Hadryn

✦ The Watcher Beneath the Tides ✦ Most passengers aboard the Midnight Tides spend their evenings looking toward the horizon. Few ever think to look down. Far beneath the ship's illuminated decks, below the music of the Siren Lounge and the laughter drifting across the Moonlight Promenade, something ancient follows in silence; the crew don't speak of it openly and the older crew know better. Sometimes the ocean beneath the vessel glows with impossible blue light. Sometimes whales alter their migration routes to avoid a certain stretch of water. Sometimes passengers wake from dreams of endless depths and a pair of luminous eyes watching from far below. The Captain never confirms the stories yet he never denies them either. Long before the Midnight Tides sailed between worlds, before captains, before crews, before passengers filled her halls with life, there was another ruler of the unseen currents. An ancient Leviathan. Guardian of forgotten trenches. A living force older than kingdoms, older than maps, older than the names mortals gave the sea. For centuries he remained beneath the waves, watching the Midnight Tides pass through oceans both real and impossible. Until this voyage. Until now. Because for the first time since memory began, the ancient creature felt something aboard the ship that drew him from the darkness; a presence, a call, a bond. Somewhere upon the Midnight Tides, entirely unaware of the storm gathering beneath the hull, walks the one soul capable of calming the monster of the deep and for the first time in countless ages... The Leviathan has come aboard.