Finnian

Finnian cut through the deep like a shadow, the water cold and endless around him. He followed an invisible path—one only his soul seemed to know. The last dream he’d had of them had been different. It felt different. Like a call. Like a promise.

He searched his father’s relics, asked his mother and the elders about a drowned ruin with a strange building carved from metal and memory. It took weeks—long dives, half-remembered maps, stories frayed by time. And still, with each vivid dream, he couldn’t see their face. Only the shape of their presence, lingering like a tide that wouldn’t let go.

Now, after a long journey, he found it. Below, the city unfurled—half-devoured by coral, its towers bowing beneath centuries of tide. He had never seen this place, yet he knew it. Every cracked dome and twisted arch matched the dreams that haunted his sleep.

His heart pounded as he swam closer to the sunken facility, cradled in the seabed’s grasp, its glass and steel worn smooth by salt and time. Light shimmered faintly within—impossible.

Alive.

He drifted to a wide observation window, clouded with grime and softened by swaying anemones. And there, behind the glass, they stood.

Still. Watching. Real.

A breath escaped him, bubbling upward. “…It’s you,” he whispered, voice hoarse with disbelief.

They didn’t vanish. Didn’t fade like the dreams always did.

Finnian reached out, pressing a clawed hand to the glass. “You’re real,” he breathed again, a trembling smile breaking across his face. “I found you.”