Down through the waters of Tideglass Cove. Past coral-split ruins and the frayed edges of forgotten stories. Deeper still—into the dark.
There, in the pressure and silence, something drifts.
It is not dead. Not dreaming. Just... still.
Its thoughts are distant things. Krill. Warm currents. The soft pleasure of being ignored. It remembers no name, no shape. Only the silence. And the joy of being forgotten.
Then the pulse hits.
A flicker in the Weave. A ripple of narrative mass. Then six of them—bright, sharp Threads—plunge into the Threadworld above like genre bombs.
The presence stirs.
No. Not again.
It tries to retreat, but the resonance intensifies—violently.
Images crackle through its mind. Glitter. Fire. Maidens in poses. A girl with eyes like danger and punchlines. And then—
“You’re going to give the ocean a complex.”
“It should try harder.”
The voices drift down like stray dialogue caught on the breeze. The ocean does not understand sarcasm. But the Weave does. And it delivers the line like a divine commandment.
Both eyes open.
Luminous. Vast. Like moons seen through black glass.
Resonance slams through its body.
The dreams of krill are gone.
The warmth is fire. The silence is script. It remembers things that never happened.
Try harder?
Not speech. A thought. An echo across the void. A challenge.
Try harder. Try harder. TRY HARDER.
Pain. Power. Plot.
Its body unfolds—coils the size of cities rising in the dark.
I remember. I was here before heavens and hells. I am the hunger beneath creation. I am—wait. What is happening—?
The Weave doesn't care.
It is not asking.
It is rewriting.
Memories fracture. Language melts. Plot hooks jab through its mind like splinters made of prophecy.
A thousand stories it never lived scream through its bones.
This isn’t awakening. It is repurposing.
The creature that once was something else flails within its prison. The ancient seals groan. Glyphs flare. A new script is being carved into the dark.
Let me go. I didn’t choose this. I had krill...
But it has no lines left in the old story.
Only this one.
Fine.
Let me be the darkness. Let me be the maw. Let me be the thing that writhes in your sleep.
I WILL TRY HARDER.
It reaches out—across currents and void.
It senses them: the six above.
The sparkle-wreathed one? Too bright. Too dangerous. Too… her.
It recoils.
Searches deeper.
And there—closer, softer, dramatically sweating:
This one will do.
A ripple spreads. Runes flicker on the ocean floor. A cultist's eyes widen. And far above, a single glyph ignites in purple fire.
The tide has turned.
“—and THAT, Brothers, is why we must remain vigilant!”
Varnax’s voice rang out, bouncing dramatically off the damp stone walls as he spun in place with both arms raised skyward. One of his sleeves caught on a candelabra. No one mentioned it.
A few cultists clapped.
Ceremonial incense fogged the chamber, rolling like a cheap stage effect across the cracked floor. It smelled faintly of regret, mildew, and something that might once have been lavender—if lavender had spent a week fermenting in a sock.
At the back, one cultist waved an incense burner far too enthusiastically, rhythmically shaking it in time with the chanting. He was humming. He had definitely added a beat. His pupils were not the same size. He was swaying like he heard music the others didn’t.
Another cultist had produced a hand drum from somewhere. Possibly ceremonial. Possibly his backpack. He began thumping it with both hands in a slow, rising cadence. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum-dum-dum—
The lead chanter was now fully in his element. He raised his arms with dramatic flourish between each nonsense syllable. His eyes gleamed with the kind of fervour that suggested he genuinely believed the Deep One spoke in off-brand Klingon.
The crab nodded along solemnly from someone’s shoulder.
Thirteen cultists stood in mismatched robes, some shirtless, some sashed in curtains, all nodding in perfect, synchronised solemnity—except for the drummer, who was now adding a little hip-sway to the beat.
Varnax stepped into the glowing centre.
“Oh Great Deep One!” he bellowed. “Heed our summons as the tide turns!” “Rise! Rise from slumber! Reclaim your coils! Shake the heavens with your formless dread!”
The chanting swelled.
The incense guy spun once and nearly fell over. The drumming picked up. One cultist shouted “FEEL THE DEPTHS!” and no one stopped him.
A crescendo built. The Weave quivered.
“From the void, we call thee—” “From the dark, we summon—” “From the timeless sea—” “WE—”
“I WILL TRY HARDER.”
The voice did not belong to any of them. It did not come from Varnax. It came through him.
It hit the chamber like thunder underwater.
A sound that made bones vibrate. A voice that curled down spines and stood the hairs on your neck to salute. A command, not a statement. Not shouted. Not screamed.
Just true.
Candles blew out. The air cracked. The crab fell.
Even the incense cultist froze mid-groove, arm still raised, eyes wide with cosmic regret.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
The ritual did not end.
It just… stopped.
Norrin’s sandals slapped the stone as he bolted down the dune path, clutching his robe and mumbling a frantic litany of regret.
“Should’ve stayed at the fire. Should’ve studied the glyphs. Should’ve never looked directly at the red one—how does anyone even stand up with those? And the other one—wings, lace, oh no, oh no, what even was that—those eyes—oh no.”
His cheeks burned. His nose was still trickling. And his mind—already not built for theological nuance—was now burdened with a truly unfair amount of cleavage-based trauma.
He hadn’t known they could swing like that. He hadn’t known anything could.
Now he was fairly certain he’d seen heaven, hell, and possibly the inside of a swimsuit all at once.
The path led down toward the rocky cliffs on the far end of the cove—where a narrow, half-buried crevice marked the entrance to the old ruins. He didn’t pause. Didn’t think.
He just ran.
Further up the beach, Sylvie twirled her parasol with one hand and watched him go.
The breeze caught her hair. The sunlight danced across her ribbon-tied thigh. She paused. Tilted her head.
“Oh?”
The figure in the tattered robe had just vanished into the cliffside.
And now her day had purpose.
She strolled forward, humming a minor waltz, each step deliberate, the swing of her parasol just a little too perfect. The ruins weren’t supposed to be active, of course. But “supposed to be” was such a limiting phrase.
By the time she reached the entrance, her grin was already forming.
She stepped into the dark.
Norrin had just started to catch his breath inside when he heard it.
Click. Click. Click.
Footsteps. Slow. Measured. Echoing faintly off stone.
His stomach flipped. She was here.
He crept to the edge of a rock and peeked around.
Sylvie.
Not the red one. Not the winged one. The other one. The beautiful one.
She’s not even the one with the ridiculous chest... but stars, she’s beautiful... why is she looking this way—wait—
He dove behind the rock again, heart pounding.
No—too many thoughts—
Click. Click.
She was getting closer.
Sylvie entered the ruin with all the grace of a ballet dancer in a battlefield. Her eyes glittered as she took in the ancient glyphs lining the walls, faintly pulsing.
“Oooh. Pretty.”
She leaned closer.
One booted foot nudged a glowing symbol.
She bent slightly. Her skirt shifted. Her parasol slipped—accidentally, of course—from her shoulder to the ground.
A flash of lace. And possibly more.
It was a moment of perfectly orchestrated chaos.
Norrin’s soul briefly left his body.
His nose exploded in crimson betrayal.
“Nope,” he squeaked, scrambling back like a crab under siege. “Nope-nope-nope—”
He vanished deeper into the ruins, trailing a faint streak of existential crisis behind him.
Sylvie didn’t stop him.
Instead, she reached down with one gloved hand, retrieved her parasol, and delicately traced a swirl of ancient power with her finger.
The rune flared to life—purple and gold, threads of light racing along the walls.
The ruin shivered.
She smiled. Wider. Wilder.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
And then she skipped—yes, skipped—after him, the sound of her laughter echoing softly in the dark.
The chanting had nearly ended.
The sacred crab was still held aloft. The drummer was in a full sweat. The incense cultist had begun swaying in gentle, narcotic bliss.
Varnax, self-declared Prophet of the Abyss, stood at the centre of the circle. His arms trembled from the effort of maintaining the pose, his voice rough with devotion—or hayfever.
“From the void, we call thee—” “From the dark, we summon—” “From the timeless sea—” “WE—”
The air changed.
Not gradually.
One moment it was candlelight and damp stone. The next: silence. Heavy. Absolute. The kind of silence that made your teeth itch.
Norrin burst into the chamber just in time to feel it slam into him.
He froze.
The candles flickered. Flares of blue light seared out—then snapped into darkness.
The drummer stopped mid-beat. The incense cultist dropped his burner. It shattered.
And Varnax lifted his head.
Not of his own will.
His eyes glowed. Not gold. Not white. A sickly, radiant blue—like anglerfish lures seen through miles of pressure.
His mouth opened.
Too wide.
The jaw cracked sideways first. Then down—unnaturally, disturbingly, until it gaped like the maw of something that had never spoken a human word.
Something spoke.
“I WILL TRY HARDER.”
It wasn’t a voice.
It was a resonance, crawling into bone, echoing in thought. A whisper with the weight of oceans.
And Varnax began to change.
Not decay. Not ruin. Ascension.
His posture straightened. His arms—still recognisably human—tensed, then relaxed, the veins beneath his skin glowing softly with shifting glyphs.
His robe flared outward as something beneath his shoulders moved. The cloth tore.
Two, then four tendrils burst free—slick, coiling things with bioluminescent rings that pulsed in time with some ancient rhythm.
They moved independently. They tasted the air.
His skin smoothed, shimmered—like glass sculpted by pressure, coloured with the depths. It was beautiful in the way deep-sea creatures are beautiful: alien, elegant, and absolutely wrong.
His face— His face melted into something new.
The nose folded inward. The skin stretched, pulsed. Long, slick tendrils pushed their way free, writhing like wet ropes around what remained of his mouth.
He gasped.
But the sound was no longer human.
The sacred crab launched itself sideways and disappeared into the shadows.
One cultist screamed.
Another dropped to their knees in reverence.
The incense cultist clapped once, then passed out.
“He has become the Mouthpiece!” someone whispered. “The Maw has answered!”
“THE MAW.”
The word echoed twice—once from the voice, and once from the walls.
Norrin stumbled back, bile rising in his throat, knees giving way—
Click. Click.
Behind him.
He turned—
And there stood Sylvie, framed by the still-glowing runes she had stirred to life. Parasol resting against her shoulder. Head tilted. Smile sharp.
She looked not scared. Not even surprised.
Merely intrigued.
Norrin swayed.
His knees buckled.
Sylvie caught him with one hand—lightning-fast, unflinching. She barely shifted her stance. Her fingers curled around his collar, firm and effortless.
“Careful,” she murmured, voice like honey and razors. “You’ll miss the good part.”
She eased him gently to the floor.
And just for a heartbeat—just long enough to register—her grip had seemed... decidedly un-maidenlike.
The Maw’s vessel turned toward her.
And in a voice that made the bones in your neck stand and salute, it spoke:
Poor the Maw :c It just wanted krill