Between Sea And Sky

Chapter Seven: The Sea Remembers

The sea closed over his head like a shroud.

Erebus swam hard and fast, deeper than he meant to, his tail flashing with frantic light as the waves above still roared in their unnatural frenzy. The salt bit against his lips, his heartbeat pounded in his ears, and though the ocean was his home, it suddenly felt strange like a beast suddenly restless beneath its own skin.

He slowed only when the sands of the seabed stretched below him, dark and still. His chest rose and fell sharply as he steadied himself, his mind replaying what had just happened.

Her eyes.

She had seen him.. truly seen him. No shadows, no tricks. Their gazes had met and held, tethered across the veil of sea and shore. It had been electric, dangerous, intoxicating. And then…

The tide had turned wild.

His brow furrowed. He had not moved. He had not called for it. Yet the ocean had risen as though stirred by rage or fear. His foster parents’ warnings echoed in his head, sharp as broken coral: Humans are danger. The surface is not for you.

But this had not been human hands. The waves had not been natural.

He flexed his tail, pushing himself forward through the currents. The glow rippling along his scales pulsed faintly, unsteady. Usually, the light mirrored his mood a warm shimmer in contentment, a dull gleam in sorrow. But this was different. The glow flared and dimmed as though it were… alive.

Erebus stilled, glancing around. The water shifted with him. Not just in the way currents always did, but sharper, quicker like it was answering him.

His chest tightened. He tested it, swishing his tail once more, sharper this time. The glow across his scales flared in answer and the seaweed nearby rippled though no tide touched it.

No. That couldn’t be.

He backed away, eyes wide, but the sea followed. The water pressed against him in strange pulses, as if it had a heartbeat of its own.

Something was wrong with him.

Or worse something inside him was waking up.

A memory pierced him then, unbidden. Childhood nights when he had cried in secret, his glow pulsing so brightly it lit the entire cove. Thalos’s face, grim with worry, as he whispered that Erebus must hide, must dim his light, must never let the others see. “The sea does not forgive curiosity,” he had also said. “And it does not forget its bloodlines.”

Bloodlines.

Erebus gritted his teeth. He had never asked what Thalos meant, and Lyla had always turned away when the subject came close. He had accepted the half truths because he had been young, because he had loved them. But now… now he could not ignore it.

The tides seem to answer him. The sea itself had bent toward his emotions, wild and unpredictable.

Was it possible that the waves had not been warning her? That they had been warning him?

A chill swept through him, colder than the depths. He turned, glancing over his shoulder as though expecting to see those burning eyes from the abyss once more. But there was nothing. Only shadow, only silence.

Still, the unease lingered, heavy as stone.

He drifted lower, letting the sand brush his fingertips, trying to ground himself. But even there, he felt it that subtle hum in the water, like a song meant only for him. It curled around his body, tugging at something deep within, something older than Thalos and Lyla’s warnings.

The sea remembered him.

And that terrified him more than anything.

He clenched his fists, tail flickering with an unsteady blaze of light. “What am I? Who am I?” he whispered into the current. His voice trembled in the vast emptiness, swallowed by the water but not lost.

Because the ocean answered.

The tide shifted with his words, a low rumble echoing through the depths, like distant thunder carried in the salt. His scales flared bright red for a single heartbeat, anger or fear, he could not tell and in that instant he saw it: a thin crack of light shimmering far below, in the black canyons where no merfolk dared to swim.

Erebus froze. His pulse raced, his glow shivering across every scale. That light did not belong there. It was unnatural, unyielding, as if the sea floor itself had opened an eye.

And it was staring straight at him.

Erebus swam back not ready to see or hear more.

Unknown to him a story started here.