Mira's first journey took her not across the waves, but into them. She traveled to the Sunken Spire, a refuge built inside a massive air-filled cavern beneath the ocean surface, a place only accessible to those who could breathe the water or command it to part.
Here lived ORIN DEEPWALKER, a man who had spent more of his life underwater than above. Orin was forty years old, broad-shouldered, with skin tinted blue by constant immersion and eyes that were large and dark, adapted to see in the dim light. He wore armor made from hardened coral and shells, and around his neck hung a string of strange, hollow stones that hummed softly.
"They call me a diver," Orin said, his voice sounding like distant waves echoing in a cave. "But I do not just dive. I listen. The ocean speaks in pressure and temperature, in salt and current. And right now… it is screaming."
They sat on the edge of a ledge overlooking the vast, dark ocean that filled the cavern below. Bioluminescent life drifted in the distance, creating trails of pale blue light.
"You know what is happening," Mira said.
"I felt it three seasons ago," Orin replied. "The Deep Current, the one that flows along the very stone of the world's crust… it has stopped moving. Something is sitting at the bottom of the world, blocking the way. It isn't a rock or a beast. It is pressure. Too much magic, too much life, trying to squeeze through a channel built for an older, quieter time."
He turned to face her, his expression serious.
"I have been waiting for you, Mira. The surface people build things, change things, make the world loud and bright. But the deep places… we hold everything together. If the deep breaks, the whole world shatters. I will come with you. I will take you where no ship can go."
"Do you know what we will find?" Mira asked.
"Old things," Orin said with a shiver of excitement. "Things that were put to sleep long ago to keep the world safe. And I fear… things that have woken up angry."