The village of Erytheras clung to the coastline like a secret, its pastel houses tumbling down steep cliffs to meet the azure waves. To the west, the sun cast molten gold across the sea, its slow descent mirrored in the rippling waters. Fishermen, bronzed and wiry, hauled in their evening catch while the briny air hummed with the chatter of gulls. This was no modern resort town but a place steeped in generations of myth and memory, where time meandered slower, like the tides themselves.
Standing at the water’s edge was Alain Karras. He was lean and sinewy, his skin a sunburnt bronze from years of life along the coast. His sharp cheekbones and angular jaw spoke of heritage, but his eyes, a striking storm-gray, told another story: one of searching. His dark hair was perpetually tousled by the sea breeze, a thick strand always falling across his brow despite his attempts to tame it. Today, he wore a faded linen shirt, cream-colored and rolled to the elbows, with weathered trousers tucked into scuffed leather boots. A woven sash, burgundy with embroidered gold thread, cinched his waist, giving him the look of someone out of time, untethered to any specific era.
He held an object in his hands—a small, obsidian disc etched with silvery runes that shimmered faintly in the waning light. It was at once solid and ephemeral, as if imbued with the sea’s own restless energy. Alain's fingers traced the grooves absently, his mind consumed by the cryptic message his grandfather had left him before he died. "The water remembers," the old man had whispered in his final moments. "Go to the cliffs and listen. The truth waits in the shallows."
Alain had laughed it off at the time, chalking it up to the ramblings of an old sailor. Yet here he was, tethered to the mystery like a boat to its moorings. That was how it always started. Men in his family had a way of following the sea—not for fish, not for riches, but for answers no one else sought.
A Call Beneath the Waves
The disc had been buried deep in the sand beneath the cliffs. Alain had found it only yesterday after a peculiar dream. In the vision, a voice as deep as the ocean called his name, pulling him toward a cove hidden by the tide. When he awoke, his chest felt heavy, as though he had been submerged. The disc had been waiting precisely where he'd dreamt it would be.
Now, as the tide receded, he waded into the shallows, the cool water biting at his calves. Above, the cliffs rose like sentinels, crowned by lush greenery that twisted and turned in the sea breeze. The runes on the disc grew brighter, their glow snaking up his arm in ethereal tendrils of light. He tightened his grip, ignoring the pulse of dread beginning to take root in his chest. He crouched, eyes scanning the water’s surface, waiting for the next sign.
A ripple. Then a shadow. A whirlpool suddenly churned in the shallows where moments before the water had been calm. Alain staggered backward as the water began to rise—not outward into waves but vertically, forming a column. The liquid shimmered as it wove itself into shape, taking on the rough outline of a human form. Then, with a sound like a thousand cascading rains, the column solidified. Standing before Alain was... himself. Or, at least, a version of him.
The Doppelgänger
The figure's features were perfect—too perfect, like a mirror image polished until any fallibility was erased. Its storm-gray eyes stared back at him with a piercing intensity. Unlike Alain's simple clothing, the figure wore plates of shimmering blue armor that resembled fish scales, edged with coral and pearl. A crown of seashells sat upon its brow. And in its right hand, it held a blade forged entirely of water, its edge rippling yet impossibly sharp.
"Alain Karras," the figure intoned, its voice layered with whispers, like the overlapping echoes of deep caverns. "You have come to claim the truth."
Alain hesitated. "Who—what—are you?"
"I am the Currents' Herald, the voice of the water that flows through time. You carry the memory of what was stolen. The disc you hold—it is the key."
Alain's knuckles whitened around the obsidian. "The key to what? Why does it call to me?"
The doppelgänger tilted its head, its piercing gaze softening. "Because you are the last son of Eliaros, the Tidekeeper. Your grandfather knew the waters' truths, but he also knew the danger of revealing them. That is why the world's oceans have forgotten. The enemy made it so."
The runes on the disc pulsed, and Alain's heart with them. Memories flooded his mind: his grandfather teaching him about constellations reflected in pools, telling him stories of islands that vanished overnight, describing creatures that swam not just in water but in the spaces between moments.
“What am I supposed to do?" Alain asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
The Eternal Struggle
The Herald raised its blade, pointing it toward the horizon where the sun had just dipped below the sea. "The Enemy stirs once more. The Reefs are crumbling, the Oceans turning red. The Waters' Song grows faint. You must awaken the Memory of the Deep." It gestured to the disc. "Cast it into the Abyss."
Before Alain could respond, the Herald dissolved into a torrent of water that collapsed into the sea. The silence that followed was suffocating.
Alain turned toward the horizon. A distant rumble, like thunder, shivered across the waves. The truth waited, the Herald had said, but at what cost? He glanced at the disc one final time before stepping deeper into the shallows, where the sea seemed to welcome him, rising around his waist, his chest, his shoulders.
And then he swam toward the Abyss.
The truth waited—
—and Alain Karras was ready to listen.
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: love to live beside the seaside! Having a home within 330 yards of water may reduce the risk of mental decline, study reveals">So THAT'S why we love to live beside the seaside! Having a home within 330 yards of water may reduce the risk of mental decline, study reveals
love to live beside the seaside! Having a home within 330 yards of water may reduce the risk of mental decline, study reveals Backdrop">
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