Introduction
I have long maintained, against the arrogance of kings and the blindness of priests, that the sea is not part of the natural world granted unto mankind by the Heavenly Order. The forests bear fruit. The earth yields grain. Even the deserts, barren though they appear, obey the laws appointed to creation. But the sea obeys only to His hunger.
You, readers of latter ages, know that before the founding of the great Maern cities and before the first crowns were hammered from river-gold, the oceans of the world were void of water and without malice. They were soil, vast fields with nothing reflecting the stars like polished glass, and the children of Harmony traversed them without fear. Yet in the elder darkness there existed a being whom the oldest Ancestral tablets named Leviathan, the Devourer of the Abyss, whose body so vastly encircled the roots of the world beneath all mortal reckoning.
It is said the Eternals themselves warred against Leviathan when the heavens were young, for wherever His blood touched water, corruption spread like rot within meat. Ponds blackened, fish were born eyeless and fanged, storms gained voices and entire bloodlines vanished beneath his wrath.
Yet the Eternals could not discover a way to destroy this creature on their own.
And so, they chained Leviathan within the deepest trench beneath creation, sealing it under unsurmountable mountains of rock, where sunlight would never again trespass. Even if the chains of Eternals remained strong as ages passed, the desires of imprisoned things seeped upward through the world like poison through cracked marble.
Thus was the sea cursed when Ydor washed upon Therra and flooded the continents now known as oceans.
And from the blood and schemes of Leviathan came water demon races and the defiled Margans. May the Holy Flames of Zoodotis preserve us from them.
May the Holy Flames of Zoodotis preserve us from them.
Many ignorant chroniclers portray the Margans falsely as spirits, long dwelling far beneath the waves. Such lies have doomed the scarce brave sailors. I have seen the true forms of these creatures during the Black Voyage of Nareth, and no man who witnessed them entirely retained his sanity thereafter.
Their bodies resemble monstrous unions of abyssal cephalopods and amorphous tendril jellyfish. Their flesh is dark as charred corpses yet slick like the underbellies of oozing deepwater beasts. From their bodies extend masses of coiling tentacles lined with grasping hooks and translucent suckers that pulse as though breathing. Their skulls are elongated and soft-boned, their jaws splitting vertically into lamprey maws filled with innumerable grinding teeth. Worst of all are their eyes, multiple, vast, black, and without reflection, resembling holes torn through the world into endless depths below.
The eldest among them grow to impossible enormity.
Entire ships have vanished beneath waters stirred by their passing, at least those that dare sail into the deep seas away from shore. In the abyssal kingdoms below the trenches, where no fire can burn and no prayer can reach, the ancient Margan Lords rule drowned palaces gnawed upon stone around the imprisoned body of Leviathan itself. There they conduct rites older than humanity, singing in the Deep demonic Tongue while feeding living captives into chasms from which colossal shapes rise briefly to feed.
The sea around such places becomes cursed for generations. No birds fly overhead, no fish swim near the surface, even the wind avoids those waters. Yet the Margans do not rule only through strength. Like their progenitor, they possess mastery over terror and despair. Their unnatural echoes travel across fog and storm alike, seeping into the minds of mortals not just through ears but through vibrating their flesh too like a broken bell. Men hearing them recall their dread, lost companions, rotten kin, vanished glories, and every horror buried beneath their soul. Many walk willingly into the surf with unnatural smiles upon their faces, seeing death as the only salvation.
What truly awaits them below is unspeakable. In the drowned catacombs beneath Vel Theron, I discovered murals painted not by human hands but by tentacled appendages pressed into blood rot and salt. They depicted thousands of kneeling mortals surrounding Leviathan while the Margans harvested their flesh like farmers reaping wheat. Above the beast was inscribed a phrase in ancient abyssal script which I translated at great cost to my mind:
I dared not speak the translation aloud thereafter. For three nights following my discovery, I heard bells ringing beneath the harbor waters though no ship sailed there. On the fourth night, every dog within the city began howling toward the sea simultaneously before throwing themselves from the cliffs. The shore towns still preserve certain laws from elder times, though few remember why they were first written:
Never answer voices calling across open waters after sunset. Never sail away from shore
Never permit a corpse drowned at sea to remain unburned. And if bells are heard beneath the waves where no church stands, flee inland without delay.
Mock these warnings if you wish. The Margans are patient…and Leviathan lies still chained beneath the world.
The three bells
-by Eolon of Oemon, Seventh Archivist of the Ashen Library
In the latter years of the Kingdom of Kareth, before the western caravan cities were turned to harbors and abandoned to salt and fog, there persisted among the folk a warning so ancient that none remembered its first utterance. Fathers spoke it unto sons beside dying hearth fires, and mothers whispered it over cradles while storms battered the shutters of their homes:
“If the bell beneath the sea is heard thrice, no soul shall remain upon the waters until dawn.”
For there existed beneath the eastern ocean of Bitter Salt a bell not fashioned by mortal smiths, suspended in darkness far below the reach of sunlight and bound in chains older than empires. It rang not by rope nor hand, but by the movement of powers imprisoned beneath the abyss since the First Spire.
Each winter, when Therril rose high, swallowing light above the horizon and the tides recoiled unnaturally from the shores, the sound returned, along the shore towers of the water templars, amongst the passing carriages. From the depths below creation itself.
“Dong!!”
The noise was deep beyond all earthly measure. One did not merely hear it but felt it within the marrow and behind the eyes, as though the sea itself possessed a heartbeat vast enough to shake the world.
The old fishermen of Kareth would extinguish every lantern after the first tolling. No nets were cast. No prayers spoken aloud. Even children were forbidden from listening too long, for it was believed the bell awakened desires within men that did not belong to humankind.
Yet among the living there is no creature more reckless than youth seeking glory. Thus must I speak of Elias, son of the dead captain Marek, who in his seventeenth year committed the folly that forever cursed the waters of Kareth.
The boy was bold beyond wisdom and hungered ceaselessly to escape the shame of poverty and obscurity. His hands were split by ropework, his back bent from labor upon the docks, and he carried within himself that dangerous ambition which has doomed kings and beggars alike. When the black hollow moon ascended over the sea and the first bell thundered beneath the waters, Elias stole the abandoned vessel of his father and rowed alone into the black horizon despite every warning spoken by the elders.
The sea soon became unnaturally still. No gulls cried overhead nor wind touched the sailcloth. Even the waters seemed to recoil from the boat as though fearful of what stirred below. Then Elias beheld the forbidden thing. Far beneath the surface, glowing faintly through the abyss in hues of corpse-blue fire, there stood caverns. An entire city slumbered beneath the ocean floor. Its spires rose like cathedral bones through drifting darkness, covered in pale coral and masses of black sea-growth that moved though no current touched them. Vast stairways descended into trenches without end. Colossal statues bearing the likenesses of tentacled monstrosities stood watch over drowned plazas where no living creature should endure.
And at the center of that dead metropolis hung a bronze bell of impossible enormity wrapped in chains thicker than castle walls. As Elias gazed downward into the abyss, movement stirred between the drowned entrances. Something vast and ancient. The waters bulged upward as though displaced by the passing of a mountain beneath the sea.
Then the second bell sounded : “Dong!!!”
The ocean split. Witnesses upon the distant shore later swore that the sea itself rose into spiraling columns beneath the swallowing moon. Around Elias’s vessel emerged figures clad in rusted armor green with age and sea-rot. Their eyes burned pale beneath broken helms, and though they climbed from the abyssal depths, they did not swim… they walked upon the waters as men walk upon stone.
At their center stood a king crowned in coral and yellowed bone, bearing upon his shoulders a cloak woven from black kelp and the skins of abyssal creatures unknown to surface realms. His flesh possessed the pallor of long drowning, yet his gaze retained terrible purpose.
When he spoke, his voice echoed like waves within crypts.
“The third bell must never sound, the Atolls have spoken”
Elias could not answer, for cold had seized his lungs and terror rooted his limbs.
Then the Drowned King spoke again:
“For centuries beyond counting we have guarded the Dread beneath this city. We bound Leviathan beneath sacred chains forged in the elder age when Eternals, our masters still walked freely among men. Yet greed has weakened the seals. Divers descended seeking gold from drowned temples. Elemendian mages and adventurers ignorant of the old laws shattered wards they did not comprehend. Corrupted cultists broke our spell with their heinous chants. And now the Abyss awakens once more.”
At the naming of Leviathan, the ocean trembled. The chained bell beneath the city began to fracture. Through the darkness below, two colossal eyes opened.
No language fashioned by mortal tongues may adequately describe the horror Elias witnessed thereafter. Those eyes alone were greater than two abandoned fortresses, dark and endless, containing depths within depths as though entire oceans swam behind them. Around the city moved shapes vast as houses, the ancient Margans, monstrous offspring of Leviathan, whose cephalopod forms coiled through ruined streets beneath the sea.
Their tentacles wrapped around shattered crevices. Their hungry mouths opened in silent anticipation. And from the abyssal trenches surrounding the city rose a song unlike any mortal sound, the Deep Hymn spoken by the children of the sea-demons before the first kingdoms of mankind were born.
Elias at last found his voice.
“What is that thing?”
The Drowned King turned his hollow gaze toward the abyss.
“The ender of worlds”
Then the third bell began to move of its own accord.
“Dong!!!!”
There are moments in history when the world itself seems to break beneath the weight of awakening horrors. So it was upon that night that the sea erupted.
From beneath the drowned city ascended Leviathan, First Devourer of the Abyss, whose body dwarfed mountains and whose shadow extinguished life wherever it passed. Black scales armored His flesh like fortress walls, while the wrecks of a hundred ancient ships hung embedded within His hide as though trapped there by ages of drowning tides.
Storms formed around its rising and the birds vanished behind spiraling clouds as waters blackened and died beneath its presence. And behind the beast emerged the great Margan Lords, towering horrors of tentacle and fang, heralds of the abyssal kingdoms below creation.
The Drowned King drew forth an ancient blade crusted with salt and glowing faintly with sacred runes of the elder Creators.
“We may bind him once more,” said he unto Elias, “but another guardian must take my place beneath the sea.”
Then the boy understood the doom before him. For the chains of Leviathan were not forged merely of metal and sorcery, but of sacrifice. One soul must remain eternally below to keep the abomination imprisoned until the ending of ages. The ghostly soldiers of drowned Kareth marched fearlessly toward the abyss. One by one they descended into the black waters without resistance, returning willingly to their ancient vigil.
The king stepped upon the shattered chains surrounding the bell and regarded Elias one final time.
“You sought glory,” said he softly. “Now choose what manner of glory shall endure your name.”
Now choose what manner of glory shall endure your name.
Then Leviathan opened its jaws.
Within its maw burned not flesh nor tongue, but an endless sea of stars turning in impossible darkness. Elias beheld entire worlds drowning there, swallowed by the hunger of the abyss before time itself possessed memory.
Far away upon the distant shore flickered the tiny lights of Kareth. His home and his people seemed now worlds apart. The last warmth of mortal life against the endless sea. And thus Elias, son of Marek, performed the deed for which his name is remembered within the forbidden archives of Kinetika.
He took up the sword of the Drowned King.
“I shall remain.” He shouted
For the first time in countless centuries, the dead king smiled. Together they struck the bell.
Once.
Twice.
And upon the final tolling, the chains awakened like living serpents wrought from divine wrath. They coiled around Leviathan and the shrieking Margan Lords alike, dragging them downward into the abyssal city as the sea itself closed over them in thunderous ruin.
The waters consumed Elias together with the dead king and the chained horror beneath the world.
By dawn the ocean had grown calm once more, yet darkness and despair lingered.
The curse of Kareth did not end. For even now, during the Therril winters when tides retreat from the shore and the fog thickens beyond the harbor, fishermen still hear the bell beneath the sea. But where once there sounded only one voice from the abyss, there are now two.
One ancient and one young.
— From the bestiary of Eolon of Oemon
