39. 39
thirty-nine
Sarah
Ithought choosing between my home and my love for the sea would’ve been harder.
The cavern echoes every piece of me. My heart, my doubts, and my fears.
It mirrors the battles I didn’t even realize I was fighting.
But when I make my choice, when I know what I need to do, the echoes still, the visions fade and the suspension that follows feels .
. . final. No more memories left to mourn.
My life above the surface will always be a part of me, indelibly woven into who I am. But the ocean has always called to me. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawn to her voice, when the waves didn’t feel like home.
My soul belongs to her now. I find peace in her depths, comfort in her endless rhythm. Yet one truth still stings when I think about my place here in Virellan.
To them, I’m an outsider. A curiosity. A wannabe human. I’ve chosen this life beneath the sea, but have they chosen me?
My thoughts twist together, tangled and ruthless, until I can’t tell where one doubt ends and the next begins.
Sliding from my resting place, I give myself some movement to rationalize the storm in my thoughts.
I ease forward, floating in front of the wide slab of stone, and catch my reflection in it for a moment.
The serpent form staring back feels familiar now, maybe even comforting.
But when I gaze closer, the reflection moves before I do. The look it gives me is cruel—amused.
A whisper threads through the water, soft at first, then spreads until it fills every shadowed corner of the cavern.
They’ll never see you as one of them.
The words come from everywhere. From the walls. From the water. From inside my own mind. I blink rapidly, but the words still echo through my skull like thunder in silence.
When I focus again, my reflection . . . changes. The serpentine shimmer of my tail fades from the stone’s surface, the glittering scales dissolving into smooth skin and pale legs. My legs.
For a heartbeat, I forget to breathe. I tilt my head, and so does she, but slower, like she’s mocking me. I flex my fins, but my reflection’s toes curl instead.
No . . . No, that’s not right.
I know what I look like now. I felt the water against my scales moments ago. So why—
My chest tightens. Maybe it’s just the light . . .
Maybe the stone’s surface distorts images . . .
Maybe—
The reflection smiles.
And I don’t.
All at once, my entire world shifts. The Echo Cavern dissolves around me, the stillness replaced by motion—by voices, by laughter.
I’m no longer alone. I’m back in Drekaris, in the training cavern, surrounded by Neravyn finlings.
Their forms flicker through the water, circling me like a current I can’t escape.
Defymin floats beside Lord Zevrin, both of them watching. Laughing, though no sound leaves their lips. Silent mockery ripples through the crowd as every face turns toward me.
The wannabe human. Whispers coil around me, slicing through the water.
She is not one of us.
She is just pretending.
She cannot even address the king properly.
I curl into my tail, hiding myself away from those around me. The whole thing feels real—too real. The sound, the movement, the eyes on me . . . It’s all too much.
Their laughter deepens, echoing until it no longer sounds like them at all. The training cavern wavers and stretches, its walls bending like liquid until the stone of Drekaris bleeds into the marble of Virellan’s castle.
Suddenly, I’m no longer surrounded by finlings but floating in the grand hall. Nyxalene and Orion swim toward me through the shimmering current. For a moment, I almost believe it’s real, until their faces distort.
Orion’s gaze hardens. His voice, once steady and warm, cuts through the water, hollow and sharp. I did not bring you here because I trust you. I only want my father’s magic. And I will take it back, one way or another.
Nyxalene’s expression twists, her eyes full of disdain.
You will fail, she says, voice layered and distorted, as though more than one person speaks through her. All land-dwellers do.
I shake my head, but the voices multiply—Orion’s, Nyxalene’s, the finlings’, all merging into a chorus that claws at the edges of my mind.
You’ll never belong.
You’re not one of us.
He only wants you to return what you stole.
The walls pulse with every word. Water presses tighter against my body, constricting me from within. My pulse hammers in my ears, blending with the echoing laughter that now sounds nothing like laughter at all.
I squeeze my eyes shut, folding inward beneath their words, as if I can vanish, and cover my ears.
But the whispers follow.
The voices never left.
They swirl through my mind even now, coalescing with every breath I take. I tell myself they aren’t real, that they’re just phantoms of the cavern, but each time I force them away, new ones arise—darker, more malicious, probing at truths I'm desperate to bury.
I settle onto the cavern’s sandy floor, my tail curling tightly beneath and around me, anchoring me against the subtle pull of the current.
Mussels lie half-buried in the sand, and I dig through it with my fingers, shoving grit and shells aside until I uncover a few.
My hands tremble as I pry one open, the shell cracking sharply beneath my grip.
I don’t question it being raw. I barely taste it before it slides down my throat, the salt and grit coating my tongue, metallic and bitter.
One after another, I devour them—greedy, animalistic, desperate. Each bite dulls the voices for a moment, silences the laughter echoing through my head. For a fleeting heartbeat, the madness quiets, and all that’s left is the rhythm of my chewing and the hollow ache of my stomach.
But the laughter returns, faint and distant, rippling through the water like it’s mocking me for thinking I could drown it out.
Another mussel slides down my throat, and the cavern shifts. The sand and shadow melt away, replaced by the long, interminable dining hall of Drekaris. I find myself perched at one of the stone tables, my tail curled beneath me as though I can anchor myself to reality.
Aniah, Keil, and Defymin glide toward me, their smiles wide and warm—or at least they start that way. But in an instant, the warmth twists into something evil. Their words slice through the water like knives.
Look, she cannot even eat food like one of us, Aniah hisses.
Her mannerisms are feral . . . Disgusting, Keil adds, eyes narrowed.
Defymin laughs, the sound ringing in the hall and inside my skull. She's nothing but human garbage. I don't understand what the king sees in her.
The laughter and whispers swirl around me, pressing in from all sides. I curl tighter into my tail, trying to disappear, but the illusions cling, twisting my every movement, turning my hunger and my attempt at normalcy into mockery.
I just want to belong. Why does it feel like this choice, the one I thought would make me whole, is tearing me apart? Did I choose wrong? Should I have stayed on the surface, where at least the judgment was quiet . . . where they whispered behind my back instead of to my face?
"No!" I squeeze my eyes shut, digging my fingers into the stone bench beneath me, its unfamiliar coldness bites into the sensitive skin under my scales.
The hallucination takes hold. "No! I just accepted being a woman of the sea.
I belong here. I have to. I won't let them, won't let them decide I'm not worth it. "
But even as I whisper those words to myself, the conviction rings hollow. The laughter still hums through the water. The illusion doesn’t fade. And for a moment, I can’t tell if I’m trying to convince the voices or myself.
With the voices still pressing against the cavern walls, I maneuver deeper, testing the limits of the space.
The walls stretch farther than the resting place where I’ve settled, endless and shadowed.
I trace my fingers along the rough stone, trying to tune out the laughter and the taunting tones of those I once thought were my friends.
Their words cut into me, sharp as knives to the spleen. At a dead end, the tunnel splits in two. I tilt my head, weighing each path, and finally veer left, following the hall until it ends.
Orion’s voice filters through the echoes, growing louder as I move further down this tunnel.
Even she realizes she doesn't belong here. No matter how much I teach her, she'll never be educated enough for our world.
His words aren’t meant for me. Still, the tunnel shifts and warps, melting into the familiar path that leads to the palace archives.
Around the corner, I see Orion speaking with Velmira.
Her robes ripple gracefully around him as he leans against the study desk chair.
She doesn't move, only a sentence leaves her mouth, and it shakes me to my core.
Even here, the walls cannot hide you, land-dweller. Show yourself.
I step out from the shadows, the blood barrier oddly inactive.
“You speak negatively of me, Orion. Why?” My voice is steadier than I feel, though my heart pounds in my chest. I take this path, choosing confrontation over submission.
“After everything you’ve taught me, you still don’t believe I can be what you want me to be?
I can try harder . . . Is that what you need? ”
I know begging won’t truly help, but I just said goodbye to my past life. I can’t bear the thought of being rejected by my new one.
No amount of teachings or lessons could change where you come from. You could never be one of us.
Liquid pricks at the corners of my eyes, and something inside my chest constricts, each word striking somewhere tender and already frayed. My heart pleads silently, desperate to be understood, but it feels as though it’s splitting in two.
“I didn’t ask for this life,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “Mother Ocean gifted it to me. I'm meant to be here. I'm meant to be in Virellan. I’m meant to be with the sea. Permanently.”
The confession catches in my throat, and for the first time, I feel the sharp ache of truth.
Tears burn hot behind my lids, searing my cheeks as if the saltwater of my own sorrow has come to punish me.
My hands clench on the cavern walls, trying to anchor myself as the stress of belonging and rejection crashes through me.
Each heartbeat feels impossibly loud, thrashing in the hollow space of my chest.
I let the tears fall, letting them swirl with the water around me. For a fleeting moment, I'm completely exposed. My fear, my hope, my aching desire to belong lay bare, and it feels both terrifying and oddly freeing.
Mother Ocean may have chosen you, but you will always be human trash. Nyxalene’s voice slices through the water as she rounds a corner, one that leads to nowhere. She materializes from the shadows like the illusion itself has given her form.
“I believe Mother Ocean chose me for her own purpose,” I say, the words trembling but sure.
“I may not know what it is yet, but maybe she chose a human for a reason.
I was chosen for my courage. My curiosity might have led me there, but it was courage that pushed me to enter that seaweed chamber where these powers lay open and bare.
Anyone could've taken them, but they were given to me.” My voice steadies, gaining strength with each word.
“I've survived everything that’s been thrown at me since coming here, and I will not let your words tear me down.”
Orion’s form shifts beside her. He moves closer, the sheer size of him dwarfing me, his shadow swallowing my confidence whole. My mind blanks, and before I can brace myself, my tail catches on something. I stumble backward, heart lurching.
The illusion disappears around me. Everything fades—the archives, their voices, even the pressure of the water. I see nothing.
I close my eyes, forcing my thoughts to still, to focus. When I reopen them, the cave's path is surrounding me once again.
I search the ground to see what I tripped over.
At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. But as my night vision sharpens, I see it clearly.
A male finling lies sprawled before me, a makeshift blade of sharpened stone jutting from his neck.
His skin is gray—decaying. Tiny sea creatures feast on him as the ocean slowly reclaims what remains.
No blood is present; already washed away.
His memories, no longer. The echo cavern, won . . .
A dull roar fills my ears.
I have to get out of here.
These images aren’t real, I know that. But they feel real.
Pain and fear sink their hooks into me, tearing deeper with every breath.
Still, I can’t give in to them. I was brought here for a reason.
I have a purpose. I will not return to the surface.
I have to find whatever is holding me back in this place, whatever keeps whispering that I don’t belong.
Returning to my resting place, I find a long shard of stone and carve a plan into the wall behind me.
The first illusions were of my past life, familiar memories meant to tempt and weaken me.
But those were easy to overcome. That life could never grant me what I’ve been given since coming to Virellan.
These new illusions, though—Orion, Nyxalene, the finlings—all felt so real.
Their words cut deep, twisted into hatred, preying on my doubts.
Because even though I chose to stay here in Virellan, a part of me still feels like an outsider.
Unwelcome. Unworthy. Not because of them, but because of where I come from.
However, as I stated toward the illusion of Nyxalene, the ocean chose a human for a reason.
Maybe that reason is me. Maybe a human is exactly what they need to fight this evil we barely understand.
Maybe that’s the entire point . . . to trust something—someone—different.
My human perspective might be my greatest strength.
I think differently, see differently, and I hunger to learn what others have long accepted as their permanent history.
When the laughter finally fades into silence, I understand. The illusions weren’t about what anyone else thought of me. They were about what I thought of myself, and why I ever believed I needed their approval to belong here in the first place.
Orion has accepted me. He’s trusted me to endure this path beside him.
And damn it, I should be willing to see where that path leads.