Topeagler _verified_ | CONFIRMED | SOLUTION |

She sat on her tower of sticks and mud, wrapped her scarred wing around herself, and looked out at the dying wetland. Somewhere below, in the deep, dark places, perhaps another Topeagler still lived. Perhaps not. She had not seen another of her kind in seven years.

It was an engine. Not the old, clanking submersibles of the Port Glimmer scavengers. This was something new—a high-pitched, crystalline hum that made her teeth ache. She surfaced slowly, just her three eyes breaking the water like a cluster of wet amber stones. topeagler

Kaelira opened her good eyes. The third eye dimmed. She was exhausted. Her feathers were torn, her gills raw, her belly full of a single eel that would have to last her a week. She sat on her tower of sticks and

The water embraced her like a cold, dark mother. Her gills flared open. Her feathers slicked flat, becoming a seamless hydrofoil. She became a torpedo wrapped in myth. She had not seen another of her kind in seven years

A ship. No—a machine . It hovered three feet above the water, supported by spinning rotors of mirrored metal. Its hull was white and seamless, like a tooth. No sails, no oars, no smoke. It was beautiful. And it was heading directly toward her spire.

Kaelira felt it. A sonar wave, but wrong. It didn't just listen. It probed . It scraped against her mind like a fingernail on slate. Images flashed unbidden: her mother, her mate, the harpoon, the stuffed chick in the guildhall. The sphere was not hunting her body. It was hunting her memories.