The first chains were not forged.
They were fed.
Kael learned this as the woman led him through the drowned corridors, deeper into the buried city. The stone beneath their feet was carved with grooves—old pathways worn smooth by thousands of footsteps long erased by time and water.
"This place was called Ilyr," she said, her voice echoing softly. "It was built when the sea had already begun to rise, but before it learned how to rule."
Kael glanced at the suspended ceiling of water above them. It quivered faintly, as if something pressed against it from below.
"Why does it hold back?" he asked.
"Because it remembers what happens when it doesn't."
They reached a vast chamber at the heart of the ruins. Its ceiling rose high into darkness, supported by pillars carved to resemble human figures straining upward. At the center stood a circular dais, etched with symbols Kael recognized from the chains above—spirals, fractures, broken horizons.
And something else.
Handprints.
Hundreds of them.
Pressed into the stone.
The woman stopped. "This is where it began."
Kael stepped closer, dread tightening his chest. The handprints varied in size—men, women, children. Some were smeared, dragged. Others were perfectly placed, fingers spread wide, as if in acceptance.
"They volunteered," she said, reading his thoughts. "At first."
She removed a satchel from her side and withdrew a thin metal plate, its surface etched with lines so fine they seemed alive. She held it out to him.
"Touch it."
Kael hesitated, then pressed his fingers to the cold metal.
The chamber vanished.
He stood on land.
Real land.
The ground beneath his feet was cracked and dry, stretching toward a horizon lit by a burning sky. Cities sprawled across continents. Towers scraped the clouds. Rivers cut through valleys that no longer existed.
And the sea—
The sea was different.
It rose higher every day, swallowing coastlines, devouring ports, dragging entire nations beneath its surface. Shapes moved within it—vast, slow, intelligent.
Watching.
Humanity fought at first. Ships burned. Weapons shattered. The ocean did not bleed.
Then came the scholars. The architects. The desperate.
If the sea cannot be destroyed, they reasoned, it must be restrained.
The first chains were designed as anchors—immense constructs of alloy and belief, meant to bind the sea's advance. They were lowered into the depths, guided by machines and prayers.
They failed.
The chains snapped like thread. Cities drowned overnight. Millions died screaming into the dark.
The sea learned.
So did humanity.
The vision shifted.
A smaller city now, half-submerged. A council gathered in a circular chamber, their faces gaunt, eyes hollow with exhaustion.
A woman stepped forward.
The chains require weight, she said. Not mass. Meaning.
She gestured to a group standing at the chamber's edge.
People.
Bound, calm, silent.
The sea responds to life, she continued. To fear. To sacrifice.
The first offering was lowered into the water.
The sea recoiled.
The chains held.
Cheers erupted. Hope flared like fire.
They called it a miracle.
They did not call it what it was.
A transaction.
The vision darkened as more people were offered. At first, criminals. The condemned. Those no one would miss.
The sea grew quieter.
The chains grew stronger.
Cities were saved.
And when the criminals ran out—
The vision shattered.
Kael gasped, ripping his hand from the plate. He staggered, barely staying upright.
"That's impossible," he whispered. "The chains are ancient. Sacred."
"They are ancient," the woman said softly. "And sacred only in the way fear becomes tradition."
She took the plate back. "The first sacrifices were conscious. Willing. They believed they were saving the world."
Kael's voice shook. "And the later ones?"
Her silence was answer enough.
"They built myths," she continued. "Gods of the Tide. Rituals. Orders. Anything to make the killing feel distant. Necessary."
She turned toward a sealed archway at the chamber's far end. "Every major chain is anchored by a living core. Or what's left of one."
Kael's stomach twisted. "How many?"
She met his gaze.
"Enough to hold the sea in place," she said. "And enough that if the chains ever break—"
The chamber trembled violently.
Dust rained from the ceiling. The water barrier above rippled like a wounded thing.
Kael felt it again.
Pressure.
Awareness.
"They know you're here," he said.
"Yes," the woman replied. "Because you are something new."
She reached out and touched the relic still glowing in his hand. "You were refused because the sea couldn't decide what to do with you."
Another tremor struck, stronger this time.
"Now it's decided," she said grimly.
A deep, resonant sound rolled through the ruins—not water, not stone.
A voice too vast to have language.
The chains screamed above them, their echoes traveling down through the drowned city.
Kael looked at the handprints carved into the stone.
At the sacrifices that held the world together.
At the truth humanity had buried beneath the sea.
"If I break the chains," he asked quietly, "how many die?"
The woman didn't answer immediately.
Then: "Everyone."
Kael closed his fingers around the relic.
"And if I don't?"
She stepped back into the shadows.
"Then the sea keeps feeding," she said. "Forever."
The chamber shook again.
This time, something below struck the barrier.
Hard.