Chapter 4: Blood in the Water

They say the sea remembers everything. Down here, beneath its weight, that feels less like a saying and more like a warning that came too late.

The Truth-Bearer did not know how long she had lain on the cold stone floor. Time had long since lost its shape, and in this place it seemed to dissolve entirely, leaving behind only the slow, deliberate rhythm of something vast breathing far below. It was not the sea she heard, but something beneath it, something patient enough to wait without ever forgetting its purpose.

When she finally stirred, the book remained where it had fallen, its pages shifting between liquid and solid, its letters burning steady and clear. They no longer resisted her. They revealed.
The map had never pointed to a place.
It had marked an opening, a wound in the world, buried beneath the sea and held shut only by the weight of it. The waters had not erased it. They had contained it.

And within that wound, something remained.
The symbol returned to her thoughts. A circle devouring itself, and at its center a pattern she now understood.
The Charging Horse.

Blood for the Blood-... Seagod!