The Sea God Sanctuary had never been so still.
It was early morning when the ocean fog rolled low across the alabaster steps of the sanctuary. The air was heavy with brine and silence. No seabird cried overhead. No waves broke upon the distant reef. It was as if the sea, in its vastness, held its breath.
Hai Shen Ling stood at the heart of the Sanctuary's Great Plaza, a solitary figure draped in robes woven with strands of enchanted sea silk—midnight blue traced with silver coral thread. On his shoulders, a mantle shaped like spreading fins shimmered faintly in the light. It was Bo Saixi's final gift.
Before him, the Seven Titled Douluo stood in solemn formation, each bearing the ancient marks of their devotion not only to the Sea God, but to the child who had become something more than heir.
Bo Saixi stepped forward, the tide-woven scepter of the Sea God in her hands. Her voice, when it rose, carried not only authority but sorrow.
"You are to enter a place no living soul has stepped within since the Age of Foam," she said. "The Drowned Temple remembers not with walls, but with wounds. What you see there, what you awaken—may change you forever."
Hai Shen Ling bowed. "Then let it."
Sea Dragon Douluo approached, placing a carved bracer upon Shen Ling's left wrist. "Wrought from Leviathan bone. It will absorb strikes from creatures born of pressure."
Sea Spear Douluo followed, his gift a bone-thin harpoon carved with hymns. "It sings to water."
Sea Ghost Douluo pressed a bead of pure obsidian into Shen Ling's palm. "This will show you what light fears to reveal."
Sea Star Douluo, silent, handed him a pearl that pulsed with heartbeat-like rhythm. "It listens for Siren song. It will react."
The other Douluo followed in kind—relics of age and memory passed into Shen Ling's keeping, until he stood wrapped not only in blessings, but in the legacy of the sea itself.
Bo Saixi stepped close last, her hands cupping a conch etched in gold. "Blow this only if the temple breaks you."
Shen Ling accepted the relic with a bowed head. "Then I hope it never hears my breath."
Then, with a silent nod, he turned toward the edge of the sea.
And stepped into the depths.
The sea did not roar around Hai Shen Ling as he dove.
It pulsed.
Each kick of his legs brought him deeper into pressure and chill. The light dimmed with every meter, color bleeding from the world like paint washed in a storm. All around him, nothing stirred—and yet the water thrummed with potential. It watched.
His soul rings flickered like lighthouses in the dark: four strong halos—three a thousand years old, the fourth burning with ten thousand years of lament.
Voice of the Abyss pulsed in his chest like a drumbeat.
But it was the Song of Aeloria that stirred first—its resonance drawing whispers from the current. Not words. Not even language. Just… recognition.
As if something once long dead acknowledged his descent.
He passed coral skeletons spiraling like broken cathedrals. Stone statues encrusted with barnacles. At a thousand meters, the trench walls narrowed. Glowfish fled his presence. Eels coiled around kelp strands parted before his shadow.
Then came the warning.
A single line of runes, scrawled in ichor-like moss across a fallen shrine:
"To call her name is to inherit her sorrow."
He did not stop.
The Abyssal Gate loomed ahead, cradled in blackstone cliffs and haloed by slow-churning eddies of pale light.
Massive, ancient, and broken in places, the gate resembled a drowned crown—seven arches forming a jagged circle, each topped by coral shards and barnacle blooms. Between them, an ethereal curtain of water shimmered with shifting memories—glimpses of drowned cities, weeping maidens, and thrones toppled into surf.
A pressure built behind Shen Ling's eyes. A low hum rose from the Gate.
Welcome, vessel.
The voice was not external—it bloomed inside his skull like a song half-remembered. The Siren's voice. Not her full song. Just a trace. A harmonic.
Shen Ling reached forward.
At the touch of his palm against the barrier, the Gate pulsed. Water spun into sigils. One of his soul rings—Elegy of the Drowned Crown—flared. The fourth ring's lament answered the temple's echo.
The Gate parted.
And Hai Shen Ling passed through.
The world beyond the Gate was not darkness.
It was memory.
The Drowned Temple was a vast complex of spiral towers, sunken vaults, and shattered mosaics, all suspended in a watery void. No ground beneath his feet, no sky above—only endless corridors of sea light and shadow.
Here, the walls whispered.
Shen Ling floated past murals of battles between Sea Gods and Deep Horrors. He saw depictions of Sirens forming courts beneath the sea, binding songs into seals.
And everywhere—chains. Binding voices. Binding thrones.
He passed a column where a Siren maiden was carved mid-scream. From her throat, a carved coral grew into silence.
"They took her voice to cage her power," said the Song of Aeloria in his mind.
The Siren martial soul pulsed.
Deeper he went.
Until he came to the Temple's heart: a vast amphitheater where a single pearl the size of a ship hovered in the air. Around it circled echoes—shadows of Sirens, singing without sound.
He stepped forward.
And the voices stilled.
The pearl pulsed.
Shen Ling reached out—only to be halted by a wave of crushing emotion. Grief. Not his own. The grief of generations. Of daughters drowned to silence their songs. Of empires lost. Of names erased.
The shadows formed into a figure.
The Siren Queen.
She did not attack. She wept.
"You… bear our song. But do you bear our sorrow?"
Shen Ling lowered his head.
"I do. And I will."
He sang.
A song not of war—but of return.
"Siren's Echo. Soul Lure Mirage. Song of the Abyssal Trial. Elegy of the Drowned Crown. Voice of the Abyss. Song of Aeloria."
Each soul skill, each melody, layered atop one another—until the temple itself began to vibrate.
The Queen stepped forward. Placed her palm upon his heart.
Then take the last of me.
The pearl cracked.
From it surged light—and memory.
A soul ring formed—not of hunted prey, but of legacy.
And with it—a new song was born.