Silence blanketed Atlantica like a shroud of mourning.
Where once laughter and song had flowed freely through the currents, now there lingered only the soft crackle of magical stabilizers and the groans of the wounded. Streets of coral, once vibrant and swaying with the tide, now lay fractured. Great sections of the reef wall had collapsed entirely, the natural curvature of the city broken by the tremors and the violence of the Bukavac's charge. Towers crumbled inward. An entire plaza had sunk into the trench below, leaving behind nothing but dust, blood, and bubbles.
Triton floated above the wreckage of the outer ward, flanked by guards too stunned to speak. His trident hung in his hand, useless now as he stared at what remained of one of Atlantica's oldest temples. The walls had folded in on themselves. Dozens had perished there—priests, children, travelers waiting to be evacuated. Only scattered remains drifted among the debris.
Queen Athena was no less grim. Her hands trembled as she passed by a line of cloth-covered bodies wrapped in seaweed and silence. Her daughters worked tirelessly in the medical wards, Ariel among them—still weakened, but determined. She and her sisters applied salves, soothed frightened children, and gave drinks to the wounded. Their royal status was forgotten in the face of catastrophe.
In the central ward, tension held like glass on the edge of shattering.
"I counted over two hundred confirmed dead," whispered a medic to Athena as he passed her a scroll, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "More missing."
Athena read the list in silence, every name a knife. She pressed it to her chest, breath caught.
"Dear let us declare Ursula an entity of apocalyptic threat," she said at last, voice raw. "From this moment, we are in a state of war."
She said it not as a queen, but as a mother.
Elsewhere, Helios and Kurai moved swiftly through the makeshift triage camps, ignoring the council meeting entirely. They didn't need to hear reports to know what had happened.
They found Thalen outside a collapsed chamber, quietly lifting debris and stacking it away from the wounded. He looked up as they approached, his skin dirty, his movements precise and unshaken.
"You're alive. Surprising," Kurai said flatly.
Thalen nodded, brushing grime off his chest. "Yes. There were others who needed help."
Helios blinked once, then nodded. "Good. You keep pn help where you can. We'll go take care of a few things while you help out here."
Thalen didn't smile—but he stood straighter.
Inside the Grand Chamber of Shells, the atmosphere was thick with grief and urgency.
Floating around the war table were Triton, Athena, Helios, Kurai, and several of the kingdom's top military minds. Projected images of the battlefield pulsed atop the table—each red blotch denoting collapsed infrastructure, lost terrain, or civilian death zones. There was far too much red.
"We've yet to pinpoint Ursula's current location," said General Marinus. "Whatever magic she's using—cloaking or relocation—it's beyond standard detection."
"Then we raise the standard," Helios replied. "Create a detection array calibrated for the trident's magic. That artifact is very powerful—she can't mask it completely."
Athena nodded. "Do it. Every ripple she sends, I want to feel it before it strikes."
"And the citizens still in the lower ridges?" another general asked.
"Evacuate them. No exceptions," Triton said. "Even if we have to carry them ourselves."
Kurai stepped forward. "All of this delays the inevitable. If you want to end this—end her. Send Helios and me. We'll cut the head off the serpent."
Triton narrowed his eyes. "Assassination."
"Precision," she countered. "It'll take one blade, not a thousand."
Helios raised a hand. "We start with reconnaissance. I'll lead a scouting expedition to her former lair. If we find a trail, we track her. Then we strike."
There was a long pause.
Athena looked at her husband, her eyes hollow but resolved. "Approved. You leave at first light."
In the districts still standing, fear festered like a wound.
Stories spread like venom: Ursula had become a sea goddess, a living avatar of vengeance sent to punish Atlantica's pride. Whispers turned to paranoia. Some swore they saw her face refracted off the seafloor. Others claimed to have heard the screams of dying victims echoing in their dreams.
Arguments broke out in the markets. Fights erupted in ration lines. Families that had lost children screamed at guards. Citizens began to speak of surrender—not as betrayal, but as survival.
"Can't we just give her the kingdom? If she controls the seas, what's left to rule?"
"She'll destroy us all unless we bow!"
The breaking point came when a crowd gathered near the palace gates, demanding answers.
Athena and Triton emerged together atop the upper balcony. The crowd fell silent as they hovered into view.
"We hear your fear," Athena began, her voice carrying through the currents like a bell toll. "We feel it too. We know what was lost. But I will not let fear decide our future."
"We are Atlantica," Triton thundered. "Not a city of cowards or ghosts—but of warriors, of survivors. We have endured storms before and we will endure this."
Then, a quiet voice rose from below.
Ariel.
She swam upward, flanked by her sisters, hair drifting like fire in the current.
"I was afraid too," she said, her voice soft, but clear. "When she took me, I thought I'd never come back. But I did. Not because I fought her—but because you did. Because you believed I was worth saving."
She looked at the crowd—at the wounded, the grieving, the angry.
"Don't let fear make you forget who we are."
One by one, her sisters joined her. And then the crowd began to nod. To breathe again.
And slowly, the panic ebbed.
Far away, in a lair carved from black coral and shadow, Ursula sat upon her throne. The trident floated beside her, humming with latent power. Around her, the ocean bent unnaturally—currents curling the wrong way, fish swimming backward.
Before her shimmered a mirror of enchanted water.
In its surface: Ariel.
Ursula's grin widened as the girl's eyes glazed briefly during her speech, just for a second. A flicker. A thread.
"She speaks so well," Ursula purred. "I wonder what she'll say when they realize what I put in the little girl."
She licked her lips.
"Let them hope. Hope tastes better when it's ripe for ruin."