The port city was as lively as ever, its docks cluttered with sails and sea-charmed voices. The scent of salt and brine filled the air, blending with the occasional waft of grilled squid, roasted kelp, and far stranger aromas from stalls that claimed to sell "fish of legend" or "eel from beneath the ocean floor."
Mother Goose stood before one such stand, eyeing the merchant's catch of the day with a mixture of curiosity and exasperation.
"What in the name of feathered saints is that?" she exclaimed, pointing at a bulbous, squishy thing with more eyes than seemed reasonable.
"Glimmergut," the merchant replied proudly. "Very rare. Only cries when cooked."
Mother Goose recoiled. "That's horrifying!"
Father Hearth, as ever, stood beside her with a stoic calm, arms behind his back, surveying the market like a guard on patrol. His eyes occasionally flicked over the wares, taking mental notes of what to buy for stew and what to absolutely never mention to the children.
At the next stall, Mother Goose peered at a wriggling fish with legs.
"This one's called a—wait for it—'Snortle Pike'?" she read from the handwritten sign. "It looks like someone tried to sculpt a lizard using half-melted wax and bad decisions!"
The fish, offended or perhaps simply overenthusiastic, promptly sneezed a tiny burst of bubbles at her.
Father Hearth didn't flinch. "It's not the worst we've seen."
She threw her hands in the air. "You say that about everything!"
The two of them moved on from stall to stall, gathering their usual ingredients—seaweed bundles, smoked salmon, dried coral roots—when the sky dimmed, just for a moment.
It was subtle. A shadow cast not from a cloud but from something else.
The merchants paused in their bartering.
The laughter of children playing by the tide cut short.
Then the ground beneath the city shook.
Not violently. But deeply. Like something old had turned in its sleep beneath the seabed.
And from the edge of the horizon, beyond the ships and lighthouse, rose something impossible.
A body. Towering. Serpentine. Covered in layered scales the color of a drowning storm. Its form stretched across the waves, sinuous and vast—its sheer size reducing the proud sails of ships into toys.
The marketplace fell into stunned silence.
Mother Goose's voice caught in her throat. Her hand clutched the edge of a crate, knuckles pale. Her eyes—usually so expressive and lively—narrowed into something quieter. Something older.
"I remember…" she whispered. "I've seen that beast before…"
Father Hearth's eyes locked onto the distant form as it slid through the sea, its presence too real to be legend and too calm to be immediate threat. But he knew. His breath, usually steady as the rhythm of firewood crackling, caught.
"It is Leviathan," he said.
"The Leviathan…" she echoed.
From the very core of her memory, fragments surged forward. Not as visions, but as instincts. The pitch of waves crashing against a hull. The weight of a sword in her hand. Her armor soaked in sea spray. Screams. Roars. A princess with tearful eyes clutching a map. A ship groaning beneath the pressure of rising tides. And above it all, a massive eye that gleamed not with malice—but with boredom.
"It didn't leave because we hurt it," she murmured. "It left… because it had better things to do."
Father Hearth was silent. In his own memory, much further back—long before the House was ever born—he remembered coastlines shattered. Storms summoned from nothing. Cities flooded, lives erased. Leviathan was no simple creature of the deep.
One of the Six Children of Chaos.
Not evil.
Not good.
Simply ancient.
It passed now through the harbor, massive coils gliding beneath the surface, disturbing the tides. The water churned in protest. Seabirds fled. Ships rocked helplessly in their moorings. Everyone, from the youngest child to the eldest sailor, stared in silent, breathless awe.
Then, just as it had arrived, it paused.
For one terrible moment, Leviathan's head rose from the sea. An eye—massive, knowing—glanced toward the port.
The city held its breath.
And then… it blinked.
Uninterested.
The beast turned, its movement slow but fluid, and dove into the deep with such force that a great column of water rose and fell like a thunderclap. The impact trembled through the docks, rattled the bones of every ship, and sent a wave up the coastline that soaked everyone waist-down.
Then all was still again.
The sea returned to its restless calm.
The wind resumed its usual rhythm.
Only then did anyone dare speak.
A child wailed. A fishmonger crossed himself and fell to his knees. Seagulls, who had wisely scattered before the beast arrived, began to return one by one.
Mother Goose exhaled sharply and finally unclenched her hand from the crate.
"Well," she said breathlessly. "That happened."
Father Hearth gave the briefest nod. "We should go."
They walked back in silence, water sloshing in their boots, fish and kelp forgotten in their baskets. The city began to hum back to life behind them—no longer joyful, but relieved. Alive.
Only once they were back at the House of the Hearth, safely behind the old, fire-warmed walls, did they stop in the entryway.
They looked at each other.
Neither said it, but both felt it:
They had been watched by something far greater than themselves.
And for a moment... had survived it.
Father Hearth let out a slow breath.
Mother Goose released hers as well, then muttered, "Next time we go out for fish, let's avoid cities with legends that move."
He nodded once.
"A reasonable suggestion."