Chapter 2: There is no escape from the Sea

In the cellars of the Great Library, there where the light of the oil lamps barely drove the moisture from the walls, they finally found something that could no longer be mere coincidence. A map, older than the oldest chronicles of both peoples, drawn on seal leather, its edges gnawed away by salt. No name stood upon it. Only a symbol: a circle devouring itself, and at its centre a tiny vertical stroke-like a breath that would never be released again. The archivist who discovered it, a gaunt man named Lirren whose eyes had long since taken on the colour of ancient parchment, spoke to no one for days. He compared. He measured. He calculated.

And when at last he opened his mouth, his voice was so low that the other librarians had to lean close to hear him. “It is not an island,” he said. “It is a hole.” Not a hole in the sense of abyss or crater. But a hole in the world itself. A place where the rules of here and now paused for a single moment. The coordinates where the reports broke off did not lie so close together by chance - they formed a perfect circle. And in the centre of that circle, on the ancient map, stood only one word, written in a script that was neither human nor magmarian: Waiting.

Lirren vanished three days later. They found only his cloak, neatly folded on the table, and beside it the map, opened to exactly that spot. The symbol had disappeared. In its place, in fresh ink, stood a single mark: an arrow pointing downward.

The rumours needed no week to reach the coastal cities. Some said Lirren had set out of his own free will. Others claimed he had been taken - by the same invisible fingers that had also seized the fleets. Still others whispered of voices that rose at night from shells and empty message bottles, always the same words, always in the rhythm of the waves: “Come. It is time.” The governments of both realms tried to quell the unrest.
 

The sea demands knowledge.