The Drowned Bell's Deliverance
You cast the bell that was meant to save them—and cracked it. Now race the tide to forge it anew.
A master bell-founder, your reputation was built on perfect resonance. But when a rival's sabotage cracks your latest creation, the sea-entity it was meant to hold back breaks free, and the town you were hired to protect is doomed. With the tide rising and the creature closing in, you must lead a desperate retreat inland, hunting for a lost forge said to be able to recast the bell before the next high tide. Along the way, you'll face treacherous terrain, a rival who knows your every weakness, and the impossible choice of who to save when the sea comes for them all.
The story begins
The bell cracked.
You knew the instant the sound left the mold—wrong, a high thin wail instead of that deep, gathering song. The bronze had barely cooled before you saw it, a hairline fracture crawling up the flank like a black root.
Maren stood at the edge of the casting pit, arms crossed, a flush of something—satisfaction?—dampening their brow. “The metal was too cold,” they said, too quickly, and the words landed like stones in your chest. That wasn't the metal’s fault, and you both knew it.
Then the tide hit the seawall with a sound like a held breath finally released. And the water kept rising.
Eadric’s voice cracked over the wind: “The bell! It must hold!”
But it didn’t. It couldn’t. And the sea knew it.
From the harbor, a shape rose—glistening, wrong, assembled from wreckage and drowned rope, something that wore the face of a drowning man and smiled like a tide pool. Its voice slid into your skull, honeyed: “You’ve failed before, haven’t you? The other bell. The one that cracked. The one that sank.”
You’d never told anyone. Not the guild, not the apprentices, not even Eadric when he begged for your craft. But the sea knew. The sea always knew
The water lapped at the foundry steps, cold and hungry, and the town behind you had begun to scream.
What happens next is up to you.
Or read in the app
More like this
The Gilded Puppet
You staged every discovery—until a real map falls into your hands, and the wilderness you faked becomes your only way out.
The Unmade Mapmaker
You drew the world that made you — now erase the lies and find the real one.
The Ward's Lament
You're the royal cartographer sent to correct a star-chart—but the stars are campfires, and the army behind them has been waiting for you.
The Salt Siege
MatureYou dive for a cure, and the sea collects your debts.
The Painted Firmament
You've lived your whole life in a village with painted stars overhead—and now the painter is watching you.
The Water Vow
Betrayed by a broken treaty, you must cross the burning wastes to find a legendary well—before your people die of thirst.