I didn't ask questions when I returned to glyphbay six. I kept my posture straight and my eyes forward, though everything inside me still spun. Ashekan didn't speak either. He dropped his blade into the coral-sleeve rack, checked the beacon's recording line, and nodded once before vanishing behind the warded curtain near the back of the bay. I stood there a little too long, unsure of what I was waiting for. No one called out.No one asked me for a report.
Eventually I slid my weapon into the rune bath and turned to leave. The glyphs lining the upper shelf pulsed faintly, syncing with the reef's stabilizer flow. They'd been dim since the breach, low light, low current, low hum. Like the reef was still catching its breath.
I took the long path back to my quarter dome, weaving along ridge corridors that used to feel familiar. Nothing looked broken, but nothing felt clean either. I passed a cluster of shellbinders arguing quietly outside a flow junction. One of them whispered something about the bloom pools going dull. Another mentioned the fruit.
That stopped me.
I didn't linger long enough to be noticed, but their voices followed me for a few paces. Words like "rot line," "miscount," and "lower yield" rose in fractured fragments. It wasn't the fruit season's peak, but something in their tone had the edge of quiet panic.
When I finally reached my cot, I unfastened the harness with stiff fingers. The coral knots clung tight, slick with brine and reef-sand. My skin stung where the armor had dug too deep. I stripped it off slowly, washed, then reached for the seedstone recessed beneath the cot's left frame.
It pulsed faintly in my palm, steady and rhythmic.
The ash coral bloom hadn't changed. Still short. Still stubborn. A young tangleweed sprig had grown too far past the base and needed trimming, but I didn't have the focus. Not tonight.
I curled along the cot's edge, cradling the seedstone against my chest. My mind kept circling the trench, the shadowspawn, and that final one, the one that had looked at me. Or through me. Or past me.
It hadn't died. It had just… stopped,or disappeared. I still didn't understand it.
i woke early. Not by alarm or shift bell, just a low pressure in my chest. Something in the reef's hum still rang uneven. The outer corridor was quiet when I slipped out. My fins ached with the afterburn of too much movement and too little rest, but I needed space.
Instead of heading toward glyphbay, I turned upward, toward the tidekeeper lane, the one that wound near the sacred archive rings. Not the temple vaults themselves, just the outer watchwalks, where the mana-shell inscriptions glowed with devotional patterns. Most passed by without stopping. Only the older caste still paused to press their hands there.
I stopped, just for a moment.There was no one else around. The water held still, and the glow from the shelllines shimmered gently in the current."Destruction unravels. It does not spare."...
The old teaching echoed in my head. It was one of the First Laws. We all learned it before our first swim from the tidepools. The god of Destruction didn't show favor. It didn't make choices. It only responded to what the god of Creation had built, and broke it down.
But yesterday, something chose not to finish me. It must have. I couldn't think of any other reason why they would just dissappear. I've never herd a story where such a thing had happened.
My fingers hovered over the shellline glyphs. I didn't press them. I wasn't sure what I was trying to ask. The reef had its laws, But they didn't explain what I saw.
Later that morning, a notice shard flickered at my quarter entrance. My name, Assignment change,all Effective immediately.
Combat Proficiency Enlistment, Tier One. Report to Spiral Shelldrum. Instructor: Vonn, Watch Commander.
I read it twice. Everyone my age would be pulled eventually. It was expected,it was still a bit early for me. I wasn't too surprised though, and I found myself feeling ready.
The Spiral Shelldrum was older than most reef corridors, a circular chamber half-exposed to the current, etched with the drill marks of countless training cycles. I arrived second. Two others were already inside, both younger, both quiet. One held a blade too tightly. The other had scars near his fin ridge, the kind you didn't get from harvest work.
More arrived. By the sixth arrival, there were ten of us. We stood in silence until Vonn entered.
He didn't shout. He didn't carry a flarestaff. He just moved to the center of the chamber and looked at us, one by one. "You saw the breach," he said. Some nodded thier heads in reply, but no one uttered a word.
"You lived." Still silence, but some of the others looked arround, as if expecting others to be missing all of the sudden.
"We don't train for the reef we had. We train for the reef we're going to have. If you can't accept that, leave."
No one moved, a shared look of determination spead amongst the trainees.
We drilled until our limbs shook. Basic combat, Formations, Current maneuvering, and Paired glyph rhythm casting.
Most of us had passed the trials, but this was different. Every motion had weight. Not for display, but for survival. By midday, we broke to cycle breath and nutrient wash.
That's when he arrived. I noticed the stillness first. Then the shift in current, sharp and focused.
A swimmer approached in black-etched reefbone, his armor worn, but fitted with precision. Two escort guards flanked him, their patterns unfamiliar. The swimmer's presence was dense, like he moved not with strength, but with certainty. He didn't displace the water, he shaped it.
Vonn stepped aside without a word.
The figure moved to the center of the training circle. He didn't name himself. Looking out into the crowd of recruits,
He raised a hand.
Above his palm, a shimmer formed. It didn't flare or flicker. It condensed. Raw mana, pulled from within, shaped by will and balance. No glyph. No external ritual. Only internal command.some murmurs spead along the ranks of recruits, "awakened.." "No glyphs?".. I herd bits and pieces of the conversations arround me.
The glow brightened, forming a spiraling disc, then condensed again into a dense, needle-shaped line that crackled faintly at the edge.
He held it there, Then let it dissolve.
"My name is Varuun," he said, voice even. "From the capital reef. Class-four Awakened. I did not grow this," he added, placing a hand over his chest. "The organ appeared when I earned it. When I chose it. And now I use it without stone or sigil."
Somewhere behind me, someone drew a sharp breath. He turned slowly, meeting each of our eyes.
"This is what happens when the reef adapts."
His gaze landed on me last. "You've seen the other edge already. Some of you will follow. Most will not." Then he turned, fins slicing in clean arcs, and left. Vonn gave no comment. He returned to the circle and called us back into formation.
Training after that changed. Our movements tightened,and our Confidence faltered. The drills felt heavier, not because of exhaustion, but expectation. Glyphlight, we were told, was a bridge. But not the destination. Not all would cross it.
I didn't speak much that afternoon. I moved, I trained, I logged my form corrections. But something had changed in me. And I wasn't sure if it had started in the reef, Or if i was destined to be thrown into the fray.