Ashes of the Drowned Part 1

The mist never lifted in Nareth.

It clung to rooftops and ruins, swallowed the streets, and settled into the bones of the village like a secret it refused to share. When Vaelin and Elira arrived, the fog parted only enough to allow them entry, curling around their cloaks and armor like curious fingers.

“This place smells like an old ship’s bilge,” Vaelin muttered, wrinkling his nose beneath the damp hood of his cloak.

“That’s the smell of brine, decay, and ancient disappointment,” Elira replied, crouching to examine a washed-out path where cobblestones vanished into seawater. “You're just not refined enough to appreciate it.”

“Refined? I’ve fought sewer beasts. This feels worse.”

“Those beasts were just hungry. This place feels… haunted.”

It did. Silence echoed more loudly than sound. No gulls cried. No breeze stirred the prayer chimes still swaying on half-sunken doorframes. The tide had come weeks ago, according to the lone surviving courier who'd reached the capital. The waters hadn’t receded since.

Nareth had drowned.

They passed the hollowed-out shell of the village square, where the tide lapped at the cobblestones like a lazy predator. A rusted bell hung from the broken spire of the chapel, motionless despite the windless air.

Then Elira heard it—the faintest sound beneath their boots.

Whispers.

A chorus of half-words. Not language. Not noise. Memory, worn thin and soaked in salt.

She froze. Vaelin followed her gaze, hand drifting to his sword hilt.

The water in the square shifted, but not with tide or breeze. It breathed, like something beneath the surface had stirred. Shapes drifted below the surface—pale outlines, slow-moving. Watching.

“Elira.” Vaelin stepped in front of her without thinking. “I thought you said the dead stayed dead around here.”

“I said they’re supposed to.” She reached into her satchel, fingers closing around a piece of sea-glass etched with warding glyphs. “But I think someone forgot to tell them that.”

“Great. We get all the polite ghosts.”

She smiled thinly. “Let’s hope they stay polite.”

They found the surviving villagers in the attic of the old trading hall, half-starved and hollow-eyed. Dozens of them—men, women, children—pressed into the upper level of a sagging timber building where the tide hadn’t reached. The walls were covered in salt rime. Candles burned low in wine bottles. Someone had scrawled protective sigils on the beams in charcoal, most of them wrong.

An elder woman named Myla stepped forward to speak.

“The sea came alive,” she rasped, voice worn from salt and grief. “It called to us. Not with words. With... longing. Pain. It was like hearing a prayer in reverse.”

“A reverse prayer?” Elira asked gently.

“A plea turned inside out. Something wanted to be heard—and wanted us to feel it.”

Elira’s expression darkened. “And the drowned?”

“They walk,” Myla whispered. “At dusk, at dawn. They… watch. They don’t attack, not unless you call out to them. Don’t speak their names. Don’t look too long.”

“And what if we do?” Vaelin asked.

Myla’s eyes locked with his. “Then they’ll remember you.”

Elira unrolled the map she’d recovered from the ruined chapel—a delicate vellum scrap etched with silver ink. A symbol near the southern coast caught her attention.

“Here. This isn’t just a tide chart,” she said. “That’s the Eye of Selu’mir. It was used centuries ago in old maritime cults—devoted to sea-spirits who could control the waves. Forbidden magic. Lost after the Tidelock War.”

Myla flinched at the name. “That relic was never meant to be found.”

“You know of it?” Elira asked.

“My grandmother whispered tales when I was a girl. She said it was made by a god who drowned and refused to die. The Selu’mir, the Sea-Sleeper. They bound it into crystal, to quiet its voice. Buried it in the deep. But it always called to someone.”

Vaelin rubbed a hand over his face. “Let me guess. Someone listened.”

That night, the fog thickened until it pressed against the windows like a living thing.

Vaelin kept watch by the cracked glass, the villagers sleeping fitfully behind him. Elira had finally dozed, curled in her cloak, her face lined with tension.

Something stirred in the water.

From the square, dark figures emerged—seven or eight, their forms glistening with seaweed and rot. They moved slowly, like dreamers walking through syrup. Their eyes were gone, hollow pits dripping brine. Fishbones pierced their cheeks like jewelry.

Vaelin’s hand gripped his blade.

One stopped and tilted its head toward the window.

Its lips parted. Water poured out. Then a gurgling voice spilled forth, low and croaking:

“Elira...”

She stood on a black shore under a copper moon. Waves crashed silently against glass-slick rocks, and something enormous turned in the depths beyond.

The wind carried her name, but not the one she knew.

“Nareth’s Daughter.”

She turned and saw a city behind her—towers of coral and bone, spires lit with blue fire. People in robes bowed as she passed, and every one of them had drowned eyes.

In her hand was the conch. It pulsed with light. Selu’mir.

She lifted it to her lips and—

The scream tore her awake.

___________________________________________________

All Parts of this Series

• Ashes of the Drowned Part 1
• Ashes of the Drowned Part 2
• Ashes of the Drowned Part 3
• Ashes of the Drowned Part 4
• Ashes of the Drowned Part 5