The envoy arrived unannounced.
No war horns.
No flags.
Just the steady drum of feet across scorched soil.
They came on foot—six robed figures in deep indigo, with skin the color of midnight and eyes like wet stone.
At their front walked a woman.
Regal. Ageless. Cloaked in lion's mane and moonbeads.
She bore no weapons.
But when she stepped into Eclipse Hollow, even the wind paused.
Zela whispered, "That's a high priestess of the Isles."
"Which is impossible," Elara said flatly. "They haven't crossed the salt-line in five hundred years."
Caelina stepped forward.
"You crossed borders closed by oath."
The woman bowed low.
"And yet we heard your howl. Even across the sea."
Her name was Seyna of the Seven Temples.
And she claimed to represent the Soultide Order—an ancient, ocean-bound lineage of wolves long believed extinct.
Their bodies shifted like water. Their magic flowed with tides.
Their goddess was not the Moon.
But Salt and Bone.
Inside the council tent, Seyna laid it plain.
"You are not the only bloodline," she said. "You are not even the oldest."
She unfurled a scroll made of whale-skin.
Upon it: a prophecy written in sigils no one else in the room could read—except Caelina.
The words burned behind her eyes.
Not remembered.
Inherited.
"When silver rises in a girl not born of tide or tooth, the sky shall ripple, and the sea shall offer its second bride."
Seyna looked at her with calm fire.
"You are the second bride."
Elara stood. "She's no bride to any god or sea."
Seyna smiled gently.
"She is not yours to keep."
That night, Caelina stood on the southern ridge, watching the tide roll in from beyond the valley.
Zela approached, carrying hot broth.
"You're thinking of going with them."
Caelina didn't deny it.
"If what they say is true… there's more. More to what I am. More to the magic in my blood."
"You just rebuilt your name from ash," Zela said. "Don't trade it for a myth in a conch shell."
Caelina turned, her voice quieter than the wind.
"I'm not trading it. I'm testing it."
Seyna requested one night to perform an awakening rite for Caelina—"to let the sea speak to its lost daughters."
Elara refused.
So Caelina agreed in secret.
Beneath the blackened moon, they gathered by the river delta where wolf blood had once been spilled.
Seyna etched salt-spirals into Caelina's palms and poured obsidian oil into the water.
Chanted words older than shifting.
Then she pressed her palm to Caelina's chest.
And something moved.
Not pain. Not power.
Memory.
A vision hit Caelina like a breaking wave:
She stood on a stone jetty, watching a massive wolf carved from coral rise from the depths.
Its eyes were weeping stars.
Its howl shook the wind into ribbons.
It did not speak.
It remembered.
And in its memory, Caelina saw herself—
Standing at the edge of two worlds.
Not belonging to either.
But capable of binding them.
She gasped and fell to her knees.
Seyna helped her up.
"You have the sea in you," she said. "And if you walk with us, you will learn its language."
Back in her chambers, Elara waited.
When Caelina returned, wet with dew and oil, she didn't lie.
"I went."
"I know."
"You're angry."
"I'm scared."
Caelina paused. Then:
"So am I. But not of the sea. I'm afraid of not knowing the full shape of who I am. I'm afraid of being someone else's symbol again."
Elara didn't speak for a long time.
Then: "If you go… come back."
"I will."
"No."
Elara stepped forward. "Promise."
Caelina raised her pinky—an old ritual from a forgotten childhood.
"I promise."
And Elara, the warrior with eyes like storms, clasped it.