"This… this can’t be real." Lizzie’s voice cracked as her boat scraped against the muddy edge where the shoreline used to meet the sea.

Before her stretched a vast pit, coral bleached and brittle in the open air, palace towers crumbling where water once held them steady. The air smelled of rot, not salt; gulls circled above as if mocking her absence.

"My palace… my axolotls… even the lily pads…" Her fingers curled white around the side of the boat, remembering the shimmer of lanterns on blue water.

The silence pressed in, louder than any storm. "Everything I built… gone."