Location: The Shattered Coast → The Drowned Man's Tavern → The Hollow Spire
Time: The Hour of Salt and Iron → The Hour of the Hungry Moon → The Hollow Hour
I. The Castaways
The sea spat them onto the shore like chewed bones.
Lysander woke with his face half-buried in black sand, the taste of salt and something fouler thick on his tongue. The shadowmark on his chest pulsed like a second heartbeat, its new shape—dragon and kraken intertwined with a third, unrecognizable beast—throbbing with every breath.
Maelora lay a few feet away, her merling traits receded but not gone. The gills at her throat fluttered weakly, her fingers still curled as if clutching a phantom conch shell.
The System flickered to life, its display cracked and glitching:
"Host Status: Stabilized"
"Symbiote Integration: 87%"
"Warning: Residual Abyssal Echoes Detected"
Lysander rolled onto his back, staring at the sky.
It was wrong.
The clouds moved in reverse, swirling around a fixed point where the dragon god had vanished. The sea lapped at the shore in perfectly symmetrical waves, each crest identical to the last.
Time itself had been wounded.
II. The Drowned Man's Tale
The tavern stank of pickled kelp and bad decisions.
The patrons were the kind of men who had stopped counting their scars, their eyes reflecting the hollow glow of ghost-crab lanterns. They fell silent when Lysander entered, hands drifting toward harpoons and gutting knives.
The barkeep—a one-eyed brute with whalebone teeth—grunted. "You're the one they're whispering about. The Shadowlord."
Lysander said nothing.
Maelora spoke instead, her voice still raw from singing. "We need passage north. To the Hollow Spire."
The tavern exploded in laughter.
"Ain't no ships sailing there," a fisherman cackled, slamming his tankard down. "Not since the waters started dreaming."
The System pinged, highlighting a map tattooed on the man's forearm:
"Chart Detected: The Hollow Spire (Pre-Cataclysm)"
"Note: Last Known Location of the Drowned King's Anchor"
Lysander flipped a Valyrian steel coin onto the table.
The laughter died.
"You'll take us," he said.
The fisherman's grin vanished.
III. The Hollow Spire
The spire was exactly where it shouldn't be.
It rose from the waves like a rotted tooth, its obsidian surface peeling away in layers to reveal honeycombed tunnels beneath. The water around it was preternaturally still, a perfect mirror reflecting nothing.
Their "ship" was a repurposed fishing skiff, its hull patched with leviathan hide. The fisherman—Gareth of the Grey Tide—hadn't spoken since they left shore, his knuckles white on the tiller.
Maelora sensed it first.
"It's singing," she whispered.
And it was.
A low, resonant hum vibrated through the wood, the water, their very bones. The spire wasn't just a place.
It was alive.
"System Alert:"
"Anomaly Detected: Temporal Fracture"
"Recommendation: Immediate Retreat"
Lysander ignored it.
He stepped onto the spire's base, his shadowmark flaring blue-black in recognition. The obsidian melted beneath his feet, forming a staircase that spiraled downward into absolute dark.
Gareth didn't wait.
His skiff was already fleeing when the first tendril of living shadow slithered from the spire's mouth.
IV. The Anchor's Truth
The chamber at the spire's heart was smaller than expected.
A single object floated at its center:
A dragon's skull, its sockets filled with clusters of bioluminescent barnacles.
But the skull was wrong.
Its horns curved inward, forming a crown-like cage around a pulsing blue orb—the source of the humming.
"The Drowned King's anchor," Maelora breathed. "This is what binds him to our world."
The System glitched violently:
"Artifact Identified: [CORRUPTED DATA]"
"Origin: [UNKNOWN]"
"Warning: Temporal Distortion Field Active"
Lysander reached for the skull—
—and the orb spoke.
"You're late."
The voice was his own.
From behind them.
Lysander turned.
Another Lysander stood in the doorway, his shadowmark fully black, his eyes empty of everything but hunger.
"I've been waiting," the double said. "For you."