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Chapter 3 —— Songs That Crosses The Worlds
Silas Veylor entered the Depths not as a desperate man, but as one who had long stopped fearing anything that bled. He was one of the strongest fighters in Etris—some whispered the strongest—and even the monsters that terrorized lesser divers recoiled at his presence. Still, Deep Owls, Megalodaunts, and the horrors deeper down could wound him, sometimes badly, but none yet had managed to kill him.
The pressure thickened as Silas descended the shifting pathways of drowned stone and black-lit coral. Whisperfish circled him, swaying to a rhythm that wasn't his. The air (or whatever passed for it) trembled with echoes of forgotten memories. The Depths were alive with the Song.
Silas pressed forward.
He wasn't seeking power. He wasn't seeking a trial, or an oath, or a boon from anything ancient.
He was searching for Alice—the girl who vanished months ago, leaving behind nothing but a fading warmth and a strange residue of Song-energy that did not belong on the mortal plane.
If the Depths held any answer, it would be in the domain of Yún'Shul, Primordial of Emotion, Hearts, and Memory.
The "Temple" was not truly a temple but a space where the Song thickened so densely that stone and coral bent into a cathedral-like cavity. The walls pulsed not like flesh, but like the echo of a heartbeat remembered long after death. The deeper Silas walked, the heavier his own memories felt joy, regret, fear each amplified until they pressed against him like a tide.
His boots sank into the soft, memory-soaked ground.
A tremor rippled through the waterless air. The Song shifted blue, then red, then blue again.
He had gained the Primordial's attention.
The presence of Yún'Shul was not a figure, nor a voice, but a pressure on his mind a sudden swell of emotion that was not his own. It hit him all at once:
Longing. Loss. Devotion. Joy. Grief. Love. Desperation.
Silas dropped to one knee, teeth gritted as the emotional weight tore through him like a tide.
A pulse answered from the walls.
Why have you come, Mortal?
The words were not spoken—they were felt, carved directly into the center of his being.
Silas forced himself upright. "I'm looking for someone. She disappeared. Not into the Void, not to the Akhians—she vanished without a trace. Her energy… it wasn't of this world."
The emotional pressure around him tightened—not hostile, but curious.
Another pulse.
You seek another world. A thread beyond the Song.
Silas nodded.
Mortals do not cross worlds. Not through prayer. Not through sacrifice. Not through will, the Primordial impressed upon him. But there are fractures. Divergences. Echoes of Songs not meant to be heard here.
Silas's breath slowed. "Alice found one?"
A rift. A tear in the music of reality. She walked through before it sealed.
Thunderless silence followed, as if the entire Depths were listening.
Silas clenched his fists. "How do I find it?"
A tidal wave of emotion slammed into him—he staggered, vision blurring. Images filled his mind, not memories but impressions:
A library long drowned, walls filled with runes that hummed to a rhythm older than the sea.
Books that resisted water as though protected by the Song.
A beacon of memory and thought—the Sunken Archives.
The feeling sharpened.
The Archives hold the remnants of the First Traveler—one who crossed worlds before your era. If a path exists, his trace will align your Song with the same rift.
Silas inhaled sharply. "So I can follow it."
If your will does not break.
The pressure suddenly withdrew, leaving him gasping.
Silas looked up into the shifting cathedral.
"Is that all you can give me?"
A final emotional surge washed over him—not guidance, not a gift, but a burden.
The Song inside him resonated, marking him, tuning him to whatever anomaly Alice had passed through.
It hurt.
It burned.
It carved itself into his nerves.
When the sensation faded, he was left shaking but standing.
Seek the Sunken Archives, the Primordial's presence whispered in his chest, fading.
Follow the Song that is no longer of this world.
Then the chamber went silent.
Silas took a long breath.
And he moved.
Deeper into the Depths.
Towards the Archives buried beneath collapsed kingdoms.
Past the skeletal remains of divers who reached too far.
Through the labyrinth where even Deep Owls hesitated.
Monsters lunged from shaded caverns—enraged Crabbos, a lone Deep Owl, a starving Megalodaunt—but Silas carved through them with brutal efficiency. Alone, but unbroken. Bloodied, but unyielding. Every blow he took only pushed him forward.
When he finally reached the Sunken Archives, he felt it—a pull in the Song, faint but real. A distortion in the air, a wrongness in the rhythm of reality. His heart thudded, the tune inside him echoing the anomaly.
Alice had stepped through here.
And now, so would he.
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