There isn’t much room for wanting for a Demon Water Lord these days.
My borders are fraying.
The SoulTakers’ mark stains the edges of the Tidal Lands.
Fishermen drag up nets full of foam and silence. Reefs spit black bloom. The sluices fail at dawn.
Men come home with ash on their tongues.
This isn’t weather.
It carries a signature you can smell in the rot.
The worst truth lives under my tongue.
The truth? My power is waning.
Runes that once answered instantly now half-listen, then go quiet.
Ward-lines I drew as a youth demand more blood, more focus, more of me.
I feel it when a current ignores my order, when docks tremble as I try to lift a wave and get only a sigh.
At first, it was a missed chime. A delayed reply.
Now it grows like ice on a spring river.
A Water Lord who can’t call tide can’t keep his people fed.
A Water Lord who can’t make the current answer can’t hold the salt back from low fields.
I’ve done the rote remedies—invoked old names, rattled relics we keep in the deep, walked to the hole where the Prime fell and bargained with the echo.
Nothing mends the leak.
So I lean on pact and prophecy. I sharpen the plan until it cuts.
Find a viyella.
Make her the living tide-line the writs promise.
Attempt what hasn’t been attempted in a generation if I must.
It’s brutal math. Cold strategy.
And under it, something older rises.
Not crowns. Not councils.
It’s the animal ache for companionship that isn’t policy.
Hunger picking at the edges of discipline.
If a viyella can be a conduit for a nation’s healing, could she also undo the part of me that tastes like salt and loneliness?
I know the risks.
I’ve counted the costs until the numbers blur. But calculation alone won’t raise reefs.
