CHAPTER 39: THE DROWNED MOUTH

The sea betrayed nothing as Apollo followed the others along the ragged coastline, but he could feel it watching him, measuring.

Dawn had broken an hour earlier, casting the world in watercolor washes of gold and gray. They hugged the cliff face, the path narrowing with each step until they were walking single file on a strip of sand barely wider than Apollo’s shoulders.

To his left, jagged stone rose like a fortress wall; to his right, the tide breathed in and out with mechanical patience.

Cale led the way, steps sure despite the treacherous footing. The man moved with the confidence of someone who had navigated this route before, though Apollo couldn’t imagine when or why.

The dog trotted ahead, occasionally pausing to sniff at something in the sand before moving on.

"Watch your step," Lyra called from behind him, her voice almost lost in the rhythmic crash of waves.

Apollo nodded without turning. The gold in his veins had been restless since morning, pulsing beneath his skin like a second heartbeat.

It made concentration difficult. He focused on placing one foot in front of the other, on the feel of Torgo’s amber shard warm against his thigh.

Ahead, Cale stopped so abruptly that Nik nearly collided with his back. Apollo looked up, squinting against the glare off the water.

There, half-hidden in the cliff face, was a dark opening, a cave mouth, its entrance partially submerged in the shallow water. It would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, or if the tide were any higher.

Cale crouched, studying the rhythm of the waves as they lapped at the opening. His eyes narrowed, calculating. "In and out before it rises," he said.

Renna stepped forward, spear balanced across her shoulders. "You sure about this?"

"No," Cale admitted, "but I’m sure about what’s behind us."

They all knew what he meant. The cultists. The bounty hunters. The weight of pursuit that had dogged them since Varnwick.

Yiv peered into the darkness, then back at the tide line. "How long do we have?"

"Hour, maybe less," Cale replied.

Apollo felt the amber grow warmer in his pocket. Something about the cave pulled at him, not just curiosity, but recognition. The sensation of being drawn toward a familiar note in a forgotten song.

’I’ve been here before,’ he thought, though he knew it was impossible.

Thorin grunted, adjusting the pack on his shoulders. "Let’s get it over with, then."

One by one, they stepped into the water. Apollo winced as the cold seeped through his boots, numbing his toes almost instantly. The sand beneath was soft, yielding with each step. It felt like walking on a memory that refused to hold its shape.

The light changed as they entered the cave, dimming from the harsh clarity of morning to something murkier. Soon, the only illumination came from reflections off the water’s surface, rippling patterns of light and shadow that danced across the stone walls. It made the world seem liquid, uncertain.

Apollo breathed deeply, tasting salt and old stone on his tongue. There was something else too, a metallic tang that reminded him of blood, or maybe just the iron in the rock itself. The dog whined softly, pressing against his leg as they moved deeper.

"Keep close," Cale murmured from ahead. "The path narrows."

They proceeded in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. The sound of the sea grew muffled, as if the cave were swallowing it. Apollo could hear his own breathing, too loud in the enclosed space. The amber in his pocket pulsed in time with his heart.

Without warning, the floor dropped away beneath them. Apollo gasped as cold water surged up to his waist, the shock of it stealing his breath for a moment. Ahead, Nik swore colorfully, and behind him, Thorin let out a startled grunt that echoed off the walls.

"Fuck!" Thorin’s voice bounced back at them, amplified by stone. "Something touched my leg."

"Just a crab," Renna said, her tone brooking no argument. "Keep moving."

Apollo pressed forward, arms raised to keep his coat from getting soaked. The water was clear enough that he could see the sandy bottom, littered with shells and the occasional darting shadow of something small and quick. The dog had abandoned them, finding a higher ledge to follow along.

The acoustics shifted as they waded deeper. The sound of the sea faded entirely, replaced by the slow drip of water from the ceiling and the distant hiss of waves moving against rock somewhere ahead. Their breathing seemed unnaturally loud, each splash of movement a betrayal of their presence.

Apollo felt it before he saw it, a change in the pressure of the air, a sense of space opening up. The tunnel widened suddenly, and they emerged into a round cavern so perfectly circular it seemed carved by design rather than nature. High above, a shaft of light pierced the darkness, illuminating the center of the chamber like a spotlight on a stage.

And there, on a raised stone pedestal, sat... something.

Apollo’s breath caught. The object was narrow and spiraled, no longer than his forearm but intricate in its construction. It didn’t look carved so much as grown, as if someone had convinced matter itself to take this precise shape.

The surface caught the light from above and held it, shifting with colors that shouldn’t be possible in the dim cave.

Water lapped gently at the base of the pedestal, but the relic itself remained dry. Untouched. Waiting.

’It’s been here a long time,’ Apollo thought, though he couldn’t have explained how he knew.

The others spread out around the chamber, their expressions ranging from curiosity to unease. Nik whistled low, the sound echoing off the curved walls. Lyra kept her distance, one hand resting on her knife as if expecting trouble. Thorin and Yiv examined the walls, while Renna stood guard at the entrance they’d come through.

Only Cale seemed unsurprised. He nodded at Apollo, a gesture that might have been encouragement or resignation.

Apollo stepped forward, drawn to the relic by something deeper than curiosity. As he approached, he felt his aether core stir, faint but insistent, like something long dormant suddenly remembering itself. The sensation was both familiar and foreign, a whisper in a language he’d forgotten he knew.

He reached out but didn’t take it right away. Instead, he studied the way the surface shifted with the light, not reflecting it, but somehow transforming it, bending it into patterns that made his eyes ache if he looked too long. The material wasn’t stone or metal or glass, but something that seemed to exist at the intersection of all three.

No one else appeared to notice anything unusual. They watched him with varying degrees of patience, unaware of the pulse that had begun to build beneath his skin, the way the gold in his veins reached toward the relic like a plant straining for sunlight.

’What are you?’ he wondered, fingers hovering just above the surface. The amber shard in his pocket grew almost painfully hot.

Finally, he grasped it.

The moment his skin made contact, the water around the pedestal rippled outward in a perfect circle, though no wave had touched it. The relic felt warm in his hand, almost alive, a weight not just in his palm but in his core, as if he’d swallowed a stone that had settled in the pit of his stomach.

He turned to face the others. Nik and Yiv exchanged uneasy glances. Thorin’s brow furrowed, and Lyra’s hand tightened on her knife. Even Cale seemed tense, watching Apollo with an intensity that bordered on alarm.

No one spoke. The silence stretched, broken only by the steady drip of water from the ceiling.

Then, somewhere behind them, in the dark of the tunnel they’d navigated, something shifted, slow and deliberate.

Apollo’s grip tightened on the relic. The sound came again, closer this time, a wet scraping against stone. Not the scuttle of crabs or the retreat of water, but something larger moving with purpose through the darkness they’d left behind.

’We stayed too long.’

The thought struck him with cold certainty. The tide was rising, yes, but that wasn’t the only thing hunting them in these waters.

"Move," he said, voice low but carrying in the circular chamber. "Now."

Cale was already wading toward the far wall, where another passage opened like a mouth in the stone. Apollo hadn’t noticed it before, the light from above didn’t reach that far, but now he could see the faint gleam of water leading deeper into the cliff.

The scraping sound echoed again, accompanied by something that might have been breathing. Heavy. Deliberate. Apollo felt the hairs on his neck prickle as he splashed after Cale, the relic clutched against his chest. The thing felt heavier now, as if it were absorbing weight from the water around them.

Behind him, Nik cursed under his breath. "What the hell was that?"

"Don’t look back," Lyra hissed. "Just move."

The dog had already vanished into the new tunnel, its instincts sharper than any of theirs. Apollo envied the animal’s clarity, no questions, no hesitation, just the pure logic of survival.