Chapter Seven
The air thickened like congealed blood. The sky dimmed to a bruised gray. A hush fell over the Mangrove Lands, the kind that settles before a scream.
Asha pushed Zuberi behind her.
"Stay close," she said, voice steady even as her pulse raced.
The six tidebound spirits hovered above the waterlogged ground. Their forms were semi-corporeal—bones threaded with seaweed, mouths sewn shut with fish spine, eyes glowing with brine light. They smelled of salt, rot, and sorrow.
They moved in unison, gliding rather than walking, whispering with mouths that did not open.
"Two gates…
Two keys…
The path is thinning. The breach must widen."
Asha stepped forward, clutching the spiral coin in her fist.
"You're not taking him."
One of the spirits tilted its head, and though it didn't speak aloud, its voice invaded her mind:
"We do not take. We awaken. The second gate belongs to us."
"No," Asha hissed, "He belongs to himself."
The spirits pulsed with cold amusement.
"And you, salt-born…?
You've walked between the breaths.
But even you cannot seal a breach alone."
Zuberi grabbed her arm. "They've spoken to me in my sleep. I didn't know they were real until now."
Asha turned to him. "You're not ready for what they want."
"I might not have a choice."
The ground beneath them trembled.
The Second Gate—the black stone door she had seen only moments before—was shimmering, its symbols glowing red instead of silver now, as though infected.
Asha raised her amulet. "We fight."
The battle was not one of fists—but will.
The tidebound spirits lunged forward, but they didn't touch her body. They attacked her memory.
One pulled her into a vision of her father's death—the moment he slipped under the water, not crying for help, but looking back at her in peace… as if welcoming the exchange.
Asha screamed, forced her eyes open.
Another spirit whispered her grandmother's last words—not as they were, but twisted, accusing her of betrayal, of cowardice, of shame.
She clutched her head, stumbling—
But Zuberi stepped forward, suddenly glowing.
Not with fear. But with recognition.
"This isn't my first life," he whispered.
"What?" Asha gasped.
"I saw myself—before this body. Before the flood. I stood at the first breach… I was a guardian once."
He stepped toward the gate.
The tidebound howled, swirling violently.
"No!" Asha cried. "You're not ready—"
Zuberi placed his hand on the stone.
And light exploded from the seal.
When Asha opened her eyes again, everything was silent.
The tidebound were gone—banished, at least for now.
The Second Gate still stood, but it no longer glowed red. Its edges were dim, sleeping.
Zuberi collapsed to his knees, panting. Steam rose from his palms.
"What… what did I do?" he asked.
"You remembered," Asha whispered. "A piece of who you once were."
He looked up at her, tears glimmering. "I'm scared, Asha."
She knelt beside him.
"So am I. But we're not alone anymore."
They sat together under the ghostly mangroves, the air slowly returning to stillness.
Above them, the clouds parted—just enough for a sliver of moonlight to fall across the coin she still held in her palm.
Only now… the spiral had changed.
It pulsed with three rings instead of two.
A new door had opened.
And someone—somewhere—was waiting behind it.
The breach grows weaker.
The gate-bearers rise.
And the tangerine sky burns ever closer to crimson.