The Ascendant's Wake

Journal Entry I – The Scribe’s Pearl
Cycle 4 of the Coral Bloom, Season of Rising Vent Heat
 
Today I was given my first journal. It came from Scribe-Tidecaller Vola during the midday rites, wrapped in kelp-twine and sealed with a bit of blue wax. She told me it was mine alone—though I must be ready to surrender it should the Queen’s voice need my thoughts. I bowed so deeply I bruised my forehead on the scribe-stone.
 
It’s not like the storybooks. There are no golden clasps or floating ink glyphs. Just soft coral-pulp pages, pressed flat and cured in salt. My stylus is carved from a reef-tongue and hollowed to hold oil-based ink that clings even in water. I must re-ink every few sentences, but the act itself is meditative.
 
Vola called it a “Vessel of Clarity.” I call it mine.
 
She told me to begin writing as though I were already on my Pilgrimage. “Even the deep must dream forward,” she said. So, here is my dream:
 
I will walk upon the land. I will speak above the tides and be understood. I will cleanse the springs, find the ruined temples, and wear the Queen’s radiance openly. I will bring the Current where it does not yet flow.
 
Perhaps I’ll meet a surface creature who doesn’t fear the sea. Perhaps they’ll help me find a ruined island of black glass and moon trees, like in the old fables.
 
Perhaps—no, certainly—I will not fail.
 
I do not yet know what it means to be chosen. But I will be. I’ve already decided.
 
 
Journal Entry II – The Ember Alcove Duel
Cycle 12 of the Fire-Fed Tide, Mid-Current Phase
 
The air shimmered with heat today. The flame vents beneath the sparring pools burned red enough to tint the water, and the coral blades warped slightly in their holders. We were told it would build endurance. I suspect it was meant to humiliate us.
 
We trained in pairs. I was matched with Varoz. Again.
 
I have bested him before—not often, but enough to make a contest of it. Today, however, was different. He fought like something had uncoiled inside him. His strikes were sharper, his shieldwork tighter, and his stance… no longer borrowed from the masters. It was his.
 
He knocked me off the ridge. The crowd fell silent. The water hissed where my body hit the shallow ring. I tasted salt and blood and embarrassment.
 
When I surfaced, he extended his hand. I did not take it. I stood on my own. He didn’t speak right away, which was worse. He only looked at me—looked, with those smoldering eyes that always seem one breath from boiling over.
 
Then he said:
 
“You were too focused on the hymn form. You didn’t bend with the tide.”
 
He said it like a tutor. Or a priest. Or a friend. I hated it.
 
…I hated how much I remembered it.
 
He walked away without waiting for praise. I watched his back until he passed the edge of the reef-shield. The other initiates returned to their drills. I stayed behind to re-align the training corals. My arms were still shaking.
 
I do not envy him. I do not admire him. I am not bothered. This entry is simply for technical review.
 
I will request another partner next time.
Or break him cleanly.
 
 
Journal Entry III – The Drift Trial
Cycle 17 of the Dimming Tides, Low Current
 
They sealed my mouth with salt. Just a strip of woven kelp, soaked in ashbrine. “So your prayers stay within,” they said. “Let the Queen hear them directly.”
 
They tied a stone to my waist. A shard of obsidian from the Trench’s throat, etched with the Doctrine’s second tenet. Nothing is hidden from the tides forever.
 
Then they told me to swim.
 
Not to a place. Not toward a goal. Just… drift. For a full turning of the moon. No current, no contact, no questions.
 
Only water. Only silence.
 
At first, I cataloged the fish, the stones, the song of pressure shifting in my ears. Then I began to forget what day it was. Then what hour. Then my own name. Not that I could say it.
 
I hallucinated a sea serpent made of mirrors. I sang prayers into the weave of my mind just to keep something moving inside me. I started arguing with the salt strip in my mouth like it was a priest.
 
I thought of Varoz. I hated that.
 
But worse—I thought of walking. Of sunlight. Of gulls. And I missed them.
 
I returned before they expected me. Not early—just more quickly than most. Vola said I must have been “deeply aligned.”
 
They didn’t see the shivers. They didn’t hear the whimpers that only the trench rock heard. They didn’t know that when I slept last night, I dreamed not of water—but of silence. True silence. Without her.
 
I do not feel chosen. I feel carved.
 
I will not fail. But I know now… I could.
 
 
Journal Entry IV – The Pressure Between Tides
Cycle 1 of the Coral Fallow, Moonless Tide
 
I’ve returned to the Ember Alcove for “reacclimation.” That’s what Vola called it. In truth, it’s a polite exile. They do not send fledglings to the coral baths unless they believe they might fracture.
 
For twelve cycles I’ve been assigned nothing but kelp tending and reef meditation. They let me lie in the hydrothermal beds until my skin begins to blister. I have not been trusted with a blade.
 
It feels like punishment without being named. Worse, it feels like permission to be soft.
 
Vola visited two days ago. She brought me a memory-shell. I expected doctrine. Instead, it was a song—her voice, recorded during her own pilgrimage. A prayer, cracked with exhaustion, near-broken in pitch. It ends with a laugh. A laugh.
 
She told me, “Even coral must be cut to grow.” She placed her hand on my head like I was a guppy and left. I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t cry either.
 
And then—today—Varoz came.
 
We sat in the trench hollow where the hydro vents flicker like fireflies. Neither of us spoke for what felt like a tide. Then he said, “They made me walk the sulfur path. Blindfolded. No anchor.”
 
I stared. No one talks about that rite. It’s meant only for the Queen’s Wrath. “That’s forbidden,” I said.
 
“I know,” he answered. “That’s why I’m telling you.”
 
He didn’t elaborate. I didn’t ask. But for the first time, I looked at him and didn’t see victory. I saw heat—forged, too hot to touch without being changed.
 
Before he left, he said:
 
“You didn’t fail. You just saw her shadow. Most don’t survive the glimpse.”
 
I should have thanked him. I didn’t. Instead, I came here. Wrote this.
 
I have not dreamed of her since the Drift. Not once. I do not feel her. I do not miss her.
 
But I do fear what I might become if I stop reaching.
 
Entry V – Sculpting the Self
~A collection of untimed journal fragments spanning one full seasonal tide. Myrryn’s words grow sharper, more precise. Faith becomes discipline. The Queen remains silent.~
 

“Stagnation is death.” Doctrine of the Drowned Throne, First Tenet. I recite it now before every cut of the coral blade. The current does not ask me to feel. It asks me to move.

Vola gifted me a reed-etched copy of The Saltflow Codex. I have memorized the opening canticle. Every syllable tastes like stone and steel. Every word is a scar I welcome.

Varoz is being called to Flamewatch duties again. We sparred before his departure. I landed no hits, but I did not yield ground. When I bowed, he touched his forehead to mine.

I did not breathe until he left.
 

My knife-hand has blistered from ritual shell-cutting. I do not heal it. Pain is part of shaping. Coral reshapes when broken—why should I be different?

The Queen still does not speak. I think I no longer need her voice. I have the text. The rites. The Current.

That is enough.
 

I passed the Echo Chant Trial without echoing. They said my mind was “too fixed.” I said: “Good.”

I took my oath today to serve on the surface, if called.

I am ready. I do not need comfort. I do not need praise.
I only need purpose.
 

Balance the shore. Third Tenet. The land must be carved clean. I will be a chisel.

I sleep less now. That is fine. The tides do not rest. Why should I?

I no longer ask to hear the Queen.

I ask only to be used.
 
 
Journal Entry VI – The Return and the Rising Tide
Recorded during the Season of Midswells, Ember Moon in waxing phase
 
Varoz returned today.
 
The last I heard, his flamewatch had been deployed to the molten rift beyond the Vent Scar—an unstable trench where even coral dies. A tidecaller whispered that his unit was “compromised.” Another said the survivors numbered fewer than three.
 
That was cycles ago. Long enough that we stopped asking.
 
I found him in the Deepveil Garden, resting near the bioluminescent lilies that only bloom during half-tide. His armor was gone. He wore only a robe of woven reef threads, and even that looked like a weight.
 
He did not greet me when I approached. He only shifted slightly, giving me space on the stone ledge beside him. His eyes were open, but not focused. The glow in them—the fire—was quieter now.
 
I waited. Breath in, breath out. One cycle. Two.
 
He said:
 
“I had forgotten the sound of gardens.”
 
Nothing more. I didn’t press. I could feel it—whatever happened, whatever broke, he had not begun to heal from it. Not yet. Perhaps never.
 
I wanted to say something doctrinal. Something wise. Instead, I said:
 
“You are not alone in your silence.”
 
He didn’t answer. But his shoulder shifted just enough to graze mine. He let it stay there.
 
That night, I returned to the tide-temple for deep meditation. My skin itched along the ridges of my spine. My blood felt warmer.
 
The priestess who cleansed my shellwater paused as she anointed my back and whispered, “You’ve entered your cycle, haven’t you?”
 
I blinked. I had not noticed.
 
It is the beginning of a mating swell.
 
 
Journal Entry VII – The Swell Beneath the Bones
 
Third Moonrise of the Coral Blooming, One Month Before Brood Tides
 
The mating swell began three nights ago.
 
It started as it always does—without warning, but with perfect timing. The vents beneath Nimbrassa darkened from red to gold, a sign that brooding temperature had been reached. The sea thickened with spores. The coral canopy opened, seeding the water with phosphorescent film. The tides felt heavier, as if every current turned inward.
 
Everything is louder. The pressure hums. My spine aches in pulses.
 
The senior priestess of the Doctrine Chamber, Herald-Tide Ysiri, who normally speaks like carved basalt, is now speaking in poetry. I passed her yesterday and she giggled.
 
Two of the forge-bound acolytes began humming to one another across chambers. Not words. Just sound. Tuning forks of flesh. The silence between them crackled like steam.
 
I cannot think. Not clearly. I document to discipline. To remain whole.
 
Biological observation:
 
The swell is ancient and near-universal. It is not just mating—it is the prelude. Over a full tidecycle-and-a-half (three surface weeks), our bodies soften or harden in preparation. Hormonal tides crest. Certain glands swell or recede. Some Tidefolk grow ornate markings. Some lose hair. Some change entirely.
 
This morning, one of the twins from the Spiral Choir—Elren, who has always been slender and soft-spoken—stepped into the training pool and emerged broader, rougher, taller. His voice deepened. His scent changed. No ceremony. No announcement. Just change.
 
He will remain as such until the swell breaks at the waning third tide. Then, like the eddies beneath moon-split waves, the body may revert—or not. The sea remembers, but she does not bind.
 
No one blinked. It is sacred. It is normal. It is unspoken.
 
Those chosen for pilgrimage must not mate.
 
Even those of us still in training are expected to withdraw. Abstain. Anchor ourselves through meditation, fasting, and exposure to icy current. We are separated from the central caverns now. The air is drier here. The water sharper.
 
I have not seen Varoz.
 
I’ve looked.
 
I told myself it was to assess his well-being. Or see how he has changed. Or determine if he had changed. But it was not discipline that stirred me. It was something darker. Something I do not name.
 
I am ashamed of it. I have re-memorized the Fifth Doctrine twice to burn it from my thoughts. It has not worked.
 
The Queen is quiet. Perhaps she understands. Or perhaps she watches, waiting to see if I will drift.
 
I will not.
 
But I am not still.
 
 
Journal Entry VIII – The Break Beneath Still Waters
Cycle unknown. Drifted far from the alcove. Written with trembling hand in sacred ink.
 
It began with a tremor.
 
A phantom ripple crawling down my spine, so sudden and precise it felt like a command. I heard no voice—but I felt something. Something deep. Familiar. Overwhelming.
 
Not from Her.
Not from Thal’vanna.
 
But from the Current itself.
 
I let myself believe it was a calling. That the tug beneath my sternum was a test of faith, not a flood of base instinct. I told myself the waters would not carry me astray.
 
I found him shielding the alcove.
 
Varoz stood at the throat of a narrow crevice, his trident braced, his armor gone. His body was marked in ritual ash, as if he had tried to scrub the swell off his skin. He was alone, a single sentinel between the surging world and the few who wished only to be left untouched.
 
Behind him were five Tidefolk—young, frail, and hidden in retreat. He had made himself a wall between them and the fever-sickened crowd.
 
He saw me. His expression did not change.
 
“You shouldn't be here.”
 
I had no answer. No defense. The tide between us swelled. My hands trembled—not from fear, but the ache that had followed me like a shadow since the Swell began.
 
The challenger came without warning.
 
He surged from the dark like a reefshark in heat—broad-finned, teeth bared, delirious with the Swell. His intent was obvious. Crude. Final.
 
He reached for me.
 
Varoz was faster. His trident clashed against the challenger’s carapace. I felt my body move without permission. I joined the fray.
 
He struck. I kicked. Together, we fell into the motions of combat like twin currents. I don’t remember striking to wound, only to banish. The merman fled, snarling and humiliated.
 
We were left breathing hard, too close. Too raw.
 
Varoz’s hands gripped my shoulders. My body leaned into his.
 
And then:
 
“If you do not leave right now, we will do something we can never undo.”
 
It was not a plea. It was a tether.
 
I left.
 
Not out of obedience.
Not out of clarity.
 
Out of fear.
 
I have not slept. The iceflow vault feels colder than ever before.
 
I waited for Her—Thal’vanna. For Her judgment. For Her rage. Or even Her silence, sanctified.
 
But I heard nothing. Not even a whisper.
 
And now I am left with a single, festering thought:
 
I was not called.
I was carried.
And I chose to drift.
 
I did not just deny the mating swell. I denied the Queen her faithful vessel.
 
What if She never looks upon me again?
 
Journal Entry IX – The Salt of What Does Not Hatch
Second tide after the ebbing of the Swell. Recorded in oil-runed coral along the spine of the brood season.
 
The brooding began yesterday.
 
The water near the Ember Grottos has gone still—thick with quiet. The pressure that once roiled through the trench now coils inward. It is the weight of incubation, and of death.
 
The nesting vents are full.
 
Dozens—no, hundreds—of fertilized broods now cling to the magma-cracked nests. Slime-covered bulbs flutter like sea flowers, stirred gently by the warmth. The midwives do not intervene. Only the strong will hatch. Only the strong will swim.
 
This is sacred. This is the cost.
 
I was assigned to monitor hatchings from above, not below. It is an honor to be spared the retrieval.
 
Below, the Tideguard wait with song-blades sheathed, their faces impassive. They will raise only the surviving spawnlings. The rest... will become nutrient.
 
Some do not burst their sacs. Some are eaten by others in the cradle. Others die from pressure, heat, or simply... weakness.
 
None are mourned until the naming tide—when the surviving young are blessed, and the others are remembered in silence.
 
I wept during the anointing ceremony. Not for the fallen. But for what we are. What we’ve always been.
 
Each spawnling lifted from the water was pressed with a mark of glowing ink and offered a droplet of sanctified trenchsalt. Their names were spoken once—never again.
 
I could not stop thinking: what if that had been me?
Would my name have vanished like theirs?
 
No one scolded me for crying.
That frightened me more than if they had.
 
When I returned to the doctrine chambers, Warlord Varnoss was waiting. He said nothing—he never does—but a Tidebinder placed a scroll into my hands.
 
It was black coral, ringed in seared obsidian. I did not need to unroll it to know what it was.
 
The Trial of Fire Walking.
 
It is not ceremonial. It is correctional. Or so it is whispered.
 
I have heard tales—of scalding tunnels carved through volcanic jets, of chanting beneath flame-cracked vaults. Some return blistered. Some do not return. But all who pass are changed.
 
It was the trial Varoz endured before his silence. Before his fire dimmed.
 
I found him near the Deepveil Garden again. His posture was still, but the fire behind his eyes flickered when he saw what I held.
 
He said nothing at first. Then, without looking at me, he muttered:
 
“Walk slow. Let it hurt. If you rush, you’ll burn everything you’re not ready to give up.”
 
I didn’t understand it then. I think I still don’t. But I committed it to ink anyway. It felt important.
 
I can’t help but wonder—was the fight during the Swell the trial? Was this entire cycle orchestrated?
 
Am I being watched?
 
Has Thal’vanna been guiding me… or testing me?
 
And worse… what if I passed?
 
 
Journal Entry X – Ash Beneath the Skin
Three days after the Trial. Fingers still too raw to write in coral. This is transcribed in bloodwater ink.
 
I do not remember the beginning. Not clearly.
 
They do not blindfold you. That is the cruelty. You see every step before you walk it. You smell the steam, the sulfur, the copper in your own mouth as your skin prepares to blister.
 
The path is long. Cracked stone and red light. Jagged obsidian teeth beneath your feet. The heat does not come all at once—it seeps into you. Seeps through you. Then turns.
 
There were no chants. No guards. Just the low thrum of ancient geothermal pulses… and the pressure of your own heartbeat in your skull.
 
You are given no water. You are offered no help.
You walk.
You burn.
You are witnessed.
 
My body failed halfway through.
 
I fell. Knees kissed the molten glass. My breath left me. I saw her—not Thal’vanna, but some warped vision of the Queen I hold in my head. Not divine. Just disappointed.
 
I dragged myself through the final corridor. My skin bubbled where it touched the floor. My vision flickered like a dying angler’s light.
 
And still—I walked.
 
I don’t know who found me. I awoke in the healing salts, my fingers red as reef-blood, my thoughts thick with doctrine.
 
I passed. Of course I passed. But no one said so.
 
Instead, they let me rest.
 
That… was worse.
 
Varoz visited me yesterday.
 
He brought a stonefruit from the vent gardens, peeled and chilled. He tossed it beside me without a word and sat at the edge of the saltpool, his legs still scarred from his walk. The burns never fully fade.
 
For a while, we just sat. Breathing together. Listening to the water ripple against the basin’s walls.
 
Finally, he spoke:
 
“I knew you would walk it. I didn’t think you’d come back with your mind intact.”
 
I laughed. It hurt to laugh. He winced as if he felt it, too.
 
“You didn’t tell me it whispers,” I said.
 
He stared at the ceiling.
 
“I didn’t want you to think I was mad.”
“Are you?”
“Only when I think about you.”
 
We both froze.
 
He didn’t look at me when he said the next thing.
 
“I had a dream. Not long ago. I was underwater, but the tide was upside down. I couldn’t breathe unless I swam upward—into the air. Into the sky. I think…”
“You’ve been called.”
“Yes.”
 
Not formally. Not in rite or scroll. But the Current doesn’t always need parchment.
 
I could feel it around him—like a ripple echoing through pressure seams. The kind that precedes pilgrimage.
 
We both looked at one another then.
 
The kind of look that could say everything, if allowed to.
 
But instead, I said:
 
“You’ll do great things.”
 
He smiled. Just once. Then left.
 
The burn still itches.
 
Not the skin. The place inside me where something cracked and healed wrong.
 
I should feel proud. I should feel blessed. I should feel ready.
 
I feel… hollow.
 
But perhaps the Current requires space to fill.
 
 
Journal Entry XI – The Salt and the Stillness
No date. No location. This entry was carved into coral after the rite had concluded. Words were forbidden during its making.
 
I do not know how long I was alone.
 
The current does not measure time in pulses. It moves. It simply moves. And so did I.
 
I was led in silence to the Salt Chamber—bare, circular, hollow as a womb. No light save the soft shimmer of salt-glow clinging to the ceiling in constellations older than speech. The Tidebinder who greeted me said nothing. She placed a single crystal basin in the center of the room, filled with still, mirrored water.
 
She pointed to my throat. Then to her own sealed lips.
 
The vow began.
 
Three days. Three full tides. No food. No gesture. No chant. No murmur. I was to become nothing but stillness.
 
The ache of silence was not in my throat. It was in my mind. Thoughts formed like bubbles and popped against the inside of my skull. Memories. Regrets. Impulses. They wanted out. I denied them. At first.
 
On the second tide, I began to cry. No sound escaped. Only salt.
 
The sacrifice came next.
 
They allowed me to choose what to cast into the vent.
 
I carried it for hours, circling the basin, holding it in both hands: a page from my very first journal. My words, shaky and arrogant, describing the wonder of the Spiral Reef. My hope. My innocence.
 
I burned the edges with trenchflame. Then I fed it into the vent. It hissed, shriveled, and vanished.
 
I felt like something bit me from the inside.
 
And then: the Sea-Glass.
 
It was laid on the floor before me—a slab, dark and smooth and ancient, rippling with the memory of the Deep.
 
I gazed into it.
 
At first, I saw myself.
But not as I am.
 
As I will be.
 
I saw a creature wreathed in divine monstrosity. A silhouette forged of pressure, instinct, and purpose.
 
Four sinuous octopus tentacles surged from my back like sentient limbs, curling with practiced grace and lethal intent. They rippled with intelligence—not mine, not entirely.
 
My lower body was elongated, my feet swallowed by a coiling eel-tail, shimmering with sparks. Lightning webbed along its surface in twitching arcs, buzzing with barely contained rage.
 
My mouth was no longer a mouth. It was a ring of shark’s teeth, layers upon layers, clicking in rhythm with an unseen pulse.
 
Seapetral wings stretched wide from my shoulders—long and wet-feathered, translucent and laced with deep-sea glow. Not for flight, but for guidance, for gliding along unseen currents.
 
One hand was no longer a hand, but a crab-like pincer, massive and jagged, pulsing with marrow-deep strength.
 
Across my chest and shoulders, a thickened turtle shell hide had begun to form—knotted plates of earthen coral, protecting the soft heart still buried beneath.
 
I could not breathe.
 
She—it—was beautiful.
 
She was terrifying.
 
She was me.
 
When I blinked, the vision was gone.
 
The Tidebinder approached. She branded the glyph between my shoulders. Her hand trembled as she did it.
 
No words were spoken. None needed.
 
Later, in the isolation vault, I wept until my throat bled.
Not from sorrow. Not from joy. From emptiness—a vacuum so vast I feared even the Current had turned from me.
 
I had burned what I was. I had seen what I must become.
 
I had been silenced, sacrificed, stripped, scarred—and still, the Current remained mute.
 
No Queen. No Current. No self.
 
Just the sound of my own broken breath echoing in sacred dark.
 
And then—
 
A voice. Her voice.
 
Low. Deep. Not heard, but felt—in the marrow, in the water, in the void between heartbeats.
 
Not a question.
Not a blessing.
Not forgiveness.
 
Just one word:
 
“Rise.”