Chapter 653: Shoreless Tide

It did not take Kael long to accept that the brief interval of peace in House Vharen had ended.

Nerya was still in the middle of the hall, resting part of her weight against one of the roots Sylphie kept discreetly beside her, while Mereth argued quietly with the other family members about what would be done with the lunar chambers.

That, at least, seemed like a problem that could continue without him.

Inner Moon no longer possessed the authority to transform anyone, the choices of the preserved women had been recorded individually, and Nerya had just demonstrated that she did not need Kael to tell her own uncle what her name was.

The page in his hands, however, had just informed him that an institution at the bottom of the ocean possessed enough authority to awaken another First Archive project.

He took out the crystal.

"Amelia."

The answer came almost immediately.

"I saw it too."

Kael raised an eyebrow.

"I’m starting to suspect you spend the whole day staring at those pages, waiting for one of them to ruin your morning."

"My morning was already ruined by a dead king, twenty-four thousand corpses, and a family that inherited people. At this point, I’m just keeping realistic expectations."

Umbra, still beside him, nodded approvingly.

"She’s learning."

Amelia ignored her.

"We’re looking into Selvanor. Don’t touch anything else until we understand why the request was recognized."

Kael looked at the page.

"I wasn’t planning to touch anything."

Sylphie approached.

"You were about to ask something."

"That isn’t touching."

"For you, it usually is."

Kael decided to continue before the argument evolved.

"When was the request made?"

The page answered.

REQUEST RECORDED: SEVENTEEN MINUTES AGO.

Amelia’s expression changed.

Kael became serious too.

That eliminated the most comfortable possibility.

It was not an old order waking up after decades.

It was not an automatic protocol that had just noticed some condition being fulfilled.

Someone or something had consciously requested activation during the exact period in which they were reviewing the First Archive projects.

"Automatic request?" Kael asked.

NO.

"Origin?"

INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORIZATION.

"I already know that. I want to know where it was sent from."

The page took a moment.

PHYSICAL ORIGIN: SELVANOR NAVIGATION CORE.

Kael stared at the inscription for a few seconds.

"Which is underwater."

Nerya answered before the page could.

"If it still exists."

Kael turned toward her.

The young woman looked physically terrible, but the change in conversation had caught her attention.

"You said the city sank."

"It did."

"How?"

Nerya leaned more heavily against the root.

"I don’t know exactly. Everyone knows the story, but there are many versions. Some say there was an earthquake. Others talk about a rupture in the seabed. My grandmother used to say Selvanor built too much over coastal caverns and the entire foundation gave way."

Mereth, who had overheard the conversation, approached.

"That was the official explanation."

"Do you believe it?" Kael asked.

"Not completely."

Kael waited.

Mereth continued:

"Selvanor did not collapse like a city struck by an earthquake. It descended."

Sylphie frowned.

"What’s the difference?"

"According to the survivors, the ground did not split first. The sea withdrew from the harbor. Then the city began sinking in almost intact sections, as though something were reducing its height relative to the water."

Kael looked at the page.

"How long?"

"A little over an hour before the lower districts disappeared. The upper district held until dawn."

"Deaths?"

Mereth closed her eyes for a moment, recalling an old number.

"More than eleven thousand."

Any remaining lightness vanished from the hall.

Kael turned back to the crystal.

"Amelia."

"Confirmed. Eleven thousand four hundred and eight missing or dead according to the final consolidated count. A little over two thousand survivors left the region during the following months. The coast was declared unsafe for navigation three years later."

"Why?"

Irelia appeared in the communication beside Amelia, holding a map.

"Because ships kept disappearing."

Kael studied the document.

Old Selvanor had stood in a wide bay on the western coast, enclosed by two narrow peninsulas.

After the sinking, almost the entire bay had been prohibited.

Trade routes had been diverted dozens of kilometers north.

"Storms?"

"No."

"Reefs?"

"Not that either."

Irelia pointed to several markings on the map.

"The survivors described abnormal currents. Ships maintaining a course parallel to the coast would slowly begin turning toward the old harbor. Compasses showed no error. Celestial instruments remained accurate. The helmsmen simply had to fight the vessel constantly to stop it from orienting itself toward Selvanor."

Nerya spoke quietly:

"That’s where the expression comes from."

Kael looked at her.

"What expression?"

"In the west, when someone insists on returning to a place they should have abandoned, people say they’re following a shoreless tide."

Umbra tilted her head.

"That’s almost poetic."

"I don’t like it when the projects have their own popular expressions," Kael replied.

Sylphie was still studying the page.

"What was the original purpose?"

Kael asked.

The answer appeared faster than expected.

ORIGIN: SELVANOR NAVIGATION COUNCIL.

ORIGINAL PURPOSE:

PRESERVE HARBOR REFERENCES, SAFE ROUTES, AND MARITIME ORIENTATION DURING TEMPORARY COASTAL CHANGES.

Kael read slowly.

"Temporary."

Amelia noticed the same word.

"Storms, erosion, shifting sandbanks, maybe magical fog."

Sylphie nodded.

"A large harbor needs to remain findable even when the coastline changes slightly."

"That sounds useful," Nerya said.

Kael looked at her.

"The first four did too."

The page reacted with a faint vibration.

Umbra smiled.

"It’s definitely learning to take offense."

Kael ignored her.

"Purpose alterations."

The page remained blank for a few seconds, then wrote:

REVISION 1:

HARBOR REFERENCE INDEPENDENT OF VISUAL CONDITIONS.

REVISION 2:

HARBOR REFERENCE INDEPENDENT OF GEOGRAPHICAL ALTERATION.

Kael went still.

Irelia placed the map on the table.

"That second sentence is bad."

"Explain," Nerya asked.

Irelia pointed at Selvanor.

"The first revision means the harbor remains locatable even through fog, storms, or temporary changes to the coastline. The second means the harbor remains the correct destination even if the geography itself no longer matches the harbor."

Kael looked at the old bay.

"The city sinks..."

"And the system keeps telling ships that Selvanor is still there," Sylphie finished.

Umbra looked at the page.

"So the missing vessels were obeying a route to a harbor located at the bottom of the sea."

"We still don’t know whether they were being forced," Kael said.

That mattered.

A wrong map could kill people without possessing any authority over them.

If Shoreless Tide merely emitted a faulty reference, it would still be a severe corruption, but different from the pattern of the other projects.

They needed to understand where guidance ended and compulsion began.

"Registered vessels," Kael requested.

The page answered:

VESSELS CURRENTLY LINKED: ZERO.

"Historically?"

The page took much longer.

LAST RECORD BEFORE DORMANCY: 318.

"How many returned?"

No answer.

Kael narrowed his eyes.

"How many reached the harbor after the sinking?"

The page finally wrote:

CONFIRMED ARRIVALS: 74.

Mereth closed her eyes.

Nerya went pale.

Kael did not need to ask what that meant.

Seventy-four vessels had been recorded as reaching a harbor that no longer existed above the surface.

"Survivors from those arrivals?"

RECORD OUTSIDE SCOPE.

Kael felt the familiar irritation.

"Naturally."

Amelia interrupted.

"I found something about the council."

Everyone looked toward the crystal.

She placed nine small drawings on the table.

They were metal seals, each bearing a different navigation star.

"The Selvanor Navigation Council had nine seats. Each councilor carried a personal chart seal. Operational decisions required five."

Kael realized it.

"Quorum."

"Yes."

"How many seals were recovered after the sinking?"

"Four."

Silence.

Kael turned back to the page.

"Quorum used for the request."

The answer appeared.

5/9.

Umbra stopped smiling.

Sylphie looked at Amelia.

"The five that were lost."

"Probably."

"So someone went to the bottom of the city," Kael said, "found five seals belonging to dead councilors, and just used them to request that the project wake up."

Varon would have called that authorization.

Kael already had another word.

"Forgery."

The page vibrated.

CORRECTION:

VALID CREDENTIALS.

Kael closed his eyes.

"I did not say the seals were fake."

Sylphie almost laughed.

"Don’t start."

"I’m only clarifying."

Amelia spoke before he actually began arguing with the page.

"Kael, the request has not been executed yet."

He opened his eyes.

"Why?"

"Elion found an activation delay. Shoreless Tide depends on physical points."

The page answered the next question before Kael could ask it.

REFERENCE BEACONS REQUIRED: 3.

ACTIVE BEACONS: 1.

AWAKENING: PENDING.

Kael brought the page closer.

"Time limit?"

NEXT ALIGNMENT TIDE:

SIX HOURS AND TWENTY-TWO MINUTES.

"Then we have six hours."

"Less," Amelia said. "If whoever is down there possesses five seals, they’re probably already trying to activate the other beacons."

Nerya looked from Kael to Sylphie.

"You’re going to Selvanor."

"Yes."

Mereth looked ready to say something, but Nerya spoke first.

"I’m staying."

Kael nodded.

"That was the plan."

"You’re not even going to pretend you considered bringing me?"

"You almost fell three times less than half an hour ago."

"Twice."

Umbra spoke:

"Three."

Nerya looked at her.

"You’re counting?"

"Yes."

Sylphie tried to hide a smile.

Kael put the page away.

"Nerya, no one is going to ask you to open the mirrors to search for memories about Selvanor."

The young woman looked surprised.

"I didn’t say—"

"I know. I’m saying it before someone thinks of it."

Mereth lowered her eyes.

Kael noticed she had probably already considered the possibility.

"Nerya spent nine months having her own memories treated as someone else’s material. We’re not going to turn their memories into a tool just because it would be convenient now."

Nerya looked at him for a few seconds.

"Thank you."

Kael simply nodded.

Preparation took less than twenty minutes.

Amelia did not try to open a portal near Selvanor.

The maritime distortions recorded in the region were enough to make spatial coordinates near the old harbor unreliable.

Instead, she chose a coastal outpost almost fifty kilometers to the north, built after the trade routes were closed.

Kael, Sylphie, and Umbra crossed together, leaving House Vharen under Mereth’s supervision and, more importantly, under the rules Nerya had just established for herself.

The air on the other side smelled of salt.

A lot of salt.

Kael stepped out of the portal onto a wide cliff covered in short grass and dark stones, with the ocean stretching to the horizon.

The coastal outpost was small, consisting of an observation tower, two stone buildings, and an old lighthouse that had not been used in years.

Three guards were waiting for them, accompanied by a tall woman with gray hair tied in a braid.

She wasted no time with bows.

"You’re Amelia’s people?"

Kael liked her immediately.

"Yes."

"Captain Mara Ennel."

"Kael."

She looked at Sylphie.

Then at Umbra, who was partially visible in his shadow.

"I’m not going to ask."

"Excellent decision."

Mara pointed south.

"It started approximately forty minutes ago."

Kael walked to the edge of the cliff.

At first, he noticed nothing.

Then he looked more carefully.

The sea was wrong.

The waves came from the west, pushed by the wind, but as they approached the region to the south, they began to curve.

They did not break against the coast in a normal line.

Their arcs slowly tilted, all converging toward a distant point Kael could not see.

Selvanor.

Sylphie stood beside him.

"The water is following a direction that does not correspond to the terrain."

"Like the ships."

Mara nodded.

"For twenty-seven years, it has happened at low intensity. Today it got worse."

"Ships in the region?"

"None authorized."

Kael noticed the choice of word.

"Authorized."

Mara pointed toward the horizon.

"We have one."

The vessel was difficult to see with the naked eye, too distant and dark against the ocean.

Kael focused his vision.

A narrow ship.

No flag.

Black sails furled.

Moving without wind.

Directly toward the old harbor.

"When did it appear?"

"Ten minutes ago."

"Where did it come from?"

"We don’t know. It simply appeared from the south."

Umbra disappeared from Kael’s shadow for several seconds and returned.

"There are living people aboard."

"How many?"

"I can’t reach that far from here. But there are human shadows on the deck."

Kael took out the page.

ACTIVE BEACONS: 1.

He watched the ship.

Then the sea below the cliff trembled.

Not like a wave.

It was a pulse.

Far to the south, a blue light appeared beneath the surface.

So deep that it should have been invisible in daylight.

Even so, it pierced through dozens of meters of water and shone like a star buried beneath the ocean.

The page changed.

ACTIVE BEACONS: 2.

Mara cursed quietly.

Sylphie closed her eyes.

Umbra stopped smiling.

Kael watched the underwater light remain lit while the unknown ship continued advancing toward Selvanor.

Five seals.

Two beacons.

One still missing.

He put the page away.

"Now we know two things."

Sylphie looked at him.

"What?"

"There’s someone down there."

Kael started walking toward the outpost.

"And they’re working faster than we are."