but the gray of stone deep beneath the ocean, untouched by light.
"The sea brought me," he said hoarsely. "It wouldn't let me drown."
Her breath hitched. "Who are you? A sailor? A thief? A priest cursed by the gods?"
He gave the ghost of a smile — the kind that shouldn't belong to someone half-dead. "Does it matter? You've seen what the sea can do. Do you think it would carry me here by chance?"
The wind rose, whipping her hair about her face. The horizon darkened — clouds rolling in from nowhere, thunder murmuring across the waves. The sea was listening.
"You shouldn't be here," she said again, more to herself than to him. "The gods forbid mortal presence on this shore."
"Do they?" His eyes flicked to hers, sharp and knowing. "Or did they only forbid those unworthy of it?"
He pushed himself up slowly, every movement deliberate, his gaze straying to the water as if speaking to it in silence. The waves trembled in reply.
"You speak as though you're not mortal," she said quietly.
He smiled then — a faint, teasing curve of his lips. "Then I suppose I'm not."
She blinked, startled. For a heartbeat, she almost laughed — almost dismissed it as delirium. "You must be fevered," she murmured, reaching to steady him.
Her hand brushed his.
The storm halted.
Wind stilled mid-breath. The thunder faded as if swallowed by the sky. The crashing of waves softened to a whisper, then to silence.
Only the sound of her heartbeat filled the air — and beneath her palm, his skin was warm now, alive. The silver band around his wrist pulsed once, like something breathing.
She drew her hand back, eyes wide. "What—what did you—"
But he only looked at her, the gray of his eyes deepening, ancient and endless.
"The sea listens," he said softly. "It remembers those who belong to it."
Lightning flashed far out over the horizon — not in violence, but in reverence.
And for the first time since her arrival, Callista felt the silence of this place not as peace… but as warning.
The storm had not come to destroy.It had come to kneel.
And beneath the stillness, the god within the man knew.Not through memory, but through the aching certainty that every wave, every drop of salt in his veins, recognized her.
He looked at her — not as one might look upon a stranger, but as one who finds a song thought lost to time.
Something inside him broke — quietly, completely.
The sea within him shuddered, then stilled.
For the first time in an eternity, the god of the deep bowed his head, not in worship or power, but in wordless reverence for what had been returned to him — and what he could never claim again.
And as the tide rose gently around them, Theron whispered a name the sea had not dared speak for centuries — but only the waves heard it.