City Officials at World's End

They say the sea remembers everything. Every promise whispered over its skin, every body it swallows when the lights go out. No one can say for Certain if that is true. However, on the night the summons came, the water was as black as a bad conscience, and the world leaned a little closer to the edge.

The invitations arrived the same way for botH races; silently, precisely, and impossible to trace. Sealed letters for the Humans, etched Obsidian tablets for the Magmars. Different forms, same words. A call to peace. A summit at the edge of the world. No signature, just a time, a place, and the promise that the war could finally bleed out.

That alone should have set off alarms. In our world, Peace never comes without a knife tucked behind its back.

 

 

Still, the officials went. Warlords who hadn't slept without armour in decades. Rulers with hands stained by ink and blood in equal measure. Elders whose memories stretched back to the first cities, the first betrayals. They boarded their ships at dawn, faces set like stone masks, entourages trimmed down to nothing. No banners. No speeches. Just the creak of gangplanks and the sound of gulls laughing like they knew a joke the rest of us didn't.

The Humans sailed south in elegant tall-ships of oak and iron, sails pale as old bones. The Magmars took to the sea in imposing battle-vessels hewn from basalt and living flame, steam hissing where water dared touch their keels. Two fleets, two histories of hatred, cutting through the same gray water toward the same vanishing point.

Toward World's End.

No one knew what waited for them there.

The sea stayed calm. Too calm. No sTorms rose to claim them, no battles flared on the horizon. There were no distress signals, no flares, no final words carried back on the wind. The ships didn’t return. They didn't wash up broken on the rocks. They just… stopped being part of the world.

At first, everyone assumed delay. Then sabotage. Then treachery.

Days passed. Then weeks.

War doesn't pause for mysteries. Without officials to sign ordErs or elders to keep the old grudges in check, the frontlines grew nervous. Commanders made choices they shouldn't have. Old grudges stretched their legs. Every shadow started to look like an enemy with a plan.

Rumours flooded in where facts wouldn't. A phantom island that only appeared to the coNdemned. A third power older than both races, tired of watching us burn the world. A trap set by one side so perfect the other was erased without a sound. Every theory had a witness. Every witness had a price.

The sea, meanwhile, kept its mouth shut.

Now the cities hum with the wrong kind of quiet. The kind that comes before something breaks. Notices are nailed to walls, offering rewards for informaTion no one has. Spies trade lies in back rooms that smell like smoke and regret. Somewhere out there, answers are floating, or sinking, just beyond reach.

Officials don’t vanish without consequences. Not in a world already soaked in war. Whatever called them to World's End didn't just steAl leaders. It pulled the pins on everything they were holding together.

And sooner or later, someone is going to have to follow the trail into the dark. Because the sea may remember everything...

….but it never gives anything back for free.

 

Chapter 1: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

 

They reached the coordinates at dawn. Two horizons. Two fleets. A stretCh of water so still it mirrored both armadas without distortion. Signals were raised. Distance held. Whatever words were meant to be spoken at World's End would have to wait until decks aligned and pride settled.

The sea decided otherwise.

The wind thinned. The swell flattened. Ships that had answered every current for weeks began to lose way, as if the water beneath no longer welcomed them. A shadow moved under the Human flagship - broad, unhurried. Then the surface broke. Hull met force. Masts lurched. At the center of the meeting point, the sea drew inward, forming a dark spiral where the charts marked nothing but depth.

There are battles that last until sunset. This was over before the sun had properly risen.

Ships tilted, slid, and were taken into the hollow. The spiral tightened. The water closed. When the light strengthened, the sea Lay smooth again, as though no fleet had ever crossed it.

Weeks passed. At first, absence was treated as delay. Then as misfortune. Eventually, it became a question no one could postpone. No wreckage drifted ashore. No survivor brought back a version of events to argue over. Whatever happened at World's End left nothing obvious behind.

So attention turned to what was available. The Grand Library filled. Sea charts were unrolled across long tables and compared line by line. Different printings of the same map were set side by side. Margins were examined for erased notes, altered depths, amended warnings. Travel accounts to the southern waters were pulled from shelves and rEad with more care than they had received in years.

Certain patterns began to trouble people. Had ships vanished there before? Why did a handful of expedition logs end abruptly at nearly identical coordinates? And why had that stretch of ocean attracted so many revisions, but so few explanations?

No proclamations followed. No theories were declared correct. But the search did not slow. If the sea offered no evidence, the Library would have to.

 

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. New commanders were appointed, new edicts issued, new wanted posters printed—this time bearing Lirren’s face. Yet the lines at the fronts grew thinner. Soldiers no longer disappeared alone; entire outposts emptied overnight. No blood. No corpses. Only weapons left behind, still warm, and boot prints That led to the water and ended there abruptly.In the taverns, new songs were already being sung. Of the vanished, who were not dead but waiting. Of a place beyond the horizon where peace was truly possible - but only if one left behind everything one had ever been.

Some laughed about it. Most did not. And then, on a morning when the fog lay so thick over the harbour that one could barely see one’s own hands, a single ship weighed anchor. No grand sailer. No basalt battlesHip. Only an old cutter, barely seaworthy, with a single sail, gray with age. At the helm stood a woman whose name no one remembered anymore. She wore no armour, had no entourage, no flag. Only a small bundle wrapped in linen under her arm - and in hEr eyes the expression of someone who had already taken leave.No one stopped her. No one called after her. As the ship sailed into the fog, the sea seemed to hold its breath for a moment. Then the gray wall closed again. And somewhere, very far out, where the sea charts end and the legends begin, something was perhaps still waiting.

Something Old. Something Hungry. Something that had learned that peace is not given—one must pay for it. With bodies.

With names.

With the certainty that no one ever returns to check the bill. The sea remembers everything. And it has a very long breath.

 

Chapter 3: No grave but the sea

 

Her name might have been forgotten to Faeo but she has not forgotten what happened to her and her crewmates. Long ago, as its tradition in this world, civilization was facing a similar cataclysm. At that time she still had hope, joined a crew tasked with uncovering the secret, a secret that has since been forgotten alongside her name.

She was the sole survivor of the whole ordeal, her life forever altered. When her crew slipped into bulky metal diving suits and disappeared into the depths, she left at her captain’s side to assist them from the deck. It wasn’t long until all oxygen lines snapped and metal diving suits became tombs, forever sealing warriors trapped within. A bright flash of stars abruptly revealed a constellation that resembled a charging horse. The ship's captain took it as a sign and charged down the sea, cutlass in one hand and harpoon in the other - never to be seen again.

Even she herself does not remember how she managed to survive this encounter and it’s hard to blame her, it happened hundreds of years ago after all.

 

There is one lasting side effect to that trip. Time has lost all meaning to her, aging was no longer a concern as she not only watched all of the people she ever knew die but even memory of them being gone from the face of Faeo. At first, she tried telling the truth about her age and story but to little effect. Even here, with eternal mighty dragons, undead roaming the lands and ghosts being everywhere apparently eternal life is where citizens draw the line. She refers to herself as Truth-Bearer whenever she is forced into social interaction, in hopes to be avoided by acting uncanny. As soon as the news hit the mainland she was hit with a feeling of dread, too familiar and too strong to just ignore it and so she went to check the footprints around the outposts herself. This confirmed her worst fears, she knew those boots all too well - nobody noWadays recognizes them as technology has advanced significantly but she was there, she saw the tragedy with her own eyes and thus the footprint is burnt inside her mind forever. Those could only be centuries old diving boots. Her old crew is still out there, stuck in the limbo between life and death, roaming the depths of the ocean. It took them almost a thousand years to walk their way to the shore…

Truth-Bearer tried to get a crew of her own to launch an investigation into the forbidden area, to no avail. Perhaps telling the truth when the world already refuses to believe you was not the best strategy but she was hoping that Lirren’s discovery of her own hand made map would change the outcome. Alas, she set sail alone, her mind swarmed wIth thoughts of how madness-inducing it must have been to be stuck on the bottom of the ocean for ages, unable to breathe, unable to eat, unable to die… Shivers went down her spine with the final thought before she managed to block them off, at least temporarily - what do they want? Most entities in such stories are looking for revenge on whoever they deem to be mixed in their misery but she is the only one left that has any memory of those events. There has to be something more at stake, some sinister plot hidden in the depths.

Things on the shore were not looking bright either. Magmars and Humans jump at each other’s throats with insane ferocity, each side accusing the other of recent disappearances. All attempts at cooperation are quickly shut down by locals fighting off the opposing race at first sight which results in each side having only half the information. To make matters worse, there have been reports of a gloomy figure covered in barnacles, luring Magmars and Humans alike to the water. Many believe him to be Lirren, having found information not made for mortal minds to have lost his own, forced to obey the voices. All of Lirren’s sightings, every single disappearance, each missing man has one thing in common - a bright flash of a charging horse constellation. Due to the way Ogriy and Khair are located, it is impossible to see the same consTellation from the same angle on both continents at once, which should be a cause for concern and a turning point in investigation - if only both sides could cooperate.

Using shortcuts known only to her, the Truth-Bearer sailed to the edge of reality fracture in mere days but it was nothing like she remembered it. There was a huge whirlpool that seemed to be both sucking in water and spewing out mud simultaneously, creating a huge tower in the middle. Indeed, this whirlpool could not have been natural, the mud wasn’t in a disorganized pile, there were doors, windows, decorative sculptures - it looked like a work of some crazy hermit rather than a natural event. Having anchored her vessel, Truth-Bearer stepped foot on the muddy island and met face to face with its guardians - her old crewmates, locked in diving suits. Rusty suits made a loud cranking noise with each move and the glass providing vision to the diver was completely shattered and yet there was no face to be seen. PitCh black darkness completely filled the inside and even though there was no way to differentiate any shapes, Truth-Bearer could have sworn it was moving. A lone tear came to her eye as she recognized one of the suits by a moldy herb belonging to her once captain - a charging horse.

She wasn’t barred entry, quite the contrary - the door opened by itself and divers stood aside, granting her passage. She whispered a soft plea of it not being her fault, expressing gratitude to see them all again but it fell on deaf ears. Carefully, she stepped inside and made her way up the tower, clearly not ready for what was hidden inside. At the end of the seemingly endless staircase was a room with three books inside - captain’s log, sailor’s diary and a dark, dusty tome. Hesitant, she opened the log and found nothing of use inside, the last entry was done the day before the tragedy. Sailor’s diary seemingly continued long after, with entries being done once a year. It was a glimpse into a troubled mind, desperate to stop his suffering - to no avail. The last entry mentioned a dark book, most likely the tHird one found in the room - and so, she opened it. The pages weren’t made of paper, it was blood in a superstate of both liquid and solid, letters made of flames. How that creation survived years of underwater life can only be explained by dark magic and the contrast between bright blood and bright flame made it difficult to read. The text was so vile it made her gag and lean over a wall - accidentally switching a lever.

The floor below opened and Truth-Bearer slid down the mud slide alongside stairs down to the basement, where she found herself on a concrete floor. There were markings made of blood on the floor, hooks with remnants of flesh hanging from the ceiling and seemingly no way out. The only hope could be hidden within the bloody tome itself, if she could muster enough strength to get through it, although it seemed she had no choice. She only hoped there is a way to get out of here without summoning the Old, Hungry Charger to this world…