The King Who Dives

Triton left the palace through a forgotten channel.

No guards. No council. No armor.

Only his trident strapped to his back, and a memory pulsing louder than duty.

He hadn’t taken this path in years. Not since before the crown had pressed itself into his skull and made everything—every choice, every love—into something political.

He moved swiftly through the kelp forests, past the weeping pillars of old coral where the water hummed with the voices of the sea’s dead. The route curved downward toward the edge of the Trenchlands, where currents grew colder and the light grew thin.

He didn’t hesitate.

The closer he got, the more the world fell away. The pull he’d tried to ignore all day—something old, something hers—drew him deeper. A whisper in his blood.

Medusa.

He could almost see her again in his mind. The way she used to laugh in the tidepools they found as children. Before power. Before separation. Before the war made them enemies of convenience.

He’d loved her. He never stopped. Not really.

He just didn’t know how to love someone the world insisted was a curse.

And now, her son was cracking the seams of the very realm he’d sworn to protect.

Triton halted at the edge of the shelf where the ocean fell into the trench like a great wound.

Below, a dim pulse flickered in the depths—glimpses of the awakened seal.

He extended his trident.

The metal resonated, its prongs briefly catching sparks of the same energy.

He’s close.

And so is she.

He closed his eyes, reaching with his senses—not with magic, but memory. For the feeling of her voice. Her presence.

And he felt her.

Alive. Not far. Frightened. Furious.

Still fighting.

Triton dove.

No more hesitation. No more waiting for the council to debate.

The king of the sea descended—not as ruler, but as a man seeking the mother of his child’s storm.

The trench welcomed him.

Where others felt pressure, Erebus felt clarity.

Where others saw darkness, he saw paths—etched into the walls, glowing faintly with energy only he seemed able to interpret.

His blood pulsed with it.

Her blood.

He stood at the base of a spiral pit that seemed to twist into the very crust of the sea floor. The air was gone here, even the water heavy with silence. He didn’t breathe. He listened.

The voice had become clearer.

“You are not breaking the seals. You are remembering them.”

Erebus’s hand hovered over the carved stone. He had placed it there once before, instinctively—and the earth had responded like an old friend awakening from slumber.

Now it shimmered again, inviting.

He pressed his palm to it.

This time, something pressed back.

Her presence. Cold and vast, like being watched by the sea itself.

Images rushed through him:

A throne not made of coral, but teeth and bone.

A woman with silver eyes, standing above a burning city of shells.

His mother, younger, screaming into a storm of serpents.

Triton, holding a spear—not aimed at her, but at him.

He gasped and yanked his hand away.

The stone dimmed—but the imprint remained on his skin, glowing faintly.

“You are the thirteenth and the first,” the voice said. “Born of shame, forged for return. They will not accept you. But I will.”