One siren broke the surface outside Maelora’s outpost.
Her mouth was sealed with black thread.
She didn’t speak. She couldn’t.
But the look in her eyes said enough.
It had begun.
---
Back near the cliffs, Dominic gathered the remaining scrolls salvaged from Poseidon’s vault.
He unrolled one—this one written not in Olympian script, but in older glyphs—language made of tide patterns and reef marks.
> "What is it?" Varun asked.
Dominic’s hand hovered over a single line.
He translated it aloud.
> "The creature that feeds on mory... devours all but the forgotten."
Maelora frowned. "What does that even an?"
Dominic’s eyes sharpened.
> "It eats what’s rembered. What’s written. What’s sung. Anything the sea holds in its heart."
> "So how do we hide from sothing that eats mory?"
Dominic closed the scroll.
> "We beco what the sea forgets."
---
anwhile, near the ruins of Orenthis
A pair of ocean shamans gathered around a decayed totem, their chants barely audible in the thick pressure of the deep. As the final line of their incantation finished, the totem shattered—splitting into salt and bone.
A whisper passed through the dark.
Not in language.
But in absence.
And the elder shaman wept.
> "It rembers us now," she whispered to the younger.
> "Then we’ll be forgotten together," the other replied.
---
Dominic’s Camp
That night—or what passed for night under leagues of water—Dominic lay in silence. Not resting. Just thinking.
The creature hadn’t attacked yet.
It hadn’t needed to.
Because it was already feeding.
Not on cities. Not on ships.
But on the sea’s story.
And with each mory it swallowed, the ocean changed. Beca shallower. Smaller. Emptier.
He felt it.
In his bones.
In his blood.
> "We have to act now," he said, sitting up.
Varun leaned against a jagged rock. "Do what?"
> "We find the Forgotten Current."
Maelora raised a brow. "That’s a myth."
Dominic shook his head.
> "So was I."
---
The Forgotten Current was legend even among sirens—an underwater stream that moved outside ti, untouched by gods, songs, or seals.
It was said to carry only what the sea no longer rembered.
And Dominic needed it.
Because if the creature fed on mory...
Then only in forgotten water could they make a stand.
---
As the team began packing to move west, a soft tremor passed underfoot.
A long, low note echoed from the depths.
Maelora froze.
> "That’s not a quake."
Varun drew his blade. "It’s here."
Dominic turned.
Behind them, the trench split—not open, but apart.
And from the divide...
A void leaked out.
Not darkness. Not shadow.
Just nothing.
A current with no color. No pressure. No sound.
The creature didn’t rise.
It didn’t roar.
It simply arrived.
---
Dominic stepped forward slowly, raising a coral shard in his hand—the last sigil from Poseidon’s vault.
He pressed it into the water.
It dissolved instantly.
The void ate it.
Maelora whispered, "How do we fight that?"
Dominic didn’t blink.
> "We don’t."
He looked toward the distant western current.
> "We run into what the sea has forgotten."
---
And with that, the team vanished into the abyss—hunted not by a monster, but by mory itself.
Silence.
Not the silence of calm—but the suffocating quiet that follows sothing sacred being broken.
Dominic swam through the deep, Maelora beside him, Varun guarding the rear. Around them, only a faint trace of light from Dominic’s glow kept the blackness from swallowing them whole.
Behind them, the world they knew was fading.
Piece by piece.
And ahead?
The Forgotten Current.
---
It wasn’t easy to find.
The current couldn’t be traced on maps. It had no fixed location. It moved as mory moved—drifting when forgotten, rising when dismissed.
But Dominic felt it.
In the stillness of the sea.
In the cold gnawing at his ribs.
In the ache where the trident once glowed in his veins.
---
> "We’re close," he whispered.
Maelora looked around. "It doesn’t feel like anything’s here."
> "Exactly," Varun muttered. "That’s how we know we’re close."
Even their voices ca out duller now, like the ocean itself didn’t want to hear them.
---
They passed through a trench once carved by Poseidon’s fury, now barren—its coral dead, its creatures fled.
And then—
They reached it.
---
The Forgotten Current wasn’t a stream.
It was a wound in the sea.
A place where ti didn’t flow right. Where light bent wrong. Where sound collapsed into itself.
It looked like nothing.
But Dominic could feel the pressure shift the mont they entered it.
mories... vanished.
---
His mind stuttered.
What was his na?
Why was he here?
Just for a mont.
Then it ca back. But weaker.
> "Stay close," he said through clenched teeth. "Don’t think too hard."
Maelora blinked rapidly. "I just... forgot what my mother looked like."
Varun cursed under his breath. "It’s stealing from us."
> "No," Dominic said. "This current doesn’t steal. It hides. From the creature."
---
Because here, mory doesn’t live. It sleeps.
And that was the only place the hunger couldn’t feed.
They swam deeper.
And then they saw it.
---
The Chamber of the Unnad
A vast, spherical space suspended inside the Current. Neither stone nor coral. A structure ford from pure water—frozen in ti. In its center floated thousands of fragnts—glowing, flickering, forgotten things.
A god’s broken crown.
A siren’s final song.
A child’s lullaby.
Even a piece of Poseidon’s voice.
All stored here. Lost to ti.
Dominic reached toward the nearest fragnt.
It pulsed in his palm—and for a flash, he saw her.
The First Fallen.
Not as she was now, but as a mother cradling a child of waves.
Maelora gasped. "You saw her too?"
> "I saw what she lost."
---
Varun swam to a piece of rusted tal, touched it, and frowned. "A sword I used in another life."
> "The Current keeps everything the sea let go," Dominic said. "It’s the only place safe from what’s coming."
He looked at the core of the chamber.
Where sothing pulsed slowly.
A blue light.
Alive.
A soul.
---
> "Is that... a heart?" Maelora asked.
Dominic nodded.
> "Poseidon’s."
They all froze.
Varun whispered, "But he’s dead."
> "Not all of him," Dominic said. "This is the part he gave to the sea when he chose to bury the creature."
The god had known his death would co.
So he split his power, and left his mory behind, in the only place it couldn’t be devoured.
Dominic floated toward it, hand outstretched.
> "If we rge it with what I carry... we can make a seal."
Maelora’s voice was low. "But it will cost you."
> "I know."
---
He touched it.
And the Current scread.
Not loud.
Just deep.
Like the ocean begging not to rember.
Dominic’s veins lit up—silver bursting through his arms, across his chest, into his eyes.
His mories poured into the chamber. His childhood. His death. His second life. His ti with Aegirion. With Maelora. With the gods.
And the chamber responded.
It gave him sothing in return.
The last truth of Poseidon.
A whisper.
A weapon.
And a na.
> "Thalorenn."
---
The creature’s true identity.
Not just a hunger.
Not just a force.
But an exile.
Once a god.
Now... a curse.
---
Dominic opened his eyes.
They glowed with the power of the Forgotten.
> "It’s ti."
Varun drew his blade again. "Then we return."
Maelora clenched her jaw. "We make our stand."
Dominic turned.
> "We remind the sea what it chose to forget."
The sea stirred again.
Not with violence.
With awareness.
A na had been spoken—one the ocean itself had buried long ago.
A na that should have never resurfaced.
Thalorenn.
---
Dominic stood at the edge of the Forgotten Current, eyes glowing with the fragnts of Poseidon’s hidden heart. His skin pulsed with silver light, and a soft humming echoed from his chest—as if the ocean was singing from inside him.
Maelora steadied herself, still trembling.
> "Thalorenn... It’s not just a monster?"
Dominic’s voice was flat.
> "It was once one of them. A god. One of the earliest."
Varun’s hand tightened around his blade. "And now?"
Dominic’s gaze was cold.
> "Now it wants to beco everything."
---
A Forgotten Na Reborn
Long before Olympus claid the skies, before the Titans fell, there were older powers—forces not born from belief or bloodlines.
Thalorenn was one.
Not of sea.
Not of sky.
But of abyss.
A god that fed on what others left behind.
Forgotten wishes.
Broken dreams.
Discarded truths.
It grew, silently, beneath the world—until even Poseidon feared what it might beco.
So he cast it out.
Locked it beyond mory.
Sealed it in the current of the forgotten, where even ti lost its grip.
And it waited.
Not to return.
But to consu.
---
> "If Thalorenn was once a god," Maelora said, "why does it still feed like a beast?"
Dominic’s voice was quiet.
> "Because it forgot what it was. And now, all it knows is hunger."
The Current behind them began to tremble.
A deep resonance rolled through the sea.
Not a roar.
A heartbeat.
Slow.
Uneven.
Coming closer.
---
Dominic turned.
In the distance, far beyond their reach, he felt it.
The void.
Not a creature.
Not even a shape.
Just pressure.
The kind that collapses minds and breaks mory.
And it was moving.
---
> "It’s searching," Varun muttered. "Following us."
> "No," Dominic said. "It’s following the na."
> "Then we bury it again," Maelora snapped.
Dominic didn’t answer.
Because he couldn’t.
The sea had already heard the na again.
It couldn’t be forgotten now.
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