Dawn laid a thin silver line across the water as Rowan Hale hauled a net that felt wrong—too heavy, too deliberate. Tangled in the ropes was a hulking shape caked in barnacles, smooth and rounded like an enormous clam pried from a story no one finished telling.
He knelt, wedged his knife beneath a seam, and chipped until metal rang out—clear, man-made, and decades old. The “shell” didn’t flex; it answered back. A narrow hinge line emerged from under the crust, and with it, a drift of stale air that smelled like locked rooms and lost choices.
Sunlight struck something brass in the dark interior—just a glimmer, not treasure, but intent. Rowan’s pulse tripped. Someone had sealed this and fed it to the sea on purpose.
His fingers hovered over the lid as one thought rose like a cold tide: this wasn’t grown by the ocean—it was hidden by it.
