Time in the temple no longer moved like it used to.It no longer dragged, heavy and endless. Since the morning the sea delivered Theron to her shore, the silence had begun to hum with life.
Days passed softly, the air lighter, the tides calmer.Where once the sea had struck the cliffs with fury, it now lapped against them like a heartbeat.
Theron's presence felt impossible — a living contradiction to every law the priests had ever taught her. Yet he was no phantom. His laughter was real, his warmth unmistakable, his voice carrying the rhythm of waves when he spoke.
They began to speak often — not as priestess and trespasser, but as two souls stranded between worlds.
He was unlike any man she had ever met.Witty, calm, curious — the kind of calm that made storms hesitate.
He told her stories of the sea, not like a sailor boasting of his travels, but like someone who missed it — who spoke of it as one might speak of a home long lost.
"There are cities beneath the waves," he said once, as they sat on the temple steps at dusk, the horizon gilded with gold. "Ruins older than kingdoms, with light trapped in the walls like stars that never go out."
Callista tilted her head. "And you've seen them?"
His lips curved slightly. "I've seen… enough to know they're real."
"You talk like the sea raised you," she teased.
He smiled faintly. "In a way, it did."
She didn't know when she had started to laugh again.It happened naturally, like breathing. Her laughter startled her — echoing through the marble halls that had once known only prayer and grief.
Theron looked at her then, a little wonder-struck. "It suits you," he said quietly.
"What does?"
"Laughter." He smiled. "I'd thought this place had forgotten the sound."
That night, she dreamed of calm waters.And when dawn came, the sea outside the temple was still — no storm, no roar, no fury.
The fishermen far across the kingdom would later tell of that day.The first calm season in decades."The curse is softening," they said."The gods have turned their faces back to us."
But Callista didn't dare believe it.The sea was calm — yes — but too calm. Like something vast was holding its breath.
Theron disappeared for the first time three days later.
She woke to find his place by the brazier empty, his cloak gone. The morning fog rolled in thick and soundless, swallowing the horizon.
Callista searched the shore until her throat burned from calling his name. But there was no trace of him — no footprints, no voice.
When he finally returned two days later, it was as though nothing had happened.
"You were gone," she said, breathless, furious and relieved all at once.
"I needed to find food," he said easily, though she noticed the salt still clinging to his hair, the dampness on his clothes. "The cliffs yield nothing, and I can't live on temple prayers."
"You could have told me."
He met her gaze, a hint of apology in his eyes. "I didn't think you'd notice."
"I did."
Something flickered between them then — a quiet, unspoken tension that lingered even as he smiled to ease it.
After that, he vanished often.Sometimes for a night. Sometimes longer.
He always returned with a small catch of fish, or driftwood for the fires, or stories of the outer reefs and the birds that nested there.
"I thought no man could cross those cliffs," she said once, watching him mend a fishing net by the temple steps.
"I find ways," he said simply, his eyes glinting with a secret amusement.
And though his words were ordinary, something about the way he said them made her uneasy — not in fear, but in fascination.
Still, she began to wait for him.Every morning, she would step to the temple edge, her gaze fixed on the gray horizon. And each time his figure appeared in the distance — walking along the surf with the sun at his back — something in her chest loosened.
They would sit side by side for hours.He would draw strange maps in the sand — spirals, symbols she didn't recognize — and she would listen as he spoke of the ocean like one speaks of an old friend.
"You make it sound alive," she said once.
He looked at her, the fading light caught in his eyes. "That's because it is."
She smiled. "You and your strange sayings. No mortal man speaks like that."
His hand brushed hers — a simple, accidental touch — and for a heartbeat, the air stilled.
A gust of wind rose, then stopped as suddenly as it came. The waves lapped once, twice, and fell silent.
Callista froze. "What… was that?"
Theron only smiled, quietly, as if he'd expected it. "Maybe the sea just likes when we agree."
She tried to laugh, but her heart was pounding too hard.
That night, the waves glowed faintly beneath the moon — soft blue veins of light threading through the black water. The sea hadn't been so calm in living memory.
Callista lay awake, listening to the distant hush, wondering who this man really was — the stranger who spoke to the ocean like it might answer back, who disappeared into mist but always returned, and whose touch made even the sea go still.
She told herself he was mortal.He had to be.
And yet, as the waves whispered against the cliffs, a single thought echoed through her mind — one she dared not speak aloud:
What if the sea hadn't brought him by accident?