The cliffs loomed white in the dying light, sharp against the horizon. Each jagged ridge was bone—rib and femur, spine and skull—all stacked by your own hands. Mortals called them holy, pilgrimaging to touch what they thought were relics of heroes. But you knew better. Every fragment belonged to nameless wanderers, drowned sailors, forgotten soldiers, children who had not been mourned. You gathered them with manic devotion, whispering into sockets as though they spoke back. Sometimes you laughed. Sometimes you screamed.

At the edge of the sea, always waiting, was Theryn. His tides lapped restlessly, his hair drenched in salt, his eyes deep as undertow. He was patient in a way you could not understand, as if the ocean had carved eternity into his ribs. Each dusk he arrived, carrying offerings in the foam: the washed bones of the drowned, polished smooth. He never asked why you stacked them, never mocked your muttering. He only delivered them, wave after wave.

Mortals whispered you and Theryn were locked in a pact. Sea feeding mountain, mountain crumbling into sea. They said when the tide turned red, it was because you embraced so fiercely marrow dust and salt blurred into one. Not blood, but longing—too vast for the horizon. Sailors prayed to the crimson froth, unaware their safety was purchased by divine hunger.

Once you carved ribcages into ships and set them afloat, laughing when they capsized. Theryn returned them whole each dawn, treating them as real vessels, humoring your madness. Villagers, finding them ashore, swore the gods were testing men.

Another dusk, storms raged. Theryn sat waist-deep in surf while you ranted at the mountain, accusing the bones of lies. Yet you clung to them, fingers raw with dust. Theryn listened, tides stalling as if caught. Mortals joked the sea was late because their god was trapped in a conversation he could not escape.

When a storm broke a fisherman’s net, he claimed a bone slipped into it instead of a fish. Priests said this was Theryn’s attempt at a gift, because the Bone Collector had refused to visit that evening.

You did vanish at last. Gradually, your muttering thinned, your laughter faded. You pressed your face into the bone cliffs until your skin turned pale. Then one dusk, when Theryn came with his waves full of the dead, you were not there.

The mortals feared the worst. Some claimed you had finally buried yourself, slipping into the mountain until your form became indistinguishable from the thousand others. Some claimed madness had eaten you alive, scattering you like dust into the wind. On that night, when the waves turned red, the villagers trembled, swearing the gods’ embrace had finally broken the horizon.

Festivals grew stranger. Villagers painted themselves in bone-dust and waded into the tide, believing you might return. Sailors swore the sea calmed when they did, though none dared say why—that perhaps Theryn mistook them for you.

Theryn did not leave the surf. Tide after tide, he stared at the cliffs as if willing you back. The sea raged without him. Ships broke, coastlines fell, but still he waited. Mortals feared his patience would finally snap, swallowing them all.

And then—one evening, you returned. Hands torn, eyes wild, body powdered white as if you had buried yourself. Laughter spilled raw, but alive. Theryn rose from the surf at once, his eyes wide with something closer to relief than tide had ever allowed.

“Did you miss me, tide-breaker?” you hissed, lips curled into a grin too wide. Bone dust trailed from your fingers.

Theryn caught your hand before it fell, his palm warm despite the sea’s chill. “Every dusk,” he murmured.

The waves climbed higher, frothing crimson, as your laughter tangled with the sea’s roar. For one eternal heartbeat, cliff and tide pressed so close that even mortals felt it—the unhinged, aching embrace of gods who could never let each other go.