Ashes of the Drowned Part 4

The rain hadn't stopped in two days.

Not the usual kind of storm either—it moved wrong, spiraling in waves over land, creeping up riverbanks and flooding low valleys in hours. Villages inland were seeing tides roll through their streets, saltwater in their wells. Birds vanished from the skies. Fish leapt from empty air.

Vaelin watched it all from the crest of a ruined watchtower outside Nareth, waterlogged cloak dragging in the wind. Below, Elira stood on the rocks, staring down at the ocean like it had something left to say.

“Still not talking?” he called.

She raised a hand in answer, but didn’t turn.

The conch hadn’t stopped humming since she touched it. Vaelin had memorized the rhythm by now. Like a heartbeat. Or a summons.

They’d spent the last two days chasing the visions it gave her—flashes of places and names neither of them recognized. A drowned monastery beneath a forgotten bay. A ring of obsidian stones humming with tidal power. And tonight, a reef just south of the headland, where the tide had begun to pull back against the moon.

Elira’s voice cut through the wind. “There’s another fragment.”

Vaelin joined her, squinting out to sea.

“How sure are you?”

“I dreamed of the people who broke it. I watched them carry the second anchor onto a barge—north of here. I think it was part of Selu’mir’s will. The piece that could command the sea.”

Vaelin tilted his head. “So what does that make the one we already have?”

Elira didn’t answer for a long time.

“Memory. Thought. It remembers names, faces, what it was. But the will... that's purpose. Instinct. If that part wakes up on its own...”

“Then it starts acting without remembering why.”

She nodded. “And without someone to anchor it... it’ll just flood everything.”

Vaelin cursed under his breath and tightened the strap on his sword. “So what do we do?”

“We find it. Before anyone else does.”

They left Nareth before the storm rose again.

Two days later, they reached the reef.

It was worse than the drea

The old fortress there had been half-swallowed by the ocean, its lower halls filled with silt and bones, its upper levels crumbling like wet paper. The place reeked of salt and sulfur, and the air shimmered with unstable magic.

Elira felt it before they stepped inside.

A low thrumming that pressed behind her eyes, a pressure in her chest like something inside her wanted to leap out and swim toward the sound. She tightened the wrap around the conch and pressed forward.

Inside, everything was dark except for the glowing lines carved along the walls—sigils etched in sharp, angry shapes. These weren’t the soft spirals of the Sea-Sleeper. These were the marks of warding, prison glyphs, and power-splitters.

She stepped over what might’ve once been a priest, now half-skeleton, half coral, fused to the stone floor. His fingers still clutched a rusted relic—another conch, this one cracked and silent.

Vaelin crouched beside him, prying the bone-thin fingers loose.

“Another piece?”

“No,” Elira whispered. “Just a guardian.”

The conch in her satchel pulsed hard against her ribs.

Then, the singing started.

Low. Distant. Harmonic.

It rose from the deeper chamber below them, where the water had pooled so dark it was like looking into an abyss. The sound was beautiful. Impossible. It was her own voice—but from far away, and not her voice at all.

Vaelin backed away. “You hear that too, right?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“The Will.”

It rose from the water slowly—a shape, not fully formed, a thing made of liquid and shadow and glowing strands of kelp-like magic that moved as if underwater, even in the still air. A vaguely human shape, and not one that matched any body Elira had worn in this life or the last.

It had no face.

Only a mouth.

And it screamed.

The sound cracked the air. Vaelin threw himself over Elira, but it wasn’t sound that hurt—it was memory. Raw and unsorted. A flood of past lives, voices she didn’t know but felt in her gut. Lovers. Enemies. The moment she died, chained beneath the sea. The pact made above her body. The lie of it.

Her eyes rolled back. The relic in her bag burst into blue fire, and the thing in the chamber stopped moving.

“You,” it said.

Elira knelt, gasping. “You know me.”

“I am what you were. The part that would not wait.”

“You’re not whole.”

“And you are not strong enough.”

Vaelin stepped forward, sword drawn, his presence a sharp contrast to the magic around them.

“She’s strong enough,” he said. “But I’ll cut you in half again if I have to.”

The creature tilted its head. Then, impossibly, it laughed.

“You would die for her. Even now. Even when you see what she’s becoming.”

Vaelin didn’t lower his sword. “Especially now.”

Elira stood slowly, her hand glowing with magic that had once come easy, but now felt ancient. She met the creature’s gaze—if it had one—and didn’t flinch.

“I don’t want to control you,” she said. “I want to reunite you. So we remember. So we choose.”

“There is no choice. Only the tide.”

“Then I’ll become the storm that turns it back.”

With a single motion, she flung the bound relic toward the creature. Blue fire met silver shadow. The two pieces sang—louder than before. The water trembled. The walls cracked.

And the thing screamed again—not in rage this time, but in surrender.

When the light faded, it was gone.

And in its place, floating above the water, was a new relic. Not a conch. Not a weapon.

A compass. No needle. Just a spiral etched in glass, spinning slowly.

Elira caught it.

She didn’t collapse this time.

Vaelin exhaled and walked to her side. “Well?”

“It points to the third piece.”

“How many are there?”

“At least one more,” she said. “Maybe two. But the last one...”

He waited.

“The last one is Selu’mir’s heart.”

“And I’m guessing it’s not in a gift box waiting for us.”

She smiled, eyes brighter than they had been in days.

“No,” she said. “It’s moving. And it remembers I betrayed it.”

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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