Yet even more shocking than the magnificent ruins were the countless skeletons scattered everywhere, along with merfolk frozen in place like stone statues.
Every one of them wore expressions of terror and helplessness.
Some appeared to be fleeing in panic, their tails still frozen mid-swish.
Some had collapsed in despair, crying as though something unimaginably horrifying was about to descend upon them.
Others clung tightly together like families. Adult merfolk shielded the young within their embrace, their faces filled with hopelessness…
It was as though every one of these merfolk had been frozen in a single instant.
Their terrified expressions, the collapsing buildings around them, and the cracked, caved-in ground all pointed to one undeniable truth—
A catastrophic calamity had been unfolding.
That disaster had destroyed this city, perhaps even this ancient and mysterious civilization itself.
They had perished silently beneath the deep sea.
Only these lingering ruins remained to prove they had once existed.
Wendy stood frozen, staring at everything before her.
This…
This was the very place she had seen in her dreams.
It was exactly the same.
This entire city, these unfamiliar writings, these strange totems…
It was clearly her first time seeing them.
And yet they all felt indescribably familiar, as though in some distant age, she too had once grown up beneath this sea.
Since childhood, she had known she was different.
Ever since she could remember, she had lived in an orphanage. The caretakers told her she had been found on a beach.
Back then, the orphanage had organized a seaside outing during low tide.
Two elderly women from the orphanage kitchen had been gathering shellfish among the reefs when they discovered her beside a rock, her tiny body completely wrapped in seaweed.
She had still been an infant.
Apart from the seaweed tangled around her body, she wore nothing—not even a swaddling blanket to keep her warm.
Yet around her neck hung an exquisitely crafted, ocean-blue bead.
Later, one of the orphanage workers had taken her to a jewelry store, hoping to identify the bead and trace her biological parents.
But the jeweler had shaken his head.
The bead wasn’t made of any precious material he recognized.
He guessed it was probably some kind of plastic imitation.
As a child, Wendy rarely spoke.
Her quiet personality wasn’t particularly likable.
Because she had blue eyes unlike everyone else’s, the other children in the orphanage often ganged up to bully her.
At first, the staff would intervene because the bead around her neck looked valuable. They worried she might be a missing child from a wealthy family.
But after it was identified as a worthless imitation…
They simply stopped caring.
The first time Wendy realized something was abnormal about herself was when she was seven.
A boy at the orphanage had insulted her, hurling words so disgusting that all she wanted was for him to never be able to open his mouth again.
That very evening, while washing up, he drowned in the water inside his own washbasin.
By the time someone found him, he had already gone into shock.
Had they been a few minutes later, he would have died.
The police suspected attempted murder.
They investigated countless times but found no clues whatsoever.
The surveillance footage showed that no suspicious person had entered the washroom around the time of the incident.
Yet several deep scratch marks were left on the walls surrounding the sink.
It was as though…
As though the water inside the basin itself had trapped him.
After that incident, none of the other children in the orphanage dared provoke her again.
She couldn’t be bothered with them either.
Instead, she buried herself in studying.
She wanted to escape this place.
She wanted to climb higher.
She refused to become like those pitiful children, fighting to rule over a tiny world, trapped by their narrow horizons before wasting away their entire lives.
Something deep within her kept telling her—
She was meant to be a leader.
A ruler.
Someone who held everything in her hands.
No matter where she was.
And so…
That was exactly what she became.
She seized every opportunity she could grasp.
In a society where class divisions had already solidified, she repeatedly shattered the barriers that separated social classes.
She entered elite universities she should never have been able to attend.
Built connections among the upper class.
Earned the admiration and mentorship of renowned professors in her field.
Founded her own artificial intelligence company…
Had the apocalypse never come…
She would have continued climbing higher and higher, reaching heights no orphan had ever attained.
Yet she had always felt out of place.
She seemed to exist among everyone else, yet an invisible barrier always separated her from them.
She looked as though she belonged…
But in truth, she stood outside everything.
She did not belong here.
She had always wanted to know what she truly was.
Where had she come from?
Where did she belong?
No one could give her an answer.
Until…
The day the sky never cleared again.
Heavy storm clouds heralded the coming apocalypse.
And impossible changes, beyond the explanation of science, began occurring within her body.
Now…
She had finally returned.
Returned to the place that belonged to her.
Yet even after imagining ten thousand different possibilities…
She had never envisioned this.
Ruined cities.
Fossilized corpses.
A civilization that had perished hundreds of millions of years ago.
Only that enormous crystal remained, emitting its faint blue glow over and over again like an elderly soul refusing to let its final trace disappear.
Ten thousand meters beneath the sea…
There was only deathly silence.
She was the only living being left.
Wendy gently rubbed the bead hanging around her neck.
It seemed to have formed some kind of connection with the gigantic crystal.
The bead slowly floated into the air, pulling her toward it.
The crystal radiating azure light was unimaginably enormous.
Its shadow completely enveloped her.
Directly before her, carved into its surface, was a giant eye-shaped totem the same size as she was.
After a moment’s thought, Wendy reached out and placed her hand upon it.
In an instant—
The power inside her body poured out as though drawn by an overwhelming force.
The giant eye beneath her palm slowly lit up.
Azure light flowed through every carved groove like streams of water, filling the intricate patterns from right to left.
As the eye gradually became completely illuminated, the crystal itself shone brighter and brighter.
Until its dazzling brilliance swallowed Wendy as well, condensing into an enormous sphere of light.
The blinding radiance forced her to reflexively close her eyes.
When she opened them again—
Everything had changed.
The seabed split apart inch by inch.
Scorching magma surged up from beneath the earth.
Countless grotesque abominations crawled out from the endless cracks in the ground.
Amid the earth-shaking catastrophe, innumerable merfolk fled in despair.
Their magnificent city collapsed into ruins in the blink of an eye.
The colossal crystal that had illuminated all life beneath the sea since time immemorial began to flicker and dim.
Only the crimson glow of underground lava remained.
Together with the black abyss from which endless monsters continued to emerge, it slowly devoured the boundless ocean.
This…
Was this the great catastrophe?
Wendy parted her lips slightly as she stared at the apocalyptic scene unfolding around her.
“Go, my child. Carry with you the hope of the Seafolk.”
Amid the chaos, a beautifully dressed female merfolk swam toward the towering crystal altar with an infant cradled in her arms.
Wendy stared blankly.
Her lips began trembling unconsciously.
The female merfolk gently laid the child upon the altar.
As she chanted an ancient incantation, the crystal overhead suddenly released its final burst of light, enveloping the infant.
Separated from her mother’s embrace, the baby began crying anxiously.
She stretched out her tiny arms over and over, desperately trying to grasp her mother—
But she could never reach her.
“I’m sorry, Leria… my child.”
“Your mother won’t be able to stay and watch you grow up.”
Still sobbing, the infant vanished into the light.
The female merfolk slowly turned around.
Wendy saw a face astonishingly similar to her own.
With a trembling, hoarse voice, she spoke as a single tear rolled down her cheek, as though offering one final farewell.
The next moment…
Her body dissolved into countless particles of light.
The radiance spread outward, illuminating the entire ocean.
The light swept across the ocean.
Wherever it passed, the giant crystal shone once more. The magma beneath the earth subsided, the merfolk who had been waiting in despair for death turned into stone statues, and the rampant abominations screamed as they fled back into the depths below.
Wendy opened her eyes.
The sphere of light burst like a firework, forming a massive wave of radiance that spread to every corner of the city.
Wherever the wave reached, cracks spread across every stone merfolk statue. Chunks of stone broke away and fell, and the merfolk sleeping within opened their eyes one after another.
They looked around in confusion, seemingly unable to comprehend what had happened.
But the moment they looked up and saw the black-haired, blue-eyed girl suspended above them, every one of them trembled.
They immediately curled their tails beneath themselves, lowered their heads, and assumed a posture that signified absolute submission.
Wendy flicked her tail and hovered silently before the Magneto Stone, her gaze sweeping over the seafolk below who had all curled their tails in salute.
According to legend, the Magneto Stone, which had brought civilization to the Seafolk, was the eye through which the Progenitor Goddess Alaylith watched over her children of the sea.
As a result, Seafolk civilization possessed a profound reverence for the eye.
The Seafolk capital—the City of Rebirth, Apari—resembled a giant eye when viewed from above.
The Lower City stretched for thousands of miles across the vast, level seabed.
Above the center of the Lower City floated an island.
This floating island was the Upper City of the Seafolk capital, home to the Magneto Stone Altar, the Divine Temple, and the estates of the various clans.
The entire island was shaped like a ring, supporting the brilliant jewel at its highest point—
The Alay Royal Tower.
At present, only around a hundred Seafolk had awakened and gathered below.
They were all citizens of the Upper City who had been sleeping near the Magneto Stone.
Many more Seafolk slumbering in the Lower City were making their way toward the crystal’s blue radiance.
However, some of them were stopped by the barrier separating the Upper and Lower Cities.
Wendy noticed this and swam toward the boundary between the two.
The Seafolk gathered in the Upper City immediately followed after her.
Soon, all the Seafolk had assembled together.
Although they were utterly bewildered by everything before them, they still waited respectfully—and fearfully—for her command.
Wendy surveyed her people.
Calling them a people was perhaps an exaggeration.
At present, all the surviving Seafolk numbered no more than a thousand.
For a city of such staggering size, their population was pitifully small.
Still…
It was, at the very least, the beginning of her kingdom.
A faint smile curved her lips.
“Welcome… to hundreds of millions of years in the future, my people.”
The breathtakingly beautiful young woman, now bearing the memories of her inheritance, spread her arms wide.
Within her sea-blue eyes, azure flames seemed to burn fiercely, their brilliance almost frightening.
“I am your new Sovereign…”
“Alay Leria.”