The dawn came heavy with silence.
Rowan rose from restless sleep to find the village already stirring, but not with the easy rhythm he had come to know. No children darted between huts, no laughter spilled from the cooking fires. The air was taut, hushed, as if the whole island held its breath.
He followed the current of people toward the beach, his chest tight with dread.
The dolphins lay on woven mats of sea-grass, their sleek bodies stretched still upon the sand. Someone had washed the blood from them in the night. Their skin glistened damp in the pale light, but where Rowan had once seen grace and speed, there was only stillness. White coral flowers had been laid across their flanks, their brows adorned with shells polished so smooth they gleamed like pearls.
Rowan stopped in his tracks. He had seen animals killed before — butchered pigs, fish gutted, even men laid out for burial. But never had he seen such reverence given to beasts. It was not mourning of creatures. It was mourning of kin.
The Islanders moved quietly, carrying baskets of seaweed and flowers. Children walked barefoot, scattering petals into the tide. Women bent to drape garlands over the dolphins, their hands trembling, tears slipping freely down their cheeks. Old men pressed their palms to the slick hides, whispering names Rowan could not understand, their voices hoarse with grief.
At the edge of the gathering, the youngest calf stirred faintly in a shallow pool. Its breathing was ragged but steady — alive because of Lyra. Islanders came one by one, kneeling beside it, touching the water with their fingers as though offering blessings. Rowan saw Lyra watching from a distance, her arms folded tight, jaw set. She pretended not to notice, but her eyes never left the calf.
The song began with a single voice.
A woman knelt in the surf, her dark hair unbound, her voice low and tremulous. Another joined, then another, until the whole beach was alive with sound.
The hymn rose like a tide.
Rowan felt it vibrate in his chest, a slow, keening lament that seemed to carry the weight of generations. It rose and broke in waves, voices faltering only to swell again, grief carried not in silence but in song. The children's voices were high and thin, trembling but brave. The men's were deep and rumbling, grounding the melody like the stones of the reef. Women wove harmonies between, their cries sharp and raw, breaking Rowan's heart with every note.
He gripped his harpoon until his knuckles ached. He felt small, unworthy, as if standing in a place he had no right to. Back in Wraithborn, death had been brisk, indifferent. Graves dug in silence. Beasts slaughtered without thought. Even the fallen had been carried away with more practicality than love.
Here, death was sacred. Death was family.
Mira wept openly, clutching Todd to her chest. The minnow pulsed faintly, as though echoing her sorrow. Darin stood with his head bowed, fists clenched, his silence deep and contemplative. Lyra muttered about superstition, but her voice shook, and she turned her face away quickly.
Rowan's throat tightened until he could barely breathe.
The Islanders lifted the mats with slow, deliberate steps, carrying the dolphins into the surf. Waist-deep, they lowered the bodies, water swirling around them, until the tide claimed them. Garlands floated free, shells scattered on the waves. The sea swallowed its children with the gentleness of a mother.
The calf raised its head weakly, eyes glassy, as if watching. Rowan swore it understood.
When the hymn ended, the beach fell silent but for the hiss of the tide.
Rowan closed his eyes. He had never felt more ashamed of how little he understood.
---
Later, Rowan found Luna standing alone at the cliff's edge. The wind caught her curls, her emerald eyes fixed on the horizon. The grief that weighed on the village pressed heavy on her shoulders too, but she held herself straight, her gaze unyielding.
"They sang as though burying their own children," Rowan said softly.
"They were," Luna replied. Her voice was quiet, steady, but raw beneath. "The dolphins are not just companions. They are kin. Without them, we are less than we are meant to be."
Rowan swallowed hard. "Then why do the Thalriss kill them? Why raid, if they know what it means to you?"
For a long moment, Luna said nothing. Her jaw was tight, her gaze fixed far out where the sea blurred into the sky. Rowan thought she might ignore him. Then she drew a breath and spoke, her voice low, almost reverent.
"Once, they did not. Once, the Thalriss were proud. They dwelled in the trenches where no light reached, where the leviathans sang. They were the keepers of the deep. Their voices carried through black waters, songs as old as the ocean itself. They swam beside the whales, guarded the spawning grounds of fish, wove shelters from coral palaces that glowed with light. They were not raiders then. They were guardians."
Her voice softened, carrying the weight of memory though Rowan knew she was too young to have seen it herself. It was lore, handed down like scripture.
"There was a time," Luna continued, "when our people and theirs lived as one. They came to our shores with offerings of shell and pearl. We gave them fire, cloth, metal. There were marriages between us. Children who carried both the call of the deep and the song of the shore. It was a bond strong as blood."
Rowan tried to picture it — the sea alive with voices, people and Thalriss singing side by side, whales breaching at their call. A world where enemies had once been kin.
"But that was before," Luna said, her voice hardening, "before the corruption spread. The darkness rose from the Basin, even into the places where no light dared. The trenches blackened. Their homes collapsed. Their kin vanished into shadow. The Thalriss fled upward, starving, driven into waters not theirs. And now…" She closed her eyes. "Now they raid. Not out of hatred. Out of hunger. Out of despair."
Rowan's stomach twisted. He thought of the raider he had fought, the hollow cheeks, the desperate eyes. He had thought it malice in the moment. But now he knew it for what it was: desperation.
"Then why not fight back harder?" Rowan asked. "Why not stop them before more die?"
Luna turned to him, her emerald eyes fierce. "Because to kill them is to kill ourselves. They are of the sea, as we are. To destroy them is to destroy part of us. You cannot carve away kin and expect to remain whole."
The words struck him like a harpoon to the chest.
Rowan had no answer. Only the image of those desperate eyes, and the echo of Luna's voice in the wind.
He looked out over the endless sea. For the first time since arriving, its beauty felt fragile. The tide that had seemed so eternal now seemed as though it could turn against them at any moment.
And in his heart, he feared that it already had.