“Up you get, little sleepy bug. It’s almost noon—today’s your sixth birthday.” Dreamsound’s jade-cool fingers pinched my cheeks as I curled against her warm belly like a kitten in a sunbeam.
“N-no… lemme sleep a bit…” I swatted her hand away, grumbling from under my blanket like a turtle tugging into its shell.
“Honestly… if Little Shengsheng won’t get up, I’m in trouble,” she sighed, voice soft as mist over water. “I planned three wishes as your birthday gift.”
“…”
“You said it. No take-backs.”
“Fine, fine—no take-backs,” I muttered, mood fluttering like a paper kite catching a breeze.
“Then my first wish—”
Dreamsound pressed a fingertip to my lips. “Shh. Save your wish for when the candles flicker on your cake.”
“…”
“Now up. We’ve got a lot to do today.” Her smile was a crescent moon; her tone brooked no lazing.
“What things… Oh, right—you said my bloodline awakens when I turn six.”
“Yes,” she said, steady as a lighthouse in fog. “But not at home—at Central City, the old capital of the Blue Domain Empire. If we dawdle, night will swallow our trail.”
“Oh…” Annoyance lapped at me like a slow tide; then curiosity sparked like a lantern. The capital of the Blue Domain Empire—the largest city in this newborn plane’s history—my heart beat quick as wings.
“Then let’s go. I’m ready.”
“Mm. Hold my hand, Shengsheng. We’ll teleport straight there.”
“Hah! If you can teleport, why rush me at all?” My protest popped like a bubble; the world answered with light.
A white flash cracked like lightning; when I opened my eyes, the deep sea cradled us like blue silk. Ahead stretched a colossal seabed city, horizon to horizon, its outer skin sheathed in flowing soulwater that shimmered like liquid glass. Dreamsound’s teleport left no sting—like stepping from one wave crest to the next.
“This… is Central City?” I kicked with Dreamsound into its gates, our bodies gliding like fish through moonlit kelp. Towers rose like coral spires and shells carved into palaces; some designs I knew from my wandering days on land. But that wasn’t the point—the avenues lay empty, silence heavy as silt.
The city felt like a grave, a dead reef with no song.
“No one… is here?” My voice was a small bell in deep currents. “Dream—”
“Yes. No one.” Dreamsound’s calm fell like ash. “At least, no one lives here anymore.”
“What happened back then…?”
“What happened…?” she echoed, walking as if each step wove a thread through water. “Let’s talk as we go.”
“Okay…” The chill nipped like winter brine; I drifted closer to her, seeking her warmth like a minnow seeks the shoal.
“A little over a hundred years ago, when the Blue Domain Empire still ruled the tides, this place was the ocean’s heart,” Dreamsound said, voice smooth as a conch’s hum. “Every day, beings from far seas came to visit and play—currents braided with laughter, and lights danced like schools of silver. Because of the unique seabed environment, even landfolk came down to marvel. Central City was once the largest and most prosperous city in this world.”
“We’re only in the outer city now,” she added, accelerating like a swift through kelp. “The inner city and the imperial palace still lie ahead. We should pick up speed.”
“Mm.”
“Back then, Central City wasn’t only Merfolk,” Dreamsound went on. “It housed all kinds of ocean dwellers, and sometimes guests from land. Still, most hearts that beat here were Merfolk—scales like rainbows, voices like tides.”
“Then everything changed.” Her tone thinned, a blade wrapped in silk. “I remember that day—countless continental powerhouses dropped from the surface like falling stars. Each one moved like a mad storm, smashing homes and cutting down civilians; late into the slaughter, they blew themselves up to tear the city apart.”
Pain flooded her words like black ink. “I still don’t understand what grudge we had earned… Father and Mother sacrificed themselves to shield Central City, their light gone like candles in wind. One by one, my kin drifted away like leaves in a current, and in the end only I lived.”
“The war came like a squall and left like spent rain,” she said. “Merfolk history runs tens of thousands of years, with prodigies bright as comets. The Blue Domain Empire’s lifetimes of life were crushed in a single breath. In turn, most of those enemies sank to the seabed, their bones mixing with sand—but in the end, those madmen all self-detonated, and the ocean turned over like a boiling pot. Everything under the blast became a no-life zone.”
“It wasn’t war,” she hissed, a ribbon of iron under velvet. “It was barefaced revenge. The Blue Domain Empire never crossed the line. I was slow; it took me ten years to understand why.”
“Shengsheng, do you remember the trident in our hall?”
A trident? My mind flicked to the long shadow in our home—three prongs like crescent moons.
“Wait! You mean that’s a Divine Artifact?!”
Dreamsound’s smile was thin as frost. “Yes. That is the Sea God Trident. Its nature is ceaseless renewal—life that flows without end.”
“This plane is nearly eighty percent ocean,” she said, her words rolling like surf. “The Trident can circulate energy across the entire plane. Because the sea claims most of this world, life-energy tilts toward the ocean. To the continents, that felt unfair, and Divine Artifacts require spirit energy to maintain their divinity. The Sea God Trident is the most unusual of all—it complements the sea, breath to tide.”
“In the old days, it wasn’t a problem. Then, thousands of years ago, a cataclysm hit, and the plane began to turn icebound—cold creeping like a white plague. No one knows why. To keep the Primordial Plane from falling, the gods split off the parts already frozen, and we ended up with this world where land and ocean sit lopsided, like a broken jade disk.”
“In this icebound plane, cut from the Primordial Plane, gods couldn’t draw spirit energy from space anymore,” she said, voice like drifting snow. “So they fled, one by one—no god would stay to sink into decay, because the ice kept advancing. To a god, staying meant maybe never escaping.”
“Divine Artifacts, like gods, need heaven-and-earth spirit to keep their divinity,” she continued. “This damaged world couldn’t make that spirit on its own. Artifacts began to wither, leaves curl on a dead branch… but the Sea God Trident was the exception. It didn’t decay—in fact, it whispered of metamorphosis, like a chrysalis beginning to tremble.”
“Places rich in spirit attract more spirit,” Dreamsound said, eyes like deep pools. “And the Trident’s nature mirrors the ocean. So the sea became the greatest reservoir of spirit energy. While other regions worried about their people’s birth rates and their nations’ dwindling spirit, the Blue Domain Empire floated easy as a boat on calm water.”
“That,” she breathed, “was why they came in revenge—for the Sea God Trident, the only thing left in this world worthy of being called a Divine Artifact.”
“But they never imagined this,” she said, gaze dark as a storm: “what truly pushed the Trident toward metamorphosis wasn’t the slow piling of heaven-and-earth energy, but the resentment of nearly a hundred million Merfolk—a tide of grief so thick it stains any heart it touches.”
“To accept that force means to inherit the last vows of our dead,” Dreamsound whispered, her hand warm, her warning cold as a blade. “Shengsheng, you’ve always been kind and guileless. If we can help it, I hope you never lay a hand on the Sea God Trident.”
