The eidolon watched him with the bored curiosity of someone who had been offered puzzles as entertainment for an age.

Her eyes, bright as flaring coals, dropped to the faint artifact he kept hidden beneath his tunic; the thing that ticked against his sternum and had been the first tether between them.

"A trinket," she pronounced, as if tasting the word for the first time.

Her voice folded around it like a connoisseur tasting spoiled wine.

"Such pretty things mortals pin to their chests. How did you manage to chain yourself to such to it so willingly?"

Caedrion's fist tightened beneath his shirt. It was no choice of his.

The artifact had been used to kidnap him and transport him beneath the shivering sea.

It was a ticking time bomb. One that would end in his return to Submareth with or without his consent.

Thalassaria let Caedrion return home for six months, but only if she were allowed to bind him to her.

The admission came slow and blunt. "It isn't just a trinket. She bound me to it. Six months. I promised to bring means to open the ruins beneath the sea. I promised to what her people have forgotten."

Her face did not move at first, no triumph, no triumph-of-tyranny smile.

Instead she let the silence sit, tasting the confession. Then a quick, delighted tilt: "Oh." S

he laughed, small and bright, like metal struck.

"How very tidy. A bargain. People are tidy when they are desperate or proud. Tell me then, was it your choice or hers?"

"It was my choice," he said. The lie would have been easy, and he would not give her that.

"I promised, I swore. I meant it."

She hummed, filaments twitching with interest.

"Interesting," she repeated.

"You swear oaths like a man who thinks words can hold the sea.

You offered me what you could. Your little batteries stirred me. And for that, you have a debt."

Her tone sharpened, as if spies had just whispered new gossip at her ear.

"But understand this: your paltry energy is not enough to break the seal on those ancient doors. They bind differently. You seem to have learned a lot here during your brief time in this world. But not nearly enough to crack what my people left behind."

Caedrion's chest dropped.

All those nights at the forge, the failures, the final glow, felt suddenly thin. "So all my work…" he began, the loss already forming in his voice.

"…was not wasted," she cut in, with a speed that reminded him she was not so small as she looked.

"Waking me was not nothing. It is everything. Without you I would still be a whisper in the gears. But without more, the ruins will only blink and close like tired eyes."

She stepped closer, the light pooling around her like a courtly cloak. "You did half of a necessary thing. That matters."

Relief and dissatisfaction spat at one another inside him.

"Then tell me what to do," he said. "Tell me what the ruins need. Tell me how to open them."

She blinked, as if surprised by the simplicity of his demand.

"You would have thought a man who promised the sea would ask for treasure first," she murmured. "You ask for knowledge. Charming."

She moved to the cradle and let one filament trail along the surface of the sigils, watching the way they woke under her touch.

"Listen then, apprentice of bargains. The ruins answer only to pattern and voice. Their locks are not metal alone; they are woven with resonance. The lattice here, the one that tied me down, was keyed to a frequency that matched the old makers. Your batteries sang in the wrong key. They could imitate, but not open. To open, one needs alignment in three parts: the lattice's cadence, a live operator to speak the gate's grammar, and a channel that will let the lattice reconfigure without tearing."

He tried to shove the facts together in his head.

"A channel… you mean a bigger energy source?" he guessed.

"Larger, yes. But not only larger."

She was already impatient to instruct.

"You cannot bludgeon these thresholds. They are built like living riddles. One must coax, not batter. If you pound a seam, it will snap closed and forget you. If you sing to it in the wrong tone, it will laugh and seal. You need an attuned core, not merely fuller, but woven to the lattice's grammar. Then you need a voice to tell the gate what to be. And you need me."

"Need you?" he echoed, hope and dread tangling.

She looked almost pleased. "Of course. I am the last who remembers the shapes. My breaths hold half the syntax of those doors. I have been asleep and starved, but my tongue still knows the old path. Teach you? No… I will guide you. I will teach you the grammar. I will show you where the seams catch. I will not, however, do the heavy-handed bits for you."

She gave him a look sharp as a blade.

"You asked the sea for something. You tied your life to a promise. You will do the work."

He should have been angry at the command. Instead he felt a bitter, grateful knot loosen.

"And the batteries? Are they useless?"

She set her hands on the rim of the cradle, watching the faint afterglow.

"Use them as keys for small things. Use them to learn. They taught me to breath a little. They will let you test seams that are not proud. They will not open the big gates. For those, we will need to weave keys from lattice cores, cores I can show you how to spin. You will learn to braid energy into the right shape."

He pictured months of more labor, of rebuilding the thing he had thought complete.

His first reaction, exhaustion, flared hot and sour.

But then a steadier thought: the architect had offered truth and a hand.

She would teach him. He would not be alone fumbling at the world's locks.

"Show me," he said, and the word came as resolve rather than plea.

"Teach me how to braid cores, how to sing the gates."

Her twin-tails quivered like a smile.

"We will begin with a practice panel," she said.

"There are half-dozen minor seals in the chamber. They are redundant, often ignored by the careless. They will let your fingers learn without tearing the lattice. Bring your trinket and your forge and your patience. Fail, and a panel will shut for a week. Succeed, and we will have a language to speak to larger doors."

He felt the artifact at his chest like an answering heartbeat.

The bargain tilted toward action.

"And one more thing," she added, softer now.

"You must understand the truth you asked me to teach: opening a gate changes more than a door. It changes currents. It teaches the deep to listen to new voices. If you open a ruin for Thalassaria, you cannot pretend the world will not answer in kind. Be ready for that, Caedrion Ferrondel. Promises make tides."

He nodded. The weight of it settled like armor.

He had pledged himself to the sea; now he pledged to the lattice he had woken.

To both would come cost and consequence.

She stepped back and produced, with a small flourish, a shard of corroded braid, a remnant of lattice spun in a pattern he had never seen.

"Take that," she said. "Use it to tune your next battery. Come at dawn. We will open a panel."

He left the cradle with the shard burned into his palm, a small, terrible loom of possibility.

The Architect, small, petty, brilliant, starved, walked her circle and hummed to the lattice like a singer coaxing a long-dormant instrument.

Outside, Dawnhaven's ovens cooled. Above it, the ward stitched its white light across the sky, ignorant of the bargain rewoven beneath.

He would keep his promise, to Thalassaria and to his own oath.

But now he had another teacher, another master to answer to: a sovereign in a child's body who had been kept sleeping and used as a lamp.

Between the sea and the lattice he would find a path or be broken on both.

At dawn he would return to the forge. At dawn the first panel would open.

Caedrion did not know if the last living Eidolon buried beneath Dawnhaven's keep was a benevolent entity, or a malevolent spirit.

All he knew was at this moment he needed her help.

And sometimes necessity in the moment begets the folly of long term consequences.

Either way, Caedrion did not have much time left before once more he was summoned to the Abyss.

And when that time came he planned to be ready to fulfill his promise.

And in doing so, hoped that Thalassaria would grant him his freedom.

Freedom to move between Dawnhaven and Submareth.

Between Land and Sea.

Between Heaven and the Earth below.

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