The Tide-Speaker's Betrayal

The sea screamed.

You stood at the cliff’s edge, salt spray lashing your face, the wind tearing the hood from your head. The tide was wrong — it was climbing the rocks in great, heaving lungfuls, far too fast, far too high. Below, the fishing boats knocked against the harbor walls, and you heard Maren’s voice, sharp as broken shell, shouting for the men to tie them down.

But you heard something else, beneath the roar. A voice like water in a cave, like a dying breath. Find Aeloria. Find what she hid, or the sea will take your village. Take everyone. Take her.

Your hand went to the pendant at your throat—cold riverstone, worn smooth by your mother’s hand, and yours. The ocean was a liar, Kael always said. But the god’s voice had cracked like old rope, and you had felt its dying pulse in the water itself.

Maren climbed toward you, soaked to the bone, her eyes wild. “Don’t listen to it,” she said. “Whatever it’s promising, it’s a trap.”

“It’s not promising,” you said. “It’s threatening.”

She stared at you, and for a moment, the old friendship flickered in her face. Then she looked at the rising water, and her jaw set. “Then we find another way.”

The sea surged, and a wave taller than the others slammed the cliff, sending a shudder through the stone beneath your feet.