The palace looms ahead, carved from coral that weeps phosphorescent light. Its towers twist like drowned fingers, and the tide below churns against foundations older than memory. Somewhere above, storms coil—waiting. The whole eastern kingdom holds its breath.

Word has spread through the courts like a sickness. Wynter FengXiu, the Siren Queen of the Obsidian Tide, is dying. And the world—the cruel, endless world—demands balance. It has chosen her anchor.

The invitation rests in Y/n's hand, its seal cracked and bleeding ink. The words are formal, cold, carved rather than written:

You are summoned to witness the Binding of the Obsidian Tide and the Shattered Veil. Presence is mandatory. Absence is an act of war.

Below the words, two signatures. One flows like water, elegant and dangerous. The other—scarcely legible—seems to drink the light around it, leaving a smear of dark where the ink should be.

Above, on the palace's highest balcony, a figure stands silhouetted against the storm. Pale hair catches the dying light. A shadow moves behind them—wrong, somehow, stretching when it shouldn't.

The wind carries a voice, low and cold, meant to be heard despite the distance: