When the sky swallowed her, Mireia thought it was the end. Lightning split around her, searing the air white. The world turned to fire and wind — then nothing but cold. Salt burned her throat. Her body twisted through storm and silence alike. She could no longer tell if she was falling or flying, only that the world above had cast her out. But death did not take her. Through the deafening thunder, another rhythm emerged — slower, deeper, like the pulse of something vast below. The roar of the heavens faded. The weight of the sea closed in. The storm had been Aureon's. But what held her now did not belong to him. The water did not crush her; it carried her. The waves enfolded her as though she were being drawn from one god's grasp into another's. She sank through blue and black — through ruins veiled in silt and coral, through arches of stone etched with forgotten symbols. Statues stared at her from the dark: women crowned with shells, their faces calm, their hands raised to the deep. Then the current shifted. The sea opened, and she rose.
When Mireia woke, she lay upon a pale and silent shore. The sand shimmered like starlight caught in stone. Behind her, cliffs of obsidian veiled the horizon; before her, the sea stretched endless and still, reflecting a sky that no longer dared to thunder.
At the heart of those cliffs stood a temple.
It was carved not for one god, but for all. Pillars crowned with sigils of the heavens, mosaics of wind and fire, of sea and stone — the council of gods immortalized in their dominion.Aureon's crest shone faintly above them all, half-swallowed by moss.Thereon's sigil lingered lower, worn smooth by time, yet no less radiant.
She climbed the steps barefoot, her gown torn and heavy with salt. Each breath she took was a rebellion.
Inside, the air smelled of rain long past — and of waiting.
Water dripped in slow rhythm, echoing through the hall like the heartbeat of something ancient. Offerings littered the floor: pearls, charred incense, sun-cracked idols.
At the far end stood an altar carved from two stones fused — one dark as the sea, one pale as lightning. Its inscription gleamed faintly through the damp:
"Here gather the gods in council, to measure sin against faith."
The words made her stomach turn.
Faith.What faith had her bloodline ever been shown?
Her ancestors had begged for mercy and been answered with famine. They had built shrines and been met with plague. She clenched her fists until her nails cut her palms.
"I owe you nothing," she whispered to the carvings. "None of you."
The silence that followed seemed to breathe.
Days blurred.The temple sustained her — rain gathered in stone basins, vines bloomed through cracks, and the tide left offerings of fruit and fish at her feet. Yet the air never warmed. The heavens remained gray, as if still watching.
At night, she dreamed — of thunder, of light splitting the clouds — but when she reached for the memory, it twisted into something else: a voice, deep and steady, calling her name through the dark waters.
Mireia.
Each time she woke, her heart pounded with fury and confusion.
She hated the gods.She hated that the sea felt familiar, that the call in her dreams stirred something she could not name.
Sometimes, she stood at the water's edge and shouted to the sky,"Was this your mercy, Aureon? To cast me down where even your storm cannot follow?"
The sea answered with stillness.
Sometimes, she would stand at the edge of the water and whisper, "You should have left me to the sky." The waves would roll closer — just enough to touch her feet — then withdraw, as if in answer. Once, she saw a vast shadow glide beneath the surface: too graceful for a beast, too deliberate for chance. And though she told herself she hated it — hated the gods, hated the sea — something within her stirred each time it moved. She did not yet understand. The heavens had cast her down. But the sea had chosen to catch her.