“No idea. We never heard from them.”

  The words hung in the air, heavy as the sub’s iron walls.

  Mereque felt the chill settle deeper.

  Five colonies. Gone. Like his own crew.

  Gone.

  Jenker watched him for a long moment, eyes sharp. Then he set his cup down with a soft clink.

  “Sorry if I hit a nerve.”

  Mereque shook his head.

  “You didn’t. Just ghosts catching up.”

  He forced a breath.

  The silence had dragged on for too long.

  “Enough heavy for now. Your turn. Who are the Havenites? Do you rule this Earth?”

  Jenker barked a laugh.

  “Rule? We rule the seas, mate.”

  He stood, swept an arm over the map.

  “Ice Coast north to Great Valance south. West past the Blanched rot. East to the Endless Deep.”

  Mereque traced the lines in his mind. Four thousand nautical miles square. It was a kingdom of water. Incredible.

  To think there had been people who had survived here. No. Even more. Thrived. His heart warmed.

  Jenker sat again, leaned back, stretched his legs out.

  “That’s our world. The rest… is more complicated.”

  “Complicated how?”. Mereque asked, casting his friend a curious look.

  Jenker poured another round.

  “Land’s poison in places. Blanched own chunks. Others fight over scraps. Most places have some hidden danger lurking about. We stay wet—where its safer. Or as safe as we can. Ocean has its own dangers.”

  He met Mereque’s eyes.

  “No one rules the whole world.”

  Not anymore. Except for the monsters perhaps, he thought.

  Mereque felt the old mission twist. No central authority. No easy contact. Just fragments. Like after the Third War in the book.

  Mereque studied the map.

  Four thousand nautical miles square. Mostly water. Less than a quarter of the planet. No sprawling civilization. Just fragments.

  He looked at Jenker.

  “Cities?”

  Jenker refilled their cups.

  “Havenlocke Harbour. My home. We’ll head there. You’re welcome aboard as long as you want.”

  Mereque opened his mouth.

  The world exploded.

  The Urchin Gull lurched like a beast struck by lightning. Gravity vanished. Mereque’s stomach dropped. He grabbed the bolted table. Jenker did the same.

  Lights died. Red-white strobes flashed from hidden panels. The sub screamed (metal groaning, pipes rattling).

  Mereque’s HUD flared: EXTREME EXTERNAL EXCELLERATION DETECTED. SOURCE UNKNOWN.

  Jenker’s face went pale, but his eyes burned.

  “Brace!”

  The deck tilted hard. Cups flew. Maps scattered. Mereque’s boots slid.

  He locked one arm around the table leg, the other around Jenker.

  The sub groaned louder. The floor vibrated violently. The lights flickered.

  Jenker’s face twisted (anger, not fear).

  “Emergency ascent!”

  The sub screamed upward. Pressure crushed in. Ears popped.

  Mereque braced against the table.

  “What’s happening?”

  Jenker shouted over the roar.

  “Old Father’s moving!”

  Mereque remembered the ridge that had thrown him sky-high.

  “Those moving mountains?”

  Jenker barked a laugh (wild, half-mad).

  “Mountains? Those are his arms!”

  This was insanity. It wasn’t possible. It was absurd. How could such a thing exist? Mereque’s rational mind screamed at him in rebellion.

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  The deck shuddered. Lights strobed red. Crew voices echoed (calm orders, practiced chaos).

  Mereque felt the sub surge like a living thing fleeing a predator. His thoughts were brushed aside by their tactile reality.

  They were hunted. His jaw set. Survival was the priority.

  Jenker gripped the table tighter. His eyes met Mereque’s.

  “He Who Holds the World. Old Father Kraken. We pray to him. We curse him. He’s our god. And he’s in a mood.”

  The Urchin Gull broke the surface with a crash. Water hammered the hull.

  Mereque’s stomach flipped.

  Something enormous moved below. Unimaginably massive. The ocean itself breathing.

  Jenker’s grin was feral, borderline madness lurking just beneath the surface.

  “Hold on, star-kisser.”

  The sub rolled. Mereque grabbed Jenker’s arm. The largest creature to ever possibly exist was hot on their heels. Was this what he meant when he said, ‘the Ocean had its own dangers’?

  ? ? ?

  Far east, the Shimmering City pulsed. Light bled from it (white, fractured, wrong).

  Beams stabbed the night (sharp as knives, flickering like dying stars).

  The Blanched Land drank it in.

  Colors twisted. Shadows danced where shadows shouldn’t.

  Along roads and paths, boots rang (cold, perfect rhythm). Knights marched. Hundreds. Thousands.

  Sycophants lined the streets (mewling, chains rattling). They leaned from windows. Clustered at corners.

  Blind faces turned toward the procession. Worship. Fear.

  The columns moved toward the center. Toward the heart. Toward the Wyrm.

  No one spoke. Only wails. Only chains. Only the promise of tears.

  The city shimmered brighter. Waiting. Hungry.

  The air itself felt wrong (thick, tasting of rust and regret). Buildings leaned at impossible angles, stone bled in unnatural ways.

  Unseen things skittered in the cracks (claws on bone, whispers in languages long dead).

  Faces pressed against windows (pale, eyeless, smiling too wide).

  The ground pulsed faintly, as if something crawled beneath.

  Knights marched without casting shadow, only trails of pale white.

  Sycophants dragged chains that rattled.

  The light fractured further (revealing glimpses of things that should not exist: limbs too many, mouths in wrong places).

  The city lived. And it hungered

  The night held its breath.

  The Weeper’s warriors gathered. Orderly. Silent.

  Where they walked, color fled (draining away like blood from a wound). The world twisted behind them (barren trails of nothing).

  Hundreds became thousands. Tens of thousands.

  Priests waited outside the First Temple (hooded, smiling with broken teeth).

  A cry rolled out from the depths. Low. Ancient. Hungry.

  Stonework shuddered. Dust cascaded from walls (soft mist drifting outward).

  In the bowels, something vast stirred. Coils shifted. Chains rattled.

  The Weeping Wyrm woke. Its grief no longer bound. Ancient constraints no more.

  The knights knelt. The priests sang.

  The city shimmered brighter. Ready. While the night began to shiver.

  The temple had been built around it. Long ago. Brick by tainted brick.

  Devotees found the sleeping thing and drank its tears. Becoming the first Priests.

  The pit was carved deep (blasted into bedrock, a vast cup cradling the god). A walkway ringed the upper lip (long stair from above for communion).

  Priests of Dolor circled below (mirrors of its sorrow, closest to the divine).

  The Wyrm filled the chamber (coils touching walls on every side).

  Rancid water pooled beneath (reeking of death and despair).

  Aqueducts drained the tears upward (pumped to the cleansing floors).

  There the unwashed waited. Knights delivered them. Priests baptized them. The god transformed them.

  The night fled. Naked fear. And the world recoiled in disgust.

  This was where Jenker would have ended. Here, or in one of the lesser temples within the city. Drenched in the Wyrm’s tears.

  The foul liquid pooled below (rancid, thick, reeking of endless sorrow). Bathe in it and choose: Dissolve (flesh sloughing off like acid, feeding the god). Or transform. Heart heavy enough with grief or regret, and the tears remake you. Twist you. Hollow you. Fill you with the Wyrm’s despair.

  The ranks swelled. Priests rose closest to the god (mirrors of its infinite lament, giving it voice). Knights marched (empty helms, obedient, giving it arms). Sycophants crawled (mewling, chained, pathetic, giving it presence). All born from tears. All feeding the endless grief.

  In the world of the Blanched, despair was so plentiful it was both nourishment and currency.

  The deeper the misery, the higher the station. The Wyrm tolerated only echoes of itself. The pit waited, filled with rancid tears to overflowing.

  The world wailed in soundless fear. And the god grew stronger.

  Keigael stood at the pit’s edge. He was the Arch Minister of Sufferance. It was a position of high favor. A sycophant curled at his heels (mewling, and blind).

  To his left: Brother Dynoinstein, Chief Astronomagus of the Twelve Observatories.

  To his right: Brother Balcarmos, High Adjudicator of Excruciations.

  Allies of convenience. There were no friends among the Blanched.

  Their bodies swayed (rotting mouths muttering nonsense). Dream-state.

  The Wyrm shifted. The chamber trembled. Coils scraped stone. Water sloshed in the rancid pool. Its mind opened (a vast wound, filled with endless grief).

  They entered through their shared pain.

  “Pitiful vermin… so worthless…”

  The words scraped like nails on flesh. Their worldly bodies shivered.

  Keigael smiled (black teeth gleaming). Dynoinstein’s blind eyes wept. Balcarmos hissed pleasure.

  The god breathed. Its tears flowed (always flowed). Endless.

  The agony would break lesser mortals. Melt their minds of sanity and self. But these were no longer men. They welcomed it (laughing through tears, bodies twisting in ecstasy).

  To stand before the Wyrm, one endured its grief. Or dissolved. Unworthy. It was the greatest honor for them.

  The god’s mind stabbed.

  “The Anointed drowns in my lamentations. His rebirth heralds misery unending. What use have I for you loathsome creatures now?”

  The priests floated helpless (flies in a web).

  The Wyrm’s bloated form undulated (slow, rhythmic). Open sores wept greenish-yellow pus. Fluids streamed down pale skin, hissing into the rancid pool. Foul steam rose (thick, choking).

  It laughed. The sound was grief made flesh. The chamber shook.

  Their worldly bodies writhed. Joy. Pain. Together.

  The tears flowed faster, heavier, more virulent. And the world beyond trembled.

  “I feel your despair… your hopelessness… good… this pleases me…”

  The Wyrm’s voice was comfort wrapped in razor blades. It pitied them. Its twisted way.

  The priests writhed (laughing, weeping, broken).

  The god had lost its mind long ago. Thousands of years of grief had shattered it. Now it projected that pain outward. Onto the world. Onto them. It was all it could do. All it knew how to do.

  The three were released. They gasped, back into their bodies. Material again.

  Keigael stood at the pit’s edge, uncertain. No directives. No orders. It was unprecedented.

  The Wyrm moaned (low, lash-like). Sycophants bled from eyes and ears.

  The priests shuffled closer together. They stared into the pit. Their god slept again. But its grief was awake. And it was insatiable.

  The chamber shook again, stronger this time, dislodging loose rocks.

  Its pool of tears rose higher. Bubbled.

  The world would drown. Soon.

  The Wyrm’s sleeping cry rolled out (sorrow made sound). The priests stood closest (blind, deaf, shielded). Any other would shatter.

  A sinuous tendril stirred in the rancid pool (slow, seeking).

  The god was nightmare made flesh. Maggot-pale. Oozing. Relishing its misery. Sharing it freely.

  Keigael felt the air shift. His brethren tensed. Something approached.

  The tendril rose (flat, dripping filth). It carried a gift. A lump of gelatinous waste (clotted in the pool).

  Dropped behind them with a wet slap.

  Sycophants (faces bleeding) tapped frantically on their masters’ palms.

  Blind. Deaf. But not stupid.

  They knew what came next.

  The priests turned.

  The “gift” pulsed. Still warm. Still alive.

  Reborn. Anointed. Blessed.

  The Wyrm’s laughter echoed (low, wet, endless).

  As the tears flowed relentlessly, its devout priests smiled wickedly—whispers filling their heads—knowing now what was to come.