The sea did not crush them.
It welcomed them.
As Thalindra, Kaelen, and Rowan stepped onto the spiraling bridge of living coral, the ocean parted gently around them—like walking through the belly of a great, slow-moving beast that had decided, for now, not to bite.
Vines wrapped with bioluminescent growths arched overhead, forming a glowing tunnel beneath the waves. Fish swam alongside them—some familiar, some not. Shapes moved beyond the edges of their vision. And all the while, the tide sang.
It wasn't words.
It was invitation.
Rowan kept his spears ready, eyes scanning the water. "I don't like that we're not drowning."
Kaelen chuckled. "Says the man walking inside a sea-vein."
Thalindra pressed her palm to the coral wall. The vines pulsed in time with her mark.
"It's the Bloom Matron," she said. "She wants us to reach her."
Kaelen frowned. "That's not comforting."
"It's not meant to be," Thalindra replied.
They reached the gate just past the shelf where light faded.
Two enormous coral pillars arched into a ring, the entry marked by a glowing spiral rune—the same as the Verdant Soul. Except… broken.
A gap ran through the center.
"Fractured harmony," Thalindra whispered.
The gateway pulsed once, then opened—water folding back into a perfect sphere, revealing the sunken city of Tir Kalthis.
It was both beautiful and wrong.
Coral towers bent inward like teeth. Stone streets were covered in tangled kelp. The city glowed with its own light, but the colors were off—slightly too blue, slightly too bright.
The Song was alive here… but mutated.
Kaelen's voice was low. "This place is a dream someone tried to keep alive too long."
They passed through the gate and entered the city.
Tideborn watched them from doorways and arches—half-seen, cloaked in silence. None attacked. None spoke.
They simply observed.
Rowan's hand hovered near his blade. "Why aren't they stopping us?"
"Because she doesn't want them to," Thalindra said. "She wants to prove something."
At the city's heart, they reached a courtyard surrounded by drowned statues—druids holding up coral blooms, their faces worn and weeping water.
And at the center, beneath a blooming tower of living anemone, waited the Bloom Matron.
She stood tall, elegant, draped in reef-thread robes.
Her blindfold shimmered like pearl.
Her voice, when it came, was the tide and the deep:
"Welcome, Leafweaver. The Circle returns."
Thalindra stepped forward.
"You've bound one of ours. You've warped the Song."
"I've preserved it," the Matron replied. "Above, you forced the wild to kneel. Here… I let it grow."
Kaelen scoffed. "You call this growing?"
The Matron turned her head. "Growth does not care for beauty. Or balance. Only survival."
Thalindra's voice cut through the tension.
"Where is he?"
The Matron turned to the tower behind her.
From it, vines uncoiled like petals falling away—
—and revealed a man, suspended in a tangle of blooming coral.
He was thin, marked with Songrunes across his chest and arms, his eyes shut.
But his lips moved.
He was singing.
A song without end.
Without breath.
Without self.
"You broke him." Thalindra's voice trembled.
"I freed him," the Matron replied. "He sings not from memory, but from the depths. He is the final voice—the chorus you tried to silence in the Grove. But he will finish what you were too afraid to begin."
Thalindra stepped toward the tower.
The Matron didn't move.
"Then I'll end it."
And the sea screamed.