CHAPTER 60: THE QUEEN OF THE ABYSS

The throne of Submareth was carved from living coral, its pale arms curling upward like the fingers of some drowned god.

Upon it lounged Thalassaria, Queen of the Deep, her body glimmering with the teal glow of leylines that traced every curve like constellations on ivory skin.

Before her, the scrying pool shimmered with visions not of her own dominion but of the lands above, the blackened fields of the Ashlands, the endless lines of trenches, and the thunder of cannons that shook Emberhold to its foundations.

She watched it all with rapt fascination.

Each volley of Caedrion’s guns tore through Ignarion’s proud defenses, and with every eruption of fire and steel, Thalassaria’s lips curved into a smile.

Her courtiers stood in silence around the chamber, too wary to speak as the queen’s laughter, low and melodious, rippled like a siren song through the hall.

"My little land dweller..." she whispered, her voice dripping with adoration. "See how you cage the Crucible’s lions? See how you tear their pride from them stone by stone, shell by shell? Oh, you are magnificent."

The courtiers exchanged nervous glances, the tension palpable.

For ten thousand years their Queen had been the definition of stoic grace and beauty.

Never had her obsession burned so brightly, nor her patience frayed so thinly.

For eons, Thalassaria had reigned as an untouchable, austere goddess to her people.

Now she spoke like a lover awaiting her groom.

One bold advisor, the Grand Vizier Naquaros, cleared his throat.

His scales, once emerald, dulled as if by age and fear. "Majesty... forgive the intrusion. But this fixation, this... human—surely you do not mean to—"

His voice caught as her gaze snapped to him.

Thalassaria’s eyes, glowing with the Abyssal hue of her birthright, cut through him as surely as any blade.

She rose from her throne, graceful and terrible, her presence filling the chamber with a weight like the ocean itself pressing down.

"Do not presume, Naquaros." Her tone was calm, but the pool rippled violently, waves slapping its rim.

"I know every thought that swims in your mind, every doubt you dare whisper. Do you think me blind? Do you think I have not heard the stirrings of dissent since I cleansed this court of its princelings?"

At the mention of the suitors, those arrogant young lords who had gathered rebellion in their hearts and had drowned without a hand laid upon them, the chamber fell utterly silent.

The memory was still fresh. One moment they had plotted treason; the next, their bodies had floated lifeless in her hall, eyes bulging, hands clawing for breath that would never come.

Naquaros lowered his head, trembling.

"Yes... I allowed their deaths to serve as warning." Her smile returned, thin and cruel.

"But I also allowed one traitor to escape, carrying word to the humans of Ignarion. You all thought it chance. A failing of my vigilance. No... it was design."

The courtiers dared not speak, though their eyes widened.

Thalassaria returned to her throne, her tail curling elegantly around its coral base.

She gestured to the pool, where Caedrion appeared astride his horse, issuing orders with that same calm authority that set her blood aflame.

"Let them know of me. Let the humans tremble when they hear the sea itself has risen against them. Let House Ignarion quake as their fleets vanish and their armies starve. All of it... for him."

Her eyes softened as she touched the water’s surface, tracing the image of Caedrion’s face as if caressing his cheek.

"Every shell he fires, every trench he digs, every triumph he seizes brings him closer. And soon... soon he will understand who stands with him. Who loves him."

A murmur rose among the advisors.

They had lived long enough to see their queen rage, conquer, destroy.

But never had they seen her devote herself so wholly, so irrationally, to another.

"My Queen," another counselor ventured, this one a sea-witch named Herythis, her voice carrying the tremor of one who had nearly bitten her own tongue in fear.

"You risk too much. To... expose us. To antagonize the humans without cause. To—"

Thalassaria laughed. It was a terrible sound, sweet and venomous.

"Cause?" she purred.

"Do you think I need cause? I am the sea. I am eternity. For ten thousand years, I have ruled unchallenged while you and your ancestors festered in doubt. Now the time has come to rise. And this man, this little guppy, has shown me the path. None of you can understand his importance to me, and to the sea...."

She stood again, towering over the pool, her reflection rippling into monstrous beauty, half goddess, half abyss.

"You think me mad because I speak of love. But you have not seen what I have seen. His fire is not the Crucible’s tyranny. It is the Architect’s design reborn. He builds with earth, with steel, with logic. He makes war into art, and he gives hope to those the Magi have spat upon for millennia. He is the storm that will topple the tyrants of this age. And I—"

she pressed her hand to her chest, eyes blazing, "—I will be his sea, his eternal tide, the womb of his empire."

Her courtiers bowed, some in awe, others in terror. None dared contradict her further.

The air in the chamber seemed heavier, as if the Abyss itself listened.

The queen drank deeply from a crystal goblet of Dawnhaven wine, its ruby liquid staining her lips like blood.

She tilted her head back, savoring it, before whispering to herself:

"March on, my Caedrion. Break their walls, shatter their pride. With each stone that falls, you draw nearer to me. And when Emberhold lies in ashes, you will find the sea waiting at your side... waiting to crown you as my consort eternal."

Her laughter, low and resonant, rolled through the coral hall. The courtiers knelt, whether in loyalty or terror none could say.

But in that moment, all of Submareth knew: their queen’s heart was no longer her own.

It belonged to a land-dwelling warlord who had never once spoken her name.

And nothing, not rebellion, not reason, not even the Abyss itself, would stand between her and the love she had chosen.

---

Far below Submareth’s coral spires, beyond the drop-off where the Shivering Sea fell into darkness without measure, the world changed.

No light reached here. No sound of whales or currents stirred. It was a silence older than history itself, the silence of the Abyss.

And in that silence, something breathed.

Her prison was neither cage nor tomb, but a lattice of chains woven from forgotten runes, hammered into the very bedrock of the sea.

They glowed faintly with teal and violet sigils, each one a ward meant to pin her vast essence in place.

Yet the chains pulsed now, straining, quivering, as though the abyssal rock itself had begun to protest.

The figure within shifted.

Her form was both beautiful and monstrous: coils longer than ships, hair floating like black silk across the void, and eyes that burned with the weight of ten millennia.

The runed chains trembled, glowing faintly in the dark.

She stirred, the ancient queen bound in silence, her coils shifting against wards older than memory.

For countless centuries she had cursed her daughter’s name, spat her venom into the void, only to hear nothing but her own echoes.

But now... now something was different.

The waters carried a pulse.

Not her own, not Thalassaria’s, but something else, sharp, alien, resonant.

It was not divine. It was not abyssal. It was something new, and yet... strangely familiar.

It came from the world above.

Above the abyss.

Above the shivering sea.

It took her a few moments to realize its nature.

And when she did her lips curved into a wicked smile.

"There is another..." she whispered, her voice rolling through the dark like a tide no current could resist.

Her laughter, jagged and hungry, made the wards flicker.

She coiled against her prison until sparks burst in the black water, searing and vanishing in the same instant.

"Oh, daughter... you think you are clever, dancing at the surface with your little mortal fancy. But you have no idea what stirs below. No idea what wakes in the cracks of the world."

She inhaled, the Abyss itself seeming to contract with her breath.

"When the waters shiver like this, it means change. And when change comes, the sea will not be the only thing that drowns."

Her eyes flared, vast and cold, shining like abysses within the abyss.

"The world is shifting. And whether you know it or not... your fate is already written. Soon... Very soon... I will be free. And then the world will understand my wrath... our wrath.... It is only a matter of time now."

The chains tightened again, glowing hot against her form.

She fell silent, but the ripples of her words lingered, climbing slowly, relentlessly, toward the lightless surface.