The tremor passed quickly, like the sigh of something vast shifting in its sleep.
But Mira felt it deep in her bones.
She stood at the edge of the cavern pool, still kneeling, hand trembling above the black water. The others in her expedition stood frozen behind her—three young Veythari-born, their eyes wide with fear and awe.
The voice had not left her.
It lingered in her mind, layered like echoes inside a shell.
"There are two kinds of gods.
Those who rise from the sea.
And those who crawl from the earth."
Mira blinked, and for a moment, her reflection in the water was not her own.
It was someone older.
Someone buried.
Someone waiting.
Frank arrived before dawn.
He had followed the pulse—the rhythm beneath the soil that matched the one beneath his skin. It led him straight to the cave's hidden entrance, where the stone had cracked open like a wound revealing secrets beneath.
He found Mira still kneeling by the pool, staring into it as if trying to pull answers from the dark.
"You saw them," he said.
She didn't look up.
"I saw her ."
Frank stepped closer, crouching beside her.
"Who?"
Mira finally turned to face him.
"She called herself Yrra ."
Frank stiffened.
He had never heard that name before.
But his body knew it.
His second pair of breasts pulsed once—sharp, like pain.
Like recognition.
Back at the lighthouse, Frank unsealed the book again.
The pages were no longer blank.
More words had appeared, bleeding into existence like ink spilled in slow motion.
"Before the ocean sang, the earth whispered.
Before the tide rose, the roots curled.
Before Quinta returned, Yrra was forgotten."
He closed the book gently.
Then he spoke aloud, to no one in particular.
"They're waking up."
That night, Mira dreamed again.
This time, she did not dream of water.
She stood in a city carved from black stone and bone, lit by glowing veins of red crystal pulsing like arteries. There were no waves here. No tides. Only silence broken by distant chimes and the soft rustling of unseen things moving through tunnels far below.
At the heart of the city was a temple—not unlike the one beneath the sea—but instead of coral and bioluminescence, this place was built from obsidian and fossilized flesh.
And in its center, seated upon a throne shaped like coiled roots, was a woman.
Her skin was pale as moonlight on snow.
Her hair flowed like smoke.
Her chest bore four full moons—soft, pulsing, alive.
She opened her eyes.
They were hollow.
Not empty.
But full of something too vast to see.
She looked directly at Mira.
And smiled.
"You've come back to us," she said.
Mira woke screaming.
In the days that followed, more signs emerged.
People across Brinemere began dreaming of the same city—some even waking with dirt under their nails, sand in their mouths.
A boy born with webbed toes and eyes that shimmered in the dark spoke his first words:
"We were here first."
A fisherman vanished near the caves and reappeared days later—unharmed, but changed. His voice was deeper, his skin cool to the touch, and when he laughed, it echoed unnaturally.
He claimed he had walked beneath the world.
Spoken to the ones sleeping there.
And they had welcomed him.
Frank gathered the council.
Mira stood beside him, her glow now constant, her presence pulling the air around her like gravity.
"We have lived between two truths," Frank said. "The return of the Veythari. The awakening of the Hollow God. The rebirth of Quinta."
He paused.
"But we have ignored the third truth."
Murmurs spread among the gathered.
"There is another kind," Mira said, voice layered again, echoing from somewhere deeper than her throat. "One that never went into the sea. One that never left the land."
She looked at Frank.
"They are waking up."
Deep beneath the world, in the mirrored chamber where no light reached and no sound should have traveled…
Something moved.
The mirror rippled.
And from the other side, a hand pressed against it.
Four fingers.
Soft palms.
Waiting.
Then—
A whisper.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just inevitable.
"We remember you."
And then—
A single heartbeat.
Slow.
Massive.
Coming from beneath the roots of the world.
Above ground, Mira placed a hand over her chest.
Her four moons pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
In rhythm with something rising.
She looked out toward the horizon.
Toward the cliffs.
Toward the caves.
Toward the unknown.
And she smiled.
Because she understood now.
Quinta was not the only shape returning.
And the sea was not the only place where old gods slept.
There were others.
Waiting beneath stone.
Beneath soil.
Beneath memory.
And now…
They were waking up.