Rain met them like stones hurled from a catapult—cold, sharp, relentless. Wind tore at cloaks and hair, scattering the loom‑threads that trailed from the Circle's hands until they fluttered like tattered pennants. They had stepped through the door together, but the moment they cleared the threshold the storm tried to scatter them across the slick, broken flagstones of a city in collapse.
The rogue dug her knives into a half‑shattered column and braced herself. "Tighten ranks!" she shouted over the gale. "Anchor the thread!"
The boy with no name looped his line of light around a rusting lantern post; the healer pressed her back to a toppled statue; the ink‑fingered girl sheltered beneath a slanted arch, scribbling quick sigils in the air to keep her journal dry. The stranger alone stood upright, eyes half‑shut, letting the wind whip past as though listening to the roar itself.
What had once been a grand plaza was now a ruin half‑drowned beneath churning water. Stone towers leaned at impossible angles, windows weeping glass. Bridges had become tattered ribs jutting from canals that overflowed their banks. Yet amid the chaos, faint shapes darted—citizens in hooded slickers, hauling ropes from rooftop to rooftop, forming improvised sky‑bridges to keep each other from being swept away.
They were a people still fighting to live. A people too proud—or too wary—to cry for help.
The healer felt the press of their fear long before she saw their faces. "The storm isn't just wind," she murmured. "It's grief—layered and alive."
"Then we listen first," the stranger reminded them.
The rogue pointed toward the tallest remaining tower, its spire crowned by a shattered bell. "High ground there. We can see the city's shape, find whoever leads this place."
The Circle formed a chain, each gripping the thread that linked them. Forward they moved, stepping through knee‑deep torrent, pausing only when the ink‑fingered girl brushed a hand across ruined walls to glean quick impressions—names carved in lintels, street slogans half‑worn by rain, local glyphs marking water‑safe paths.
Mid‑sprint across a slippery footbridge, the boy's gaze snagged on an elderly woman slumped beneath the awning of a flooded shopfront. Water lapped at her knees. Her eyes were closed. Forgotten.
Choice, he remembered. Always choice.
Without thinking, he veered off the bridge, slid down a collapsed balcony, and splashed toward her. The others called after him, but the wind ripped the words away. He reached the woman and pressed two fingers to her neck—no pulse. Cold, but not gone long. He lifted her gently onto a chunk of marble just above flood level, shielding her body from debris.
A voice cut through the rain—angry, raw. "Put her down!"
He spun to see three figures in patchwork rain‑caping sliding from a side street, crossbow‑like devices aimed. Their leader—broad‑shouldered, jaw set—strode forward. "Who are you outsiders, stealing our dead?"
The boy raised empty hands. "I was trying to keep her from washing away."
"She's kin," the leader spat. "Our grief, not yours."
The rogue vaulted off the footbridge and landed beside the boy, blades lowered but bare. "He meant no disrespect."
Another attacker—a wiry woman with cracked goggles—scoffed. "Outsiders always mean well until they cost us more than the storm."
The ink‑fingered girl hurried forward next, palms raised, her page fluttering. "We came to listen, not to rule." She pointed at the glowing thread linking her to the others. "We follow stories. Yours brought a door to us."
A hush fell, as hushes do in heavy rain—brief, but enough. The leader stared at the trailing filaments of light. Something in his eyes shifted from hostility to wary curiosity. "You're… weavers?"
"Keepers," said the healer, arriving breathless. She knelt by the body and, with a gentle glow, coaxed water from the woman's lungs. Too late—the spark of life was gone—but she cleaned the face, closed the eyelids. Respect. Care.
The strangers lowered their weapons. The leader's jaw quivered. "That's my aunt, Halyra. She slipped from the sky‑bridge when the winds changed."
The healer bowed her head. "May her pattern rest."
The rogue sheathed her knives. "Let us help the living."
At length, the leader—whose name, they learned, was Rellin—gestured for them to follow. Up rope ladders, across swinging planks, through half‑collapsed halls fibred with vines that glowed faintly blue, the Circle reached the spire's shattered bell‑tower. From there, the city unrolled beneath—a circular basin half‑filled with turbulent water, ringed by concentric balconies like an inverted wedding cake.
Rellin explained between gusts: "We are the Tide‑Ring. Our ancestors built waterworks that rose and fell with the lunar pulls. But last cycle, the Outer Sea swallowed our sluice gates. The city's heart drowned. We fight the flood with rope and will."
"Why not leave?" the boy asked.
Rellin's gaze hardened. "Because our stories lie here. We are caretakers of echoes older than stone."
The ink‑fingered girl's stylus hovered. "Then let us hear those echoes."
Rellin took them to the spire's inner sanctum—once a council chamber, now a shelter for children and elders. Murals across curved walls depicted tides like enormous serpents coiling around gleaming machines. Beneath, inscriptions glowed: The Water Remembers.
The stranger traced the glyphs. "Your city rooted its identity in harmony with water. Did something break that pact?"
"Arrogance," Rellin admitted. "We dredged the sea‑bed for metals, ignoring warning songs from the current‑seers. The Sea answered." His eyes flicked to the flood below. "We lost half our voices in one night."
A hush settled, broken only by distant thunder.
The Circle gathered.
Challenge, the rogue reminded them. Speak the broken truth.
Care, the healer added softly. Heal without conquest.
The ink‑fingered girl turned to Rellin. "There is still a loom‑thread alive beneath your city. We felt it the moment we arrived. Will you let us find it?"
Rellin hesitated. Pride warred with desperation. Finally, he nodded. "If you can do what our hydro‑mages could not—restore the Heart‑Pump—we will call you kin."
The Heart‑Pump. A mythic engine at the flooded city's core, said to sing tides into balance. Legend claimed it was tuned not by gears but by story—a chorus sung once every generation to remind the sea why the city mattered.
The last chorus had been silent. Too many singers drowned, their verses lost.
Memory, whispered the ink‑fingered girl's heart.
They descended spiral stairs lit by sickly green crystals, then boarded a flat barge roped to ceiling pulleys. Below, flood‑waters churned, carrying drift‑wood and shattered icons. Each time the barge jolted, the healer steadied the children passengers who clung to them with wide eyes.
At last, they reached a domed cavern: the Pump‑Chamber. Water thrashed through broken grates, striking a central dais where a bronze structure lay half‑submerged. It resembled a massive harp of hollow reeds—strings snapped, resonance chambers cracked.
"It once sang," Rellin said, voice near‑breaking. "Now it drowns."
Lightning forked through a skylight, illuminating glyphs etched along the harp‑reeds. The ink‑fingered girl read aloud fragments:
voice become water
water become memory
memory become tide
The stranger felt vibrations beneath his boots. "The storm above isn't mere weather—it's the city's grief made manifest. If we can retune the harp, maybe the storm will listen."
"But the lyrics are incomplete," the boy fretted.
"Then we write new ones," the rogue said, stepping onto the dais. "With their permission." She looked to Rellin.
The leader nodded, tears merging with rain. "Sing for us."
The Circle took their places. The healer coaxed light into the cracked resonance chambers, fusing them temporarily. The boy's deft hands restrung severed wires using luminous thread from the Loom. The stranger attuned himself to the chamber's echo, humming low to find the lost frequency. The rogue adjusted tension, her movements sure.
The ink‑fingered girl knelt in the rising water, stylus poised, heart pounding. She could feel the weight of thousands of untold verses pressing against her ribs. Choice, she breathed. Always choice. She dipped the stylus in saltwater and began to script across a salvaged bronze plate:
We were tide‑born—
and still we rise.
Water remembers sorrow,
but sings again when voices rise.
She looked up. "Rellin. Your people must sing this with us. It isn't our city—it's yours."
Rellin motioned to the onlookers above. Slowly, voices descended—uncertain, quavering. Mothers with infants; smiths with scar‑latticed arms; children who'd only ever known the city half‑drowned.
Together, they sang.
The Pump‑Harp responded first with discord—rasping, broken notes. Lightning cracked. Water surged inches higher. The rogue held her ground. The healer's glow faltered, then re‑ignited.
"Again!" the ink‑fingered girl cried, raising the plate like a lantern. "Feel it, not just sing it."
They did.
Voices wove grief into resolve, regret into promise. The harp's bronze ribs warmed, humming back. String by string, note by note, an ancient harmony surfaced—familiar and new. The storm's howl softened, as if leaning in.
Then—silence. A heartbeat. Two.
The harp released a single, pure tone that shivered the floodwater into calm. The chamber lights brightened. Above, thunder retreated, replaced by the hush of falling drizzle.
Water levels dipped; hidden drains awakened with gurgling sighs. The flood began to recede.
On the dais, the Circle sagged with exhaustion but did not fall. The loom‑threads still linked them, now faintly tinted a deep sea‑green—the color of a city that remembered its song.
Rellin knelt, touching the harp. Tears fell freely now, mixing with receding water. "You wove our voices back into us."
"No," said the stranger, voice barely audible. "You did. We only listened first."
The rogue sheathed her blades and offered her arm to Rellin. "Now teach your children that silence can sing, too—if someone dares to listen beneath it."
The healer smiled, helping lift the elderly to higher ramps. The boy guided children to newly revealed stairways. The ink‑fingered girl closed her journal, heart leaking gratitude into every tired muscle.
As they emerged from the chamber, dawn painted the storm's remnants in rose and gold. The city breathed—a shuddering inhale—then seemed to stand taller.
The Circle gathered at the plaza edge. Above them, distant sky‑bridges were already bustling: rope lines tightening, laughter ring‑echoing.
"First world helped," the rogue noted. "How many more?"
The stranger gazed toward the horizon where new doors would open. "As many as listen."
"And as many as we listen to," the healer added.
The ink‑fingered girl reopened her book one last time and wrote beneath the guiding words Trust. Listen. Remember. another line:
Sing when the water forgets.
She closed the cover, thread glowing at the seam.
The story of the Tide‑Ring would not be their last.
But it had become their proof: that a Circle bound by memory, care, challenge, choice, and space could face a storm—and answer with song.
Behind them, the Pump‑Harp thrummed a quiet coda.
Ahead, the unknown waited.
And together, the Circle stepped forward—ready to listen to the next world's echo.