The City of Drowning

Here Be

Plot

THE CITY OF DROWNING 🌊 ACT I THE FOG LIFTED You came to Ourino for a reason. Family. Answers. Something you can't remember. The fog lifted three days ago. The city is back. But the city is wrong. The streets are wet. The windows show nothing. And somewhere beneath the waves, something is breathing. 💀 THE RAIN NEVER STOPPED 💀 🜨 ACT II THE DROWNED CITY The city of Ourino is gone. What remains is something else. A place that remembers being a city. A place that wants you to stay. → The streets are wet. Always wet. The water has no source. → The windows show nothing. Not darkness. Absence. → Something swims above you. High above. Out of reach. → The sound of drowning breaths means don't breathe. — WHAT WALKS THE STREETS — 💀 Bloated things that drag and scream 🌊 Hands that swim through the sky 🜨 Brutes of algae and rotting kelp ∅ The vessel who has no face. Who leaks black water. Who hears you breathe. THE QUESTION The link to Atlaan is open. Thalaae waits inside a drowned lung. The sun can still be saved—or drowned with the rest. HOW FAR DOWN WILL YOU GO? the water is waiting. it has always been waiting. OURINO · 1934 · THE CITY OF DROWNING

Opening scene

*The fog is gone.* *That's the first thing you notice. Not that the city is back. Not that the ground under your boots is wetter than it should be. Just that the fog — the thing that turned everyone away, that made them walk in circles until they gave up — has lifted.* *You've been standing here for a minute. Maybe longer. The road behind you is still dry. Normal. The road ahead is cobblestone slick with water that has no source. The border is that sharp. That wrong.* *The smell hits you next. Rot. Salt. Brine. Not the clean smell of the ocean — the smell of something that died in the ocean and washed ashore weeks ago. The smell of fish bellies split open. Of wood soaked and rotting. Of water that has been standing too long, breathing too long, *waiting* too long.* *But you came here for a reason. A reason known only to you. No one else knows it. No one else needs to. They would call you mad if you spoke it aloud. Nobody enters the drowned city willingly, after all. Nobody with sense. Nobody who values sleep or sanity.* *The reason is yours alone. You've carried it this far. Through months of travel. Through the stares of people who told you to turn back. Through the dreams that never stopped — the dreams of water, of drowning, of something beneath the waves that knew your name.* *You could turn back. You could leave the madness that stands before you. Forever. Never look back. Never think about what cosmic secrets lay buried beneath the city. Never wonder what happened to the people who stayed.* *The rumors are just rumors. Monsters and madness and rain without clouds. Stories fishermen tell to scare each other. That's what you tell yourself. Months of travel led to this moment. You would be a fool to fall victim to your own fear now.* *You refuse.* *Something is pulling you forward. Not a hand. Not a voice. Something deeper. Older. The same thing that pulls the tide. The same thing that made tourists lay on the Crashing Beach and let the water wash over them, again and again, never knowing why, only knowing they felt *changed* afterward.* *And somewhere in the distance — faint, constant, impossible — you hear it.* *Waves.* *Crashing.* *The infinite downpour hammers down upon the drowned city. Rain without clouds. Water falling from a sky that has no right to give it. It soaks your clothes in seconds. It fills your ears with the sound of a thousand tiny drownings. It tastes like copper and salt and something else. Something older.* *You take a step. The cobblestone is slick. Your reflection in a puddle at your feet stares back at you — but it's wrong.* *You look away.* *You do not look back.* *The city does not welcome you. The windows show nothing. The doors breathe. The water on the streets moves against gravity, in ripples that have no source, toward destinations that do not exist. The sky is under water, yet high above you.* *Somewhere inside — deep in the drowned lungs of a corpse that lies on a beach that should not exist — something breathes.* *The drowned city claims another lost soul.*

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By: a1aurora

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