The Sea of Glass reflected nothing.
Not the sky.
Not the sun.
Not Kael.
Only memory. Only regret.
He stood at its edge, the water perfectly still, as if afraid to ripple—afraid to wake what slept beneath.
Behind him, the Hollow Saint watched.
Not attacking. Not speaking.
Just waiting.
Waiting for Kael to break.
To forget.
He stepped into the sea.
His boots sank an inch into the surface—then stopped.
No splash. No wetness.
Just silence.
With each step, the world behind him unraveled.
Not crumbled—unwrote.
The towns he passed vanished.
The roads bent in reverse.
Even birds forgot how to fly.
Only forward remained.
Only the drowned chapel.
The Saltmother waited inside.
She had no face—only hands.
Dozens of them.
Holding rings. Bones. Cradles. Razors.
She was not a god.
She was a consequence.
Born when the first sailor drowned and cursed the ocean instead of praying.
She did not love.
She recorded.
"You come seeking her," the Saltmother said, cradling a skull.
Kael bowed.
"I seek a voice I once heard in the dark."
"Voices lie."
"I know."
"But memories lie louder."
"I know that too."
The Saltmother giggled—like sand scraping bone.
"Then drink."
She offered him a cup.
It was filled with the sea's first betrayal.
Kael drank.
And fell backward into Elira's breath.
He was a child again.
She was teaching him the names of clouds.
Not the scientific ones.
The real ones.
The names you whisper when you're alone.
The ones clouds answer to when they want to weep.
He remembered:
"Blackmare. Softmourn. Hollowcrest."
He smiled.
And then—he felt something watching.
Not the Saltmother.
Not the Hollow Saint.
But her.
Elira.
Alive, somewhere, just out of reach.
He woke inside the chapel.
A salt circle had formed around him.
And from its edge—
She stood.
Not whole. Not clear.
But present.
"Elira?" he whispered.
Her head tilted, like a dream unsure of its dreamer.
"You shouldn't have come," she said.
Her voice was both hers and not hers.
Both warm and broken.
Kael stepped forward.
"I couldn't forget."
She recoiled.
"That's how it begins again."
The Saltmother's hands clapped—dozens of them.
"You see?" she said.
"Even love becomes a spiral."
Elira turned toward the Saltmother.
"This wasn't our deal."
The hands opened wide.
"Deals change when belief frays."
Kael stepped between them.
"You're not her. Not entirely."
Elira—the echo of her—nodded.
"I am what's left when you refuse to grieve."
Kael understood.
The Hollow Saint had not won.
But it had seeded something.
A reflection of Elira made from his refusal to let go.
Not her soul.
Not her mind.
Just her shadow, clinging to his heart.
He looked at her.
Truly looked.
And whispered:
"I let you go."
She smiled.
Collapsed into salt and wind.
And the Hollow Saint—outside the chapel—screamed.
Because Kael had finally killed what it needed most:
The memory that could be weaponized.
The Saltmother sighed.
"You'll forget her now."
Kael shook his head.
"No. I'll remember rightly."
He stood.
Walked past the shattered salt circle.
And for the first time since Elira's death—
He didn't look back.
Outside, the sea began to ripple.
Not with storms.
But with voices.
Not divine.
Not monstrous.
But human.
And the gods beneath the sea opened their eyes—
Afraid.
The sea bled upward.
Not water.
Not rain.
But memory—boiling, curdled, red with unspoken truths.
Kael stood at the shoreline as the Hollow Saint screamed behind him, a sound like bones being rewritten.
And before him, the sea opened.
Not cracked.
Not parted.
But invited.
He walked into the wound.
Beneath the Sea of Glass was no ocean.
Only halls of bone and coral, ribcages arching over forgotten altars.
And the walls… they breathed.
Not with lungs.
With remorse.
Each breath whispered a name—
One of the drowned.
One of the betrayed.
And always, somewhere in the echoes, Elira's name tried to form—
But was swallowed.
The first god he met had no eyes.
It wore a crown of fishhooks and its voice was a song Kael's mother had once hummed.
"You bring her scent," the god said, dragging itself along the coral.
"She is gone," Kael said.
"She was never gone. She became."
"Became what?"
The god grinned, and maggots spilled from its smile.
"She became consequence."
Further in, the sea grew darker.
Not with absence of light—
But with overabundance of memory.
Here, statues wept blood.
Here, lanterns flickered with screams instead of flame.
Kael passed a mural: Elira kissing a blade. Another: Kael burning books. Another: the Hollow Saint wearing his face.
Each one true.
Each one future.
He met the Threemouth Oracle next.
It wore no skin—only scrolls, stitched into its flesh.
Each scroll a prophecy.
Each prophecy a failed attempt to rewrite her death.
"You are the Final Bearer," it said with all three mouths.
Kael said nothing.
"You are the one who remembers her as she was, not as she is."
Still, Kael said nothing.
"You are dangerous."
"I know."
The Oracle screamed.
Its scrolls burst into flame.
And Kael walked on.
At the sea's core: the altar.
Made of Elira's spine.
Yes—her spine.
Not symbol.
Not metaphor.
The gods had taken her body—
Each bone turned to a binding.
Each nerve an oath.
Each vertebra a door.
Kael placed his hand on it.
And the altar pulsed.
And a voice—hers—whispered:
"You shouldn't have come."
He fell.
Not through space.
Through truth.
Through every lie he'd told himself to stay sane.
Every memory of Elira edited to hurt less.
Every night he'd whispered her name into wine and called it ritual.
And in that spiral—
The real Elira spoke.
Not as love.
Not as myth.
But as wrath.
"You tried to hold me," she said.
"I tried to honor you."
"You tried to own me."
He knelt.
"I was afraid."
"You made me more than I was."
"You were more."
"No," she said, "I was enough."
Kael wept.
Not for her.
Not even for himself.
But for the space between memory and myth.
For what happens when love becomes legend—
And legend kills the person beneath it.
He stood.
"You are free."
"I always was," she said.
The altar shattered.
The sea screamed.
And above—
The Hollow Saint exploded into salt and starlight.
Because its food—its womb—had been truth distorted.
And Kael had remembered rightly.
The drowned gods rose.
Not as tyrants.
Not as divinities.
But as witnesses.
And Kael?
He walked from the sea with no scars, no symbols, no halo.
Only silence.
And the quiet promise:
"I will never make her a god again."
The Sea of Glass cracked.
The Spiral moaned beneath the horizon.
And a new voice whispered into the wind.
Not Elira's.
Not Kael's.
But the world's.
And it said:
"Now—begin again."