Thalric Deepcurrent's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Thalric waited in the shadow of the reef, all four arms pressed tight against the current. Three generations his bloodline had been scattered across Crexlura, and he had spent the last five years hunting for the one thing that could bring them home — the Tidecrown, an artifact that would make their thin blood run deep again. But the coral-covered cove ahead changed everything. The entrance was marked with the old sign — three stones stacked in a spiral, the way his grandmother had taught him before she died. Inside, a woman with his same glowing eyes waited, her two arms clutching a sealed container to her chest. She spoke before he could ask. The exile was never about power, she said. It was about what they had found. The Tidecrown had been theirs all along, hidden by the council to keep the bloodline from remembering what they really were. The container held proof — documents, sealed in wax, showing the vote to hide the truth. Thalric took them with all four hands. The lie was older than he thought, and now he knew who had been telling it.