The ocean was wrong.
Kaelen Veryn had grown up with the sea in his bones—the rhythmic pull of the tide, the hiss of salt spray on stone. But tonight, the waves did not move. They hung, frozen mid-crash, like molten glass caught in a sculptor's grip. The moonlight lay across them in silver sheets, unbroken. Even the wind seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
Somewhere beyond the unmoving water, something was pulling.
He felt it before he saw it—a deep vibration under his skin, like the hum of a bowstring straining against an invisible hand. It wasn't sound, not exactly, but Resonance. A force most men never touched, and those who did… rarely survived.
Kaelen took a step closer to the cliff's edge. His breath misted, though the air was warm. Shadows were bleeding from the rocks below, thick as oil, slipping upward toward the still ocean. They gathered, swirling into a black spiral that sank deeper than sight could follow.
And then the voice came.
Not from the air. Not from the earth. From the Layer beneath reality, a whisper that seemed to slide into the marrow of his bones.
"The first link has been forged."
Kaelen staggered back. His heel caught on stone. He almost fell—but a hand caught his arm.
She was standing there as if she had stepped from the frozen air itself: a woman in a dark traveling coat, her hair silvered at the ends, her eyes the color of deep water before a storm.
"Don't move," she said. Her voice was steady, but her grip was iron. "If you breathe too deeply, it will notice you."
Kaelen didn't ask what "it" was. Some part of him already knew—something ancient enough to have been here before the oceans filled, something that had been waiting for a moment exactly like this.
She glanced over her shoulder at the frozen waves. "You've felt it too, haven't you? The pull."
He nodded slowly.
She let go of his arm. "Good. You'll need to remember that feeling. It's the only thing that might keep you alive."
The spiral of shadows shuddered, as if aware they were being watched. A single thread of darkness lashed upward, striking the sky—and the still ocean began to move again.
The wind screamed to life. The waves slammed into the cliff. And in the chaos, she leaned close enough for him to hear her words over the roar.
"My name is Lyra Thaloren. And if we don't stop this… the Anchorfall will take everything."
Kaelen opened his mouth to speak, but the cliff beneath them cracked, splitting toward the spiral below.
The first link had been forged.
And somewhere deep inside, a chain began to pull.