Beneath the ocean floor, deeper than any diver could reach or machine could map, there was a place untouched by Quinta's return. A place older than the Veythari. Older than the Hollow God.
It was not built.
It was grown .
A vast chamber buried in the bones of the world itself.
And at its center stood a mirror.
Not made of glass.
Not made of water.
But of silence.
Of memory.
Of potential .
This mirror did not reflect what stood before it.
It showed what had been forgotten.
What had never been seen.
And what might yet come to be.
Frank Frownwater had dreamed of it for weeks.
Each night, he stood before the mirror in his sleep, staring into its depths as it revealed fragments of something vast and unfinished.
A face that wasn't his own.
A voice speaking in tones no human ear could hear.
A shape beneath the earth, coiled like a serpent around the roots of the world.
He woke each morning with salt on his lips.
Even when he hadn't gone near the sea.
In Brinemere, the signs were growing stronger.
Newborns arrived with eyes like polished stone.
Children spoke in voices that echoed from the cliffs.
And deep within the caves behind the village—caves once thought shallow and harmless—walls cracked open to reveal tunnels lined with symbols identical to those found beneath the waves.
Mira led the first expedition.
She and three others descended with torches that flickered strangely, as if repelled by the darkness rather than illuminating it.
They reached a cavern unlike any recorded.
At its heart, a pool of black water pulsed in rhythm with the tides above.
Mira stepped forward.
Kneeled.
Dipped her hand into the pool.
And screamed.
Not from pain.
From memory .
She saw:
A city beneath the land.
Towers carved from bone and obsidian.
Figures with four moons on their chests walking among humans, unseen, unnoticed.
And a throne.
Empty.
Waiting.
When she returned to the surface, she could not speak for hours.
When she finally did, her voice was layered—as if more than one being spoke through her.
"The sea is not the only place we came from," she whispered.
Frank stared at her.
"What do you mean?"
Mira looked up at him, eyes reflecting nothing.
"There is another lineage."
"Another kind."
"Buried beneath the soil."
"Forgotten by the tide."
"But waiting."
That night, Frank walked alone to the lighthouse.
He lit the lamp.
Watched the pulse of light stretch across the waves.
And then, for the first time since Quinta vanished into the deep, he opened the old book hidden behind the gears of the tower—the one written in ink that shimmered like oil on water.
Its pages were blank… until now.
Words bled into existence.
Slowly.
Carefully.
As if the book itself remembered them.
"There are two kinds of gods.
Those who rise from the sea.
And those who crawl from the earth."
Frank closed the book.
His skin tingled.
His second pair of breasts—now fully formed, glowing faintly beneath his shirt—pulsed in time with something below.
Not the ocean.
Something deeper.
Older.
Hungrier.
Far beneath the land, in the mirrored chamber, something stirred.
It had felt the echo of Quinta.
It had heard Mira's scream.
It had tasted the awakening.
And now…
Now it would begin.
To remember.
To rise.
To change.
Above, the ground trembled.
Not violently.
Just enough to remind the world—it was not alone.
And beneath it all, in the oldest silence, the mirror waited.
For the next shape.
The next song.
The next truth.
And the next girl born with four moons on her chest.