The Coral Palace, Council Chamber. The sound of Bartos dragging his left leg sliced through the stillness of the deep sea. Steel-gray hair cropped short, burn scars crawling over the left half of his face. Behind him, the killing intent radiating from forty Tide Fang warriors seemed to shift the very temperature of the ocean. Carlo stood in the corner of the chamber, gripping the oath parchment through his cloak at his hip. Aira did not rise from her throne. Her long, silver-blue hair swayed with a deep-sea languor, catching the light of the surrounding lumina crystals. Her amber eyes were cold, fixed in quiet scrutiny upon the force that had forced its way in. "[cold]Entering without permission. You've grown senile, Bartos." "[angry]Silence, you insolent girl!" His voice shuddered through the seawater of the council chamber like an undersea quake. Bartos raised his right hand, pointing at Aira without any attempt to hide his missing fingers. The representatives of the people watched, breath held. "[angry]Four times, Aira! Four attacks, four failures! Coraline still stands! Are you too craven to protect our people—or are you in league with the humans?!" A murmur rippled through the crowd. (It's begun…) Carlo clenched his teeth. His own falsified report—that the target posed no threat—had given them the pretext for this inquisition. Bartos held up a sheet of parchment. It was a copy of the report on the kraken attack off the coast of Coraline the previous week. "[angry]Answer me, Witch of the Sea! Why does that Singer of Light still live?! Four is no trifling number! Your dispatched emissary—Carlo!" Bartos's crimson eyes pierced Carlo where he stood in the corner of the room. "[angry]Why did this wretch fail to eliminate that songstress?! With a full fortnight's grace, why could he not land even a single poisoned blow?! There is but one answer—our Queen is in league with the humans! Nothing else explains this disgrace!" Aira's fingers dug into the armrest of her throne. The pendant, her grandmother's keepsake, glowed pale blue against her chest. That day at the harbor, she had felt Serafina's song—the song that drove back the kraken—resonate through her entire body as vibrations in the current. The Singer of Light's existence was exactly as Carlo had recorded in his report: a miraculous voice that required no lumina crystals. But Aira did not flinch. "[cold]Bartos. What is this cowardice you speak of? Is it refusing to let our people die in vain?" Bartos's face twisted further, the burns distorting his expression. "[angry]Wrong! Cowardice is forgetting the oath to your departed grandmother, forgetting your hatred, and sitting idle in the safety of the deep! Hear me, people!" He turned from Aira to the crowd and began to speak as if intoning a chant. "[sad]Aquaria—twelve hundred souls, burned by a rain of fire arrows." Someone in the crowd gasped. "[sad]Silvana—eight hundred. Cut down by blades, even the infants." An elderly woman of the Meridia tribe covered her face with her hands. Carlo knew her lineage—survivors of Silvana. "[sad]Emporio—fifteen hundred. Only twelve escaped alive into the sea." The Great Exile. The names of the surface cities that had burned eight hundred years ago, the numbers of the dead, were loosed one after another into the seawater. These were the scars of history that every Meridia had memorized. The young soldier standing beside Carlo unconsciously touched the scale-like markings on his own neck. Finally, Bartos exhaled deeply and glared at Aira head-on. "[cold]My Queen. You have forgotten your grandmother's dying words—'Never forgive.' To you, the future of this people cannot be entrusted." Aira gripped the pendant at her chest with her left hand. The chain bit into the back of her hand. The cold deep-sea silver threatened to mar her skin. The stares of the people were painful. No one spoke. Carlo tried to step forward, but Bartos's underlings blocked his path. (Don't move—don't move, Carlo.) He told himself. If he moved now, he would be handing them proof of his treason against Aira. Bartos interpreted the people's silence as consent. "[serious]Therefore, I present this ultimatum. Two choices. One: immediately commit all forces of current manipulation and beast summoning, and reduce Coraline to sea wrack. Two: abdicate the throne and cede it to us, the Tide Fang. You have three days. Choose, Aira." There was no longer even anger in his voice. Only certainty, and a trace of sorrow. Aira slowly rose from her throne. The coral ornaments in her hair brushed together with a cool, clear sound. She walked past Bartos, not turning back, and began to move southward—toward the Void Trench. "[scared]My Queen! Where are you going?!" Carlo shouted. He alone understood where Aira was headed. Fifty years ago, when he had lost both parents in a mine collapse and was trembling in the rubble as a child, it was Aira who had pulled him out. She had promised nothing then, only said, "Come." Thirty years of loyalty—he alone knew her solitude. (I cannot let her go alone—) But Aira did not look back. Bartos, triumphant, declared to the crowd: "[cold]Behold! Even a Queen is but a child of man! She flees! In three days, the abdication ceremony will be held here! From tonight, the Tide Fang shall lead Voltida!" Water temperature: two degrees. The deepest part of the Void Trench was a darkness where even light had perished. Aira stood alone before the bedrock of the forbidden ground. Her silver-blue hair swayed in the faint deep-sea currents, and her amber eyes gazed at the enormous crystal embedded before her. It was jet black. A mass of pure darkness that swallowed even the light of the surrounding lumina crystals. The forbidden deep-sea crystal—the Abyssal Core. (Three royals have laid hands on this before. Two lost their sense of self.) The records from three hundred years ago flickered through Aira's mind. The first went mad the instant he absorbed the crystal and devoured his comrades. The second kept her sanity for three days, but on the fourth, she clawed out her own throat and lost her song forever. Only the third—her grandmother—barely retained her sanity, but at the cost of a lifetime eroded by the crystal's curse. Bartos's voice echoed in her head. *The Queen who forgot her grandmother's dying words.* Aira smiled. A deep, cold smile, like the darkness of the deep sea. "[cold]Grandmother's dying words, is it." She touched the pendant gently. The keepsake of the last Witch of the Sea, who had protected their clan at the cost of her own life. "[cold]How shallow. What I must protect now is not her dying words. It is the people who are still alive." Her fingers touched the crystal's surface. In that instant—the scale markings all over her body throbbed. From her nape to her shoulders, down her back, to her legs, the markings glowed faintly all at once, and a piercing pain shot through her as if she were being stabbed by needles. The crystal was resonating. Aira accepted the pain as if it were an old friend. For three hundred years, this crystal had been waiting for her bloodline. (If it is to protect my people—) Aira pressed the crystal against her sternum. (I have no need for a self.) The crystal broke through her skin. There was no pain. Instead, there was the sensation of something vanishing from deep within her chest. The feel of her grandmother's pendant slowly, but surely, faded from her awareness. Her silver-blue hair began to turn jet black from the roots. Her amber eyes transformed into a darkness that swallowed light. Her body began to swell. Bones creaked, muscles tore, skin was replaced by scales. The form that had been human warped into the shape of a beast, then further into something colossal, something beyond the natural. Aira's consciousness still remained. But the melodies of song magic, her grandmother's face, even Carlo's name—everything was being overwritten by something else. The last thing she recognized was the roar she let out. The entire trench was enveloped in a soundless vibration. Petralca, before dawn. The cobblestones of the harbor district were suddenly struck by violent tremors. Cracks ran up the walls of the fishing-net warehouses, and the merchant ships moored at the wharf groaned. "An earthquake?!" Harbor workers jolted awake. The sea's surface split open from within. Bathed in moonlight, a jet-black mass fifty meters in length rose in a pillar of water. It was what had once been Aira—scales gleaming with the dull luster of obsidian, countless tentacles undulating from the base of its neck, and the crystal embedded in the center of its head radiating a dark light. The beast's roar shook the entire harbor. Glass shattered, children screamed and wailed, seabirds took flight all at once. "A sea beast—!!" Amid the shouts, the harbor workers' station was smashed to splinters by a single blow of a massive tail. Fragments of wood and stone rained down. The beast stepped over the breakwater on four legs, mowing down warehouses as it began its advance toward the city. The Coraline Navy's ballistae loosed fire arrows from the harbor fortress. But they bounced off the jet-black scales the moment they struck, leaving not so much as a scratch. "All forces, retreat!! Abandon the harbor district!!" As alarm bells rang out, people fled in panic toward the higher ground, each desperate to escape first. Carlo, disguised as a black-haired human through transformation magic, dashed through the shadows of the rubble, carrying an elderly woman who had been left behind. The moment the beast had split the sea's surface, he had understood everything. Aira's back as he had seen it in Voltida—she had already made her decision then. (That thing… she took it on alone…!) He set the old woman down in a safe place and pulled a sheet of parchment from the inner pocket of his cloak. The oath. *Forget not the pride of our people, and seek dialogue as equals*—his own vow, written in the ancient Meridian script. When Carlo looked up, he saw a lone girl standing atop the wreckage of the breakwater. Pale golden curls shimmering in the moonlight. Serafina. She had witnessed the beast from the window of her inn and, pressing a hand to her still-unhealed throat, had run to the harbor to protect the people. Around her larynx, there were translucent spots of lumina crystal. With trembling hands, she cupped the fragments of lumina crystal in both palms. "…La… Lumi… La…" She could still sing. She drew a deep breath and, standing on the breakwater, began to sing the *Sanctus of Repose*. It was a melody unknown even to the Meridia—spun only by a Singer of Light born once in centuries. The miraculous strain that had driven back the kraken and saved the harbor just the week before. But. The beast did not stop. On the contrary, it let out an even louder roar, as if to drown out her song. (It's not reaching…? Why…!) Serafina's blue eyes widened. Inside the beast, the Abyssal Core had completely seized control of its lumina organs. The frequencies of song magic no longer fundamentally meshed. Her song could no longer reach a beast overwritten by the madness of the deep. Even so—Serafina kept singing. High notes that seemed to seep blood from deep within her body. Something inside her throat screamed. Her vision blurred white, her knees trembled. Even so, she continued to spin her song beyond the limits of her voice. Asking nothing in return, knowing the danger of destroying herself. (To save someone—) *Snap.* A faint tearing sound reached her ears. In the next instant—her voice would not come out. Even when she opened her mouth, only air escaped; it would not form a melody. She fell to both knees and pressed a hand to her lips. Warm blood seeped into her palm. Her vocal cords had been completely severed. She had lost her voice. She would never sing again. Carlo stared at th