The next dawn came quiet and silver, casting long threads of light over the waters encircling Sea God Island. Yet there was a strange stillness beneath the surface—a hush in the deep, as though the ocean itself held its breath.
Hai Shen Ling stood at the edge of the tidal cliffs, gazing across the limitless horizon. The trials of the chamber still echoed within him. He could feel the lingering resonance of the obelisks in his bones, as though they had left markings upon his very soul.
He whispered into the wind, not expecting an answer. "What am I becoming?"
Behind him, a familiar presence approached. Sea Ghost Douluo, draped in a mantle woven of kelp and phantom mist, said nothing for a moment. Instead, he joined Shen Ling in staring out toward the endless blue.
"You are becoming what the world needs," Sea Ghost finally murmured. "A voice to replace the silence."
"I'm not sure I'm ready," Shen Ling said quietly. "Everything I've felt—every soul skill I've received—carries more than power. They carry pain. And it isn't all mine."
Sea Ghost turned to him, solemn. "Then you already understand more than most. Pain remembered is not a burden. It is a compass."
He pointed toward the sea. "And out there... something is stirring."
That very morning, a disturbance was reported.
Bo Saixi summoned all the titled Douluo to the Grand Hall. The atmosphere was taut with anticipation. A scout, drenched and pale, knelt at the base of the dais.
"A reef—east of the Tidal Maw. It emerged last night. A reef that should not exist."
Sea Dragon narrowed his eyes. "Another illusion?"
"No," said the scout. "It sings."
The room fell into stunned silence.
Bo Saixi's expression grew sharp. "Summon Shen Ling."
When Shen Ling arrived, the sea breeze carried a low hum in its wake. A melody—too soft to be heard, but impossible to ignore.
Sea Woman Douluo stepped forward. "Your resonance with the Siren legacy has reawakened old places. We believe this reef is one of them. A vault."
Sea Star Douluo added, "Its appearance... it responds to your presence. We must investigate."
Bo Saixi turned to Shen Ling. "We will go together."
And so they departed—eight figures of tide and legend, drawn toward a melody only the sea remembered.
They found the reef at twilight. It rose like a crescent fang from the water, covered in barnacles and strange shell-like runes. As Shen Ling drew near, one of his soul rings glowed softly.
Voice of the Abyss.
Its activation came not from intention, but recognition. The reef responded, pulsating like a living thing. The melodies etched into its surface bloomed with light.
"It's not a reef," Sea Fantasy Douluo murmured, eyes wide with reverence. "It's a relic."
Shen Ling approached, hand raised. As his fingers brushed the nearest glyph, the ocean surged upward—not in rage, but in harmony.
A siren's call. Ancient, full, and unbearably beautiful.
And then, as the water parted, a spiral stairway revealed itself, descending into the abyss.
"Only you may walk this path," Bo Saixi said.
Shen Ling nodded once. He descended.
What awaited him was not a tomb, nor a vault.
It was a cathedral.
Lit by soft coral-glow, the structure was vast, built in perfect spirals, with walls of opalescent glass and murals etched in layers of sediment and starlight. Figures—siren-like, some with faces, some without—danced across the walls in silent procession.
In the center: a dais with seven concentric circles.
Shen Ling stepped into the first.
Immediately, his five soul skills flared. Not with urgency, but with harmony—as though greeting old kin.
The mural before him came to life.
And a voice—not his own—spoke from within the stone.
"You have remembered us. Now, we shall remember you."
Shen Ling stood alone upon the dais of concentric circles, each step downward spiraling toward the center like a descent into song itself. The murals glowed dimly around him, and a soft current of light winded through the chamber like a whisper.
Each footfall echoed, but not against stone. They echoed against memory—his, and the sea's.
The second circle was different from the first. It pulsed beneath his soles like the slow beat of a heart. The air shifted. And suddenly, he was no longer alone.
Figures rose from the mist—no longer shadows etched into murals, but translucent siren spirits drifting toward him, their bodies composed of salt and refracted light. Their eyes did not hold anger. They held sorrow.
One of them stepped forward.
Aeloria.
The First Siren. Her song had granted Shen Ling the Song of Aeloria, but now she stood complete—a woman of vast beauty, draped in kelp silk, her face serene yet mournful.
"We are echoes," she said, her voice like the hush of tide over sand. "Echoes you have stirred. You must now learn to carry us."
Shen Ling bowed. "I'm ready."
She reached toward him, fingers grazing his temple.
Suddenly, his soul surged. His spirit power churned wildly. All five of his soul skills activated at once:
Siren's Echo sang out across the cathedral.
Soul Lure Mirage created reflections of every siren who had died with a song in their throat.
Song of the Abyssal Trial rumbled with judgment, calling forth illusionary adversaries.
Voice of the Abyss expanded the chamber's silence into emotion.
Song of Aeloria twined with Aeloria's spirit, harmonizing in celestial resonance.
The spirits joined in the song.
And the air caught fire.
Flames. Not of heat—but memory.
Shen Ling fell to his knees, breath trembling. Around him, the choir sang—a litany of lost verses, harmonies that had not been heard for thousands of years. The spirits spiraled upward, each refrain breaking and reforging his soul.
Pain surged through him. Not physical—but empathetic. He felt their deaths, their longing, their endless waiting in the abyss.
The murals around him changed.
A great war—Siren against Sea.
Temples submerged. Choirs extinguished.
Chains forged by fear.
And then silence.
Until now.
From the storm of memories, a new energy coalesced. Shen Ling's spirit ring space pulsed violently.
A forth ring began to glow—not a real ring, not yet—but a resonance.
Aeloria sang louder.
"You are our voice now. Do not falter."
Shen Ling rose. His hands opened. His voice joined hers, and the harmony surged through the chamber like a second birth.
The spirits wept.
And then they dissolved—leaving only memory, and music.
He fell silent.
The second circle dimmed.
And from above, Bo Saixi's voice called softly through the tides:
"Come back, child. They've passed their voice to you."
Shen Ling took a trembling breath and stepped off the dais.
His soul now echoed with more than power.
It carried flame.
It carried song.
It carried the pain of every Siren who had died unremembered.
And as he rose through the winding stair of coral and light, the sea itself hummed in tune.
.
As Shen Ling emerged from the final step of the coral staircase, a faint tremor ran through the water beneath his feet, as though the sea itself shuddered in awe. The cathedral doors closed behind him—not with finality, but with reverence.
The sea was not quiet. It was listening.
Bo Saixi stood before him, eyes searching. Around her, the Seven Children of the Sea God—each cloaked in silence, each bearing the weight of revelation on their shoulders—watched with bated breath.
"You heard them, didn't you?" Bo Saixi asked.
Shen Ling nodded slowly. "They were waiting… and they remembered everything."
Sea Woman Douluo stepped forward, eyes glassy. "We thought they were myths. That their pain was legend. But it lives in you now."
He didn't speak. Instead, he raised his hand.
In that moment, the innate soul skill—Song of Aeloria—rose like a tide behind him. But something had changed. The tone was deeper. Older. It harmonized not only with the spirits, but with the sea itself. The sound vibrated through the cliffs, into the coral, across the reef. A tremor of song.
"They showed me the war," Shen Ling said. "The betrayal. The silencing. They showed me why the sea forgot... and what it cost them to remain remembered."
Sea Spear Douluo clenched his fists. "Then we are not just guardians of the present. We are wardens of forgotten sins."
Sea Ghost Douluo murmured, "And he is the atonement."
Bo Saixi turned toward Shen Ling. "What did they give you?"
He looked down at his hand, where faint rings of silver-blue light spiraled up his arm. They didn't hurt. They pulsed.
"They gave me their name," he said. "I carry it now, though I don't yet understand its meaning."
The Sea God Douluo bowed their heads in unison.
From the shoreline, the sea whispered back. Gentle waves lapped at the temple stones in rhythm to a song none of them could yet sing.
But Shen Ling heard it. And in the far corners of his soul, something stirred.
A new power. A new soul skill.
Still unnamed. Still forming.
But it was there—cradled in the silence where the Sirens had once wept.
Later that night, Shen Ling stood alone at the peak of the Singing Cliffs, his robes fluttering in the salted wind.
Bo Saixi joined him, bringing a woven shawl of sea-lily fibers. "You look like you've aged a year."
"Maybe I have," he replied. "Or maybe I've just been singing with ghosts."
She draped the shawl around him. "You held them well. I'm proud of you."
He didn't answer at first. Then, softly, "Why do I feel like this is just the beginning?"
Bo Saixi smiled. "Because it is. The sea doesn't give answers. It gives echoes. And you've become the one who listens."
They stood in silence for a while, the tide humming beneath them.
And somewhere, deep within the abyss, the name he had been given whispered through ancient currents—waiting for the day he would speak it aloud.