2. 2
two
Orion
These moments always feel the longest. I sit anxiously around the large, circular table with the nobles and my first general, listening to updates on the state of my kingdom.
It has only been two years since my father passed, and taking the throne so young was never something I expected.
Traditionally, the kings in our kingdom do not rise until their one hundred and twenty-fifth birthday, a milestone celebrated with fanfare and reverence.
I got no such celebration. I am only ninety-six and still learning how to rule.
Respected but always being questioned on my decisions.
Today’s meeting focuses on the ongoing search for my father’s body.
No one has found it. Some of my subjects still believe he lives.
But I know he does not. The moment he died, I felt it.
A shift in the ocean’s rhythm, as if it mourned the absence of his love.
And then there were the crown-born powers.
New in my veins, but long-known in my mind.
A confirmation of his passing, whether my court accepts it or not.
“My king, I believe it is time to start our search among the wreckage of old villages, outside the barrier,” General Nyxalene says, her voice edged with caution. “If your father ventured that far, those wreckages would hold the first clues.”
I glance at Nyx. She is not just my general. She is family.
I remember what my father told me about her clan.
They were reclusive sirens, masters of eerie song-magic and ancient ritual, but that knowledge mattered little the night he found her.
She was younger than I was, half-starved and wild-eyed, the sole survivor of a surface-world expedition that slaughtered her clan.
He brought her home that night, cradled in his arms like something precious and breakable.
But Nyx never broke.
We grew up together in the palace halls, trained side by side, sparred until we bled, dared each other into mischief, and learned the burdens of duty far too young.
My father saw the fire in her early on. He trained her in secret, thinking I did not know, even though I would watch them from behind pillars or through the cracked doors in the palace, amazed by how quickly she learned.
Minus the siren magic, he taught her everything he taught me.
And maybe more. She moved like the ocean itself—unpredictable, relentless, impossible to pin down.
Before he died, he gave her a promise to keep: if anything happened to him, she was to become my sword and shield. She has kept that vow as if it is carved into her bones.
“Why would he venture so far, alone, without any of his warriors by his side?” I ask, a bite to my tone. “Virellan Kingdom has known peace for centuries. He has never taken unnecessary risks. I cannot fathom why he would leave the kingdom’s barriers.”
“If I may speak, your majesty?” comes the voice of our archseer, Velmira, a quiet figure, the last of her kind.
Wise beyond her years, she moves with calm assurance, her presence commands attention without demanding it.
“A prophecy has been uncovered, left behind by King Thaldrin himself, hidden beneath an altar.” She swims forward, placing it before the council with reverent care.
“The marking at the bottom confirms it was written by his hand.” Her voice drops, low but certain.
“It speaks of his power, hidden and protected, meant to be uncovered only when the time is right.” A hush falls over the council.
“Foretelling a convergence, a moment when what was hidden will awaken, revealed not in blood, but in breath.”
She looks directly at me. “Fear consumes this moment, a reckoning tied not to magic, but what might follow in its wake.” With careful hands, she unrolls the parchment. “The words are faded, lost to time. Revealed only when time aligns.”
The room erupts into noise; voices clashing in panic and disbelief.
A prophecy? We have not witnessed a true prophecy in over five hundred years, one that foretold the fall of the old kingdom in bloodshed and chaos.
For centuries, survivors eked out their lives among the ruins of a shattered world, until King Thaldrin rose from the ashes and forged Virellan.
It was no easy task, but when my father took the throne, he brought peace, unity, and earned the reverence of his subjects.
It made my rise to the crown a little smoother.
However, it did not make meetings like this any less daunting.
I can feel the tension pressing in like the deep sea itself, a weight that refuses to be ignored.
My father did not train me for this. He trained me for war, politics, and diplomacy.
But not this. Not faded scrolls and half-spoken omens.
Not the kind of magic that breathes instead of bleeds.
Beneath the voices, my hydro-senses stir. At the far end of the table, Velmira holds a subtle trace of deception and hidden truth. Something about her feels deeply off.
Without a thought, I rise from my seat. “Leave us.” I command, cutting through the clamor like a blade. The room stills. “All of you. Except General Nyxalene and Velmira.”
Hesitation ripples through the room. They obey as they always do, yet I am still adjusting to leading in my own name. One by one they rise and file out, robes whispering against the floor. Eyes linger, but none dare challenge me.
The council room stretches before me, tall and austere.
Marilume crystals embedded in the ceiling cast soft, shifting light that dances across the polished coral walls.
Tiny eddies stir around the seats, fixed to the floor and lined like sentinels, while faint currents carry whispers of magic through the water.
Every detail reminds me this is my command, my responsibility, my kingdom.
The large, arched doors thud shut, and silence settles over the room, dense and charged with tension. I face Velmira, my voice low but sharp. “This prophecy, it does not make sense. What are you not telling me?”
She doesn’t flinch; she never does. Her eyes are a clouded milky haze that have been there since before I was born.
Blind to the world, yet somehow always seeing more than the rest of us.
I do not need sight to sense her pause. Even in her confidence, I feel the weight of what she is about to reveal, the careful way she measures how I might respond.
“A fragmented prophecy,” she replies slowly, voice steady but careful.
“No longer hidden, truths revealed. A vision uncovered, no longer sealed, now unfolding. Pieces missing—” Her head tilts slightly, as if listening to something far away.
“—calling to mind the royal bloodline’s future, unable to see.
A curse or a safeguard, one does not know.
A woman of focus. A land-dweller, I see. ”
I feel Nyx stiffen beside me, but I keep my focus on Velmira.
“A name to be remembered,” she continues. “Sarah Fischer. A presence that is clear and radiant, like a signal in the dark. Vision remnants are blurred and unrecognizable.”
I let her words settle like silt in deep water. Sarah Fischer. A land-dweller. How could she be tied to my father? To all of this?
“Thank you, Velmira,” I say at last, my tone quieter now. More controlled. “You have given me more than the other nobles ever could.”
I lift a hand and gesture subtly toward the door, out of habit more than anything.
She turns her head toward me, almost as if she sees the movement. Or senses it. Her awareness has always gone beyond sight. However, she does not move.
“One more thing must be said,” she pipes, her voice thinner now, like it is straining through a current. “Evil flows beneath the waves. Blurred and shifting but . . . present. Always present. Like a shadow clinging to the tide.”
She turns then, slowly, and makes her way toward the door with the quiet certainty of someone who swims more by instinct than by sight.
The layered folds of her sea robes trail behind her, deep indigo and seaweed-green.
Faint glyphs shimmer near the hem, unreadable to all but her order.
They whisper as they move, as though the fabric itself remembers spells long forgotten.
And just like that, she takes her leave without another word. The chamber cools, leaving a hollow stillness in her wake.
Nyx shifts beside me. I hear the subtle rustle of her armor, the way her breath catches like she’s about to speak. “Orion—”
“Give me a moment,” I snap, the edge in my voice sharper than intended. The chamber throws my voice back at me, too loud in the sudden quiet.
She falls silent, but refuses to move. Of course she does. She has never been one to leave my side just because things grow heavy.
I lower myself back into the seat at the head of the table, the ancient stone smooth beneath me.
Pressing my hands into the carved arms of the throne, my father’s throne, staring at the space Velmira had just occupied, still seeing that scroll in her hands, still hearing Sarah Fischer echo in my mind like a tide that won’t settle.
A mortal woman. A blurred evil. And a prophecy that refuses to show me what I need most.
The silence stretches and thickens with every passing moment. I don’t look at Nyx, but I know she’s still there, watching me the way she always has—with eyes that see more than they let on.
Nyx finally creeps closer, her voice soft and affirming. “You do not have to carry this alone, you know.”
I stay silent. For now. My thoughts are tangled, stretched in too many directions at once, toward a girl I have never met, a future I cannot see, and a threat I cannot name.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she continues, “and I do not blame you. You have become the one expected to make sense of the storm. To fix what breaks. But even your father knew that strength is not about bearing it all yourself.”