The Tidecaller's Oath
Elara Voss has spent her life listening to the sea. As the last of the tidecallers, she reads every current with a single touch and answers the slow pulse of the tides with an oath older than her bloodline. But on the eve of the last ebb, the waters beneath her palm go silent. The salt crusts gray on the docks. The channel turns black. And a wrongness she cannot name begins creeping inland with the stillness. Three moons pass without an answer. The elders offer silence. The fishing boats return empty. The oath that once filled her with purpose now coils tight around her chest like a held breath. To restore what has been broken, Elara must descend beneath the waterline, into the trench where the first covenant was sworn and the first tidecaller was lost to the deep. The sea has not forgotten its bond. It has chosen what it will not surrender. And unless Elara can hear what it is trying to say before the final tide recedes, every fishing village, every trading port, every shore the tide has ever touched will be left to the silence. She swore an oath to the sea. Now the sea is calling her home.