The rope bites my wrists, hauling my arms wide between the two posts. Our ancestors set those posts into the basalt lip of the tidal cauldron long before I was born; now the pool surged and sucked at my calves. Vilar raised his Bible, a spotted finger leveled at me.
“Only witches wield the power to open the gate!”
The hum climbs the posts and finds the gap under my ribs. My breath stutters to sevens before I can stop it. I bite the inside of my cheek—three, two, one—and force it back to plain air. Vilar steps in, close enough that I smell tallow and fennel. He slides my wet hair off my neck, exposing the mark, and bends to my ear.
“You should have taken my offer. They would have called you senhora. Now you’ll always be their bruxa.”
He smiles for the crowd while he says it—voice for me alone—then lays my hair back on my shoulder, flicks a bead of saltwater from his fingers as if ridding himself of filth, holds up his Bible, and takes his place among them.
As the night tide came in, the black water splashed at my face, wetting the knots, tightening them around my wrists. Sofia’s eyes filled with tears as she clutched my leather journal, the proof Vilar only speculated about.
Icy water drenches my nightgown. His eyes follow mine, to Sofia. I wrench his gaze back. I shout the words like a flare: “Decima will rise again. The nine will become ten. The Coroa Velha will finally close its broken ring and Thalassia will breathe as one again!”
I draw one last breath to the taste of salt and iron dust, and let the ocean close my eyes.
Cold darkness embraces me, but a heartbeat pulses against my palm. A man, salt-tangled black hair streaming, plants a shell to my mouth. I shake my head as the air slams sweet and hot. Gills ripple faintly at his throat; webbed fingers close around the frayed rope at my wrist. He only gestures: hold, breathe, and stares at me with eyes black as wet stone. He points to the abyss below, grips the trailing rope at my freed wrist and drives downward, legs carving the sea, hauling me into the dark.
After an eternity, we break into a hidden grotto, rock domed overhead. He slips the rope from my wrist; I yank free, relief knotted with anger. No explanation. No bearings. Water slicks the basalt at my calves. The dark sharpens. Faces ring the pool, silent, watching. People.
I clench the conch around my face, my lifeline.
“Cael, you’re late,” a petite elderly woman with a crown of jewels places a hand on his shoulder. He rolls his eyes and takes a deep breath. Then flashes me a look of pure disgust, shifts into human form, motions me to remove the conch as he rolls his eyes, lets out a grunt, and then walks away.
“Forgive Cael. He’s lost many of our warriors to retrieve you safely. We haven’t had anyone return to Thalassia for generations and, the…” her eyes roll, “locals were already trying to kill you. My name is Thessa, and this is our home,” she motions to the crowd now gathering.
“It’s real. It’s all real,” I murmur under my breath. I’m breathing underwater. I’m in Thalassia. With People.
“Yes, dear. We’re real, and we need your help. And now you must forgive my urgency, but there isn’t much time. Decima has awoken. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting?” I stammer.
She places a gentle hand on my waist and motions me to take my place at the table. Five elders also take their seats, leaving five empty chairs around the table. “It’s alright, Iara. This one is yours.”
I recognize the symbols on all of the chairs, except mine. As I take my seat, I feel a familiar hum pulsing along the floor. Like a tuning fork finding its chord, I remember how I recognize it.
***
I’m instantly taken back to the ruins of the Crown Gate where Sofia and I had followed the map she found in our island archives. It was written in a language no one dared speak anymore, but our father, the humble adventurer that he was, taught us, like his mother before him. It was our little secret, one apparently we both took to the grave.
At the gate, it was as if the water pulsed for me, beckoned me closer. I whispered a lullaby my father taught me: “Dorme, menina do mar, sem medo, ouve a onda que entoa: A Coroa Velha há de surgir quando a filha de Korahar respirar o ar no Portão da Coroa; e o anel do mundo vai-se fechar.”
The pulse quickens, hard, insistent, drawing me into the cave. Sofia snatches my hand, but the pull is already in my bones. I wrench free long enough to whisper, “Run.” That’s when Vilar finds me: knee-deep in the shallows, trance-still, as the cave walls ignite with a script he cannot read.
“Witch,” he says, reaching his hand to his mouth in disbelief.
“Iara!” I hear my name, an echo in my mind, pulling me back to the table. Thessa grabs my hand, grounding me. “What did you see?”
“I opened the gate,” I whisper, staring blankly at Thessa.
“That you did, menina. And now we have work to do,” she smiled, “Welcome the Crown Compass.”
***
By morning, Cael drags me through a knot of caves and along the trench bordering Thalassia. He still says nothing—just a curt gesture here, a grunt there, pointing at things like I should already know. He could be mute for all I care because the rock vibrates here, stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, whispering the word, Korahar.
I check to see if Cael heard the voice, but his back is to me, so I ask, “What’s Korahar?” I ask, sharper than I mean to.
He faces me, grabs my wrist and we drop beneath the surface. He points to a map carved into the trench wall and actually rolls his eyes.
A crown with ten peaks. I trace them under my breath: “Santa Maré, Migal, Terça, Graçosa, São Jouro, Píncaro, Faialva, Florésia, Corvão… and Korahar. Décima is Korahar. The symbols on the chairs.”
“And you’re the Daughter of Korahar,” he says, finally speaking. “The one foretold to open the Crown Gate and reunite all of Thalassia. She didn’t mention that last night, did she?”
“The what?”
“You’re the tenth. So the story goes.” He shrugs, hard. “You pressed the magic button and now Korahar will rise, along with my people, the people I’ve been protecting since before you were born. And last I checked, land-dwellers don’t exactly love us.”
“I’m nobody. Just a fisherman’s daughter.”
“Maybe. But now I’m drafting for war, peace treaties, and general chaos, thanks to you.”
His anger hums through every word, his eyes dark as basalt, unblinking on mine.
A blast punches the water. The trench shudders. Silt geysers up in a brown cloud.
Another detonation—closer. A rain of pebbled basalt ticks across our shoulders. Cael yanks me behind a rib of rock as a slab shears off above and drops where we were.
“Vilar,” he says, jaw tight. “He’s blasting the shoal—trying to drop the lip of the trench and bury the ring. If he collapses this corridor, the Crown Gate loses its land key. He keeps Thalassia a rumor and carves himself a private channel no islander can contest.”
The current swings, strange—dragging outward, then shouldering back in. The Crown Compass is answering the violence, I can feel it: a deep, sick pulse.
“If he keeps this up,” Cael says, reading the same shift, “Píncaro–Faialva will silt shut, and a counter-sink could take a bite out of Florésia’s reef. Balance takes its due.”
Another boom. The carved crown on the wall fractures the hairline at Migal’s notch.
“Up,” Cael decides. “We stop him at the shoal or there won’t be a city left to save.”
He threads my fingers around the rope—no argument this time—and kicks for the light, the trench’s long note rising under our ribs like a warning bell.
We reach the council room from last night, Thessa already positioned to collect council votes, but Cael protests, “Há um tempo e um lugar para falar, Thessa. Não é agora. Vilar vai destruir tudo pelo que trabalhámos. Vai destruí-la.” He glares at me, eyes softening for a single breath.
I can’t help but to think I should have paid more attention to my dad’s lessons.
“She needs to go back up. She’s the only one to broker the peace, Cael,” Thessa pleads.
Cael grunts. “O caralho,” he slams his fist on the table. “I’ll go with her. For her sake, pray the prophecy holds. If it goes wrong, it won’t be because I stayed behind.”
He doesn’t need to say it. I felt it, the loss he’s endured on my behalf.
“Don’t expect me to play nice with the locals,” rage visible on his face.
Again, he grabs my hand, and shoves the conch against my face. “You know what to do.”
We bolt upward, and we break the surface inside a pocket where the sea chews the shoal from below. Cael bares his teeth toward the cliffs, gills retracting.
Wind knifes the rim. Islanders pack the bowl of the Witch’s Steps, faces brined with spray and fear. Vilar stands high above, one boot on a blasting box, hand on the plunger. Sofia is there, held at the shoulders, clutching my journal.
“Sofia!” Something in me goes very still and very sharp.
“So much for peace talks.” Cael forces his arm in front of me, holding me back. “Keep your calm, Iara. You’re no good to her dead.”
“There she is,” Vilar crows, lifting his Bible like a blade. “The witch who woke the devil’s crown.”
“Let her go,” Cael says from the waterline, voice flat. No one dares look at him too long.
The tide climbs my shins. The moon drops, pale as fishbone. Somewhere deep under us, the Crown Gate begins to sing, a familiar humming that surges through my body.
Between us on Pincaro and our neighbor, Corvão, something black shoulders up from the deeps and snaps every head toward the horizon. Reef-teeth punch through foam, steam hissing from vents. A smell of hot stone rides the wind, white boils spit, and then a strait opens where there was none, a tongue of water biting clean between the islands.
Gasps rip through the ring of faces and Sofia breaks free as Vilar loses his balance. More blasts pierce the air and the bay bucks. Spray needles my face. I bite down on a scream and keep my feet planted, one hand in Cael’s, the other squeezing Sofia’s.
“Enough,” Cael says from the rim, not to Vilar but to the ocean, as if the sea itself were an animal he could turn with a word. His eyes cut to mine. “We don’t have much time. We need to get back. Now,” he growls.
Korahar breaks the skin of the world, its crown still buried, vents still breathing, but it’s here. The prophecy slides through me in my father's voice, gentle as the tide: Dorme, menina do mar, sem medo… a Coroa Velha há de surgir… e o anel do mundo vai-se fechar.
The crowd leans forward, faces lit by something older than fear. No one moves to help Vilar when he stumbles. The waves begin crashing against our shore. The ring keeps closing.
“Give her your conch,” Cael barks at me.
I don’t hesitate. I shove it to her face and tell her to breathe. He ties a rope to her waist and tells me, “Don’t fight it when we dive. Just breathe.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Plan B.” He smirks and shoves us off the cliff.
We hit. He folds into the sea as if it belongs to him, one hand on the rope, the other at my ribs, and kicks. The water rips past. We’re yanked down so hard my stomach lurches; pressure slams my ears; the world streaks green-black. His legs carve the ocean in long, ruthless strokes, hauling two bodies as if we’re nothing but drift.
I gasp, take water. Panic flashes. Then the pulse of the sea steadies me. Cael taps two fingers: breathe. I lift my hand to my neck; gills open under my touch, fluttering to life.
We plunge deeper. Above us, the surface breaks and reforms, and farther out a dark ridge heaves into moonlight—Korahar rising.
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