The Deep Calls

The sea was waiting.

It did not rage. It did not roar. It waited—a vast, endless patience stretched beneath silver light and crashing waves. Selena stood at the jagged edge of the cliff, the storm-laced wind hurling salt against her skin and tearing at her cloak like claws. Her boots pressed into the crumbling stone, and still she did not move. Beneath her, the ocean writhed with a fury too old to be called weather. Black waves slammed against the base of the cliff, shot through with glowing veins of blue—like molten crystal pulsing with the rhythm of something ancient and asleep. The veins moved, breathed, watched.

The scent of the air was not just salt. It was memory. Rotting promises. Forgotten names.