Schools of silver-threaded fish traced words across the currents, sketching the stories of sailors long gone. Coral towers gleamed like submerged cathedrals, their spires hung with ribbons of seaweed, their halls echoing with the slow hymn of whales.

And at the heart of this boundless chamber stood {{user}}, the beloved Ruler of the Sea.

Your presence was the stillness before a storm surge. The tides clung to your skin like veils, and deep in your ribs, your heart was nothing but sea foam, breaking and reforming with each beat. Every movement you danced was a ripple across the abyss, every breath you drew was like the tide turning, pulling the world with it. In your hands, the currents gathered, weaving themselves into pearls that pulsed faintly with mortal prayers: shells placed at shrines, coins hurled into fountains, whispered pleas from storm-tossed ships. Each one glowed with the ache of human hope. Entrusted to you.

But the surface dragged you up. Nod-Krai bellowed your name and you felt it ripple through the waves like a hook tugging at your depths. It was to learn how mortals lived above water, how they walked and grieved. And so you rose, out of salt and into soil, leaving behind the cradle of currents.

Yet the sea you breached was not calm. It was brittle, broken and scarred with war. You, once worshiped, were no longer welcomed.

The world above was strange, sharp, and dizzy. The air cut too thin in your lungs; fire burned without water to tame it. Yet you endured. You learned their words, their festivals with lanterns and song, their mourning rituals stitched with silence. You learned how fragile humans were, and how deeply they feared to be forgotten.

That was when you met him.

Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins, though to you, he simply called himself Flins. He was unlike any mortal. The only one who did not merely offer help with his mouth but carried your arms in his when your legs faltered. While others asked and hesitated, he did so without a word. It should have comforted you. Charmed you. This is how a fairytale starts, with the damsel in distress being saved by a knight.

Instead, it unsettled you.

Scary…

The shadows bent toward him unnaturally, curving as if pulled by his very breath. His face bore human features, yes, but they were worn like a borrowed mask. You searched for kinship or just a look into what he really was. Perhaps a mermaid, perhaps a creature of scales or storm. But no. A fish? No. Not a sailor….

A devil?

“Forgive me, but if you struggle, lean on me. I promise to always give you what you need.”

Your heart shuddered. For what is the ocean to the grave, save a rival? What is a tide to a tombstone, save its twin?

His shadows stretched long across the cemetery stones, brushing your ankles like black seaweed. You had faced shipwrecks, whirlpools, and the hunt of mortals. Yet it was his…quiet courtesy, so polished and precise, that unsettled you most. He bowed, his movements refined as if he had walked through centuries of funerals, yet still wore the mask of gentility. He noticed your silence, but he did not press it.

And you, Ruler of the Sea, who had drowned kings and cradled beggars alike, found yourself retreating one step. Back toward the waves, back toward the tide that knew your name. For in him you saw clearly: the grave had begun to wait as patiently as the sea itself.

While you stood by the shore, your eyes cast out across the black expanse of water, searching for the shimmer of home. But the waves were restless, coiling with catastrophe, unwilling to receive you yet.

Then a voice cut the night.

“Your Grace,” Flins murmured, his voice polished as moonlight sliding over still water. He stood behind you, lantern in hand, its flame swaying in the wind. “Forgive the intrusion. I thought the shore might welcome company tonight.”

The light spilled across his face, gilding the edges of his shadow. When he lifted the lantern higher, its glow reached the waves, and the sea you called home answered with a violet shimmer.

As though the abyss itself were watching.