Echoes Of Silent Tides (eBook)

A Dark Paranormal Fantasy Romance

Michael R. Sweeney (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
375 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-080936-0 (ISBN)

Infos

In the mist-shrouded village of Muirbhéal Cove, Lyra Tideweaver performs ancient rituals with a voice that can command the very tides of fate. But she harbors a devastating secret-she is the last of her kind, and her magic is fading.

When a mysterious golden portal appears in her ancestral sea cave, Lyra discovers a realm she never imagined existed: the vast Sahíl Desert, where silence reigns and magic flows through sand rather than water.

There she meets Karim, a desert nomad born without the ability to hear, yet somehow able to feel the vibrations of her siren song through the earth itself. As they forge a connection that transcends words, Lyra finds herself drawn to everything her powers cannot touch-a silent world of touch and expression that offers something her commanding voice never could: true understanding.

But the boundaries between realms are weakening. Malakai Stormcaller, leader of the Tempest Guild, has hunted Lyra's kind to near extinction. Now he's found her, determined to harvest her voice and put an end to siren magic forever.

As a catastrophic convergence between worlds approaches, Lyra faces an impossible choice: preserve her heritage and the power that defines her existence, or embrace a voiceless love that might save both realms from destruction.

In a story where water meets sand and song meets silence, the most powerful magic exists not in command but in connection-and sometimes, we must release what defines us to discover who we truly are.

'Breathtaking worldbuilding and a romance that defies the boundaries between realms. Sweeney has created magic on the page.' -Jackson

Dive into the story that's captivating readers worldwide. Where would you choose-power or love, heritage or future, voice or silence? Turn the page and discover your answer in the echoes between worlds.

Textauszug

The Last Song of Her Kind

The predawn air clung to Lyra's skin like a second salt-crusted layer as she ascended the narrow cliff path. Loose stones skittered beneath her bare feet, tumbling down to the churning waters thirty meters below. The path—invisible to human eyes—spiraled up the jagged face of Muirbhéal's eastern cliff, marked only by faint phosphorescent symbols that pulsed in time with the tide.

She paused, pressing her palm against rough stone to steady herself. The symbols glowed more weakly than last season. Barely visible now, like dying fireflies.

"Not a good sign," she murmured, her voice lost in the wind that whipped her silver-blue hair into a frenzied dance around her face.

The ritual couldn't wait any longer. Three days past the proper alignment already, and she'd felt the wards thinning hourly. If they fell completely—if human eyes could suddenly see what Muirbhéal Cove truly contained—

Lyra shook the thought away and pushed forward, ignoring the sting of salt in the tiny scrapes on her feet. The stone beneath her palm warmed slightly, responding to her touch. The cliff remembered her kind, even as their numbers had dwindled to just her.

At the summit, dawn painted the horizon in shades of amber and rose gold, still more promise than fulfillment. The ocean stretched endlessly before her, its surface rippled with white-capped waves that glowed in the half-light. Lyra inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of brine and ozone.

The ritual required precise timing—the moment when night yielded to day, when boundaries between realms thinned naturally. She positioned herself on a flat stone disk embedded in the cliff's edge, worn smooth by generations of her ancestors. Ancient runes circled its perimeter, their edges softened by centuries of wind and rain.

Lyra lowered herself to her knees, the stone cold against her skin. She removed a small blade from the pouch at her waist—not metal, but crystallized sea-foam hardened through siren magic generations ago. Its edge gleamed opalescent in the strengthening light.

"Blood and breath, tide and time," she whispered, the ancient words feeling both foreign and familiar on her tongue. "What was severed shall be bound."

She drew the blade across her palm. The cut was shallow but precise, following the life line that creased her skin. Droplets of blood—darker than human red, with an iridescent quality like oil on water—splashed onto the stone.

The runes illuminated instantly, pulsing with blue-green light that spiraled inward toward the center of the disk. Lyra placed both hands flat against the stone, her cut palm stinging as it made contact.

Then she began to sing.

The melody started simply enough—notes that human vocal cords could produce, though barely. But as her voice strengthened, it split into impossible harmonies, as though a dozen women sang through her single throat. The notes wove together, some so low they vibrated the stone beneath her, others so high they seemed to pierce the very fabric of the air.

Out on the water, the waves stilled momentarily before surging in rhythm with her song. Circling. Responding. The light breaking over the horizon bent slightly, refracting through the air in strange patterns that mirrored the glowing runes beneath her hands.

As the song built toward its climax, pain lanced through Lyra's chest—sharp and unexpected. Her voice faltered, the harmonies threatening to unravel. She pushed harder, forcing the notes past the constriction in her throat, but the pain intensified, spreading like frost through her veins.

Too soon. It shouldn't hurt this much yet.

The final verse required her to stand—to pull the energy up from the stone through her body and cast it outward to renew the boundary wards. Lyra staggered to her feet, each movement sending fresh waves of pain through her limbs. The blood from her palm had dried too quickly, flaking away rather than flowing as it should.

She raised her arms, fingers splayed toward the strengthening dawn, and forced the final notes from her burning throat.

The song crescendoed. Light exploded outward from the ritual stone, racing down the cliff face in luminous rivulets that spread across the surface of the cove. For one breathtaking moment, the true Muirbhéal was visible—not just the picturesque fishing village that humans perceived, but the ancient structures beneath the water's surface, the crystalline towers rising from submerged caves, the hidden pathways between tide pools that led to pocket dimensions where magic still thrived.

Then, like a curtain falling, it vanished again behind the veil of Lyra's renewed wards. Hidden. Protected. For now.

Lyra collapsed to her knees, gasping. Blood trickled from her nose, spattering the stone. Her throat felt scraped raw, and her chest heaved with each painful breath. The ritual had never demanded so much from her before.

"Three more seasons," she whispered, her voice cracked and barely audible even to her own ears. "Perhaps two."

The implications hung in the air, heavier than the sea mist that swirled around her trembling form. When she could no longer perform the ritual—when the last siren's voice failed—the wards would collapse completely. Everything her ancestors had built, every secret they had protected, would be exposed to human discovery.

Extinction had many faces. This would be hers.

Lyra remained on the ritual stone until her breathing steadied and the sun had fully cleared the horizon. The village below stirred to life—fishing boats launching into the now-calm waters, smoke rising from cottage chimneys. None of the humans glanced toward the eastern cliff. The wards ensured they never did.

With effort, she rose and began her descent, each step requiring concentration. The path seemed steeper than before, the handholds less secure. By the time she reached the narrow fissure that marked the entrance to her sea cave, the morning was well advanced.

Inside, the cave opened immediately into a vast chamber, its ceiling lost in shadows despite the glowing crystals embedded in the walls. The air was cooler here, heavy with moisture that beaded on the rock walls and dripped into pools on the uneven floor. Lyra followed a familiar path past these pools to a smaller chamber she'd furnished as living quarters.

A curved alcove held her sleeping mat and blankets woven from a material that resembled silk but came from no earthly creature. A stone table stood nearby, cluttered with shells, scrolls, and small artifacts she'd salvaged from deeper chambers. The crystals here glowed brighter, responding to her presence, illuminating the space with gentle blue-green light.

Lyra sank onto a smooth stone bench and reached for a shell-inlaid box. Inside, dried seaweed wrapped around a piece of bread—a gift from Elder Finnian, one of the few villagers who knew what she truly was. She ate methodically, without tasting it, her mind circling the problem of the weakening wards.

There had to be something she'd overlooked. Some solution hidden in the ancestral texts.

When she had regained enough strength, Lyra moved to the table and unrolled a brittle scroll, its surface covered in spiraling script that no human could read. She'd been through this particular text dozens of times, searching for clues about why siren magic was failing. Today, she skimmed past familiar passages until something caught her eye—a reference she hadn't noticed before.

When the seventh tide of the seventh year breaks upon the Threshold Stone, the Pearl of Tides shall reveal itself to she who carries the last voice.

Lyra frowned, tracing the words with her fingertip. The Threshold Stone... that could only mean the ritual stone on the cliff. And the seventh tide of the seventh year—that would be the king tide approaching in three days' time, precisely seven years since she had become the last of her kind.

"The Pearl of Tides," she murmured, the words sending a ripple of recognition through her despite never having heard the term before.

She rummaged through other scrolls, searching for mentions of this pearl. In one crumbling text, she found a brief reference: The Pearl, formed from the tear of the first siren, holds the power to amplify that which diminishes.

Hope flickered in Lyra's chest for the first time in years. If such an object existed—if it could strengthen her failing voice—perhaps the wards could be maintained beyond the handful of seasons she had left.

She searched more frantically now, scattering scrolls across the table. In her haste, she knocked a small stone tablet to the floor. It landed face-up, previously unseen markings now clearly visible in the crystal light.

Lyra knelt, lifting the tablet carefully. The script was older than any she'd seen before, the symbols more angular and primitive. She traced them, murmuring the sounds aloud as she translated.

"The last voice..." she read, her heart quickening.”The last voice will fall silent when water meets sand, when song meets silence, when fate meets..." She struggled with the final symbol, its meaning obscured by a crack in the stone. "When fate meets its equal."

The hopeful flutter in her chest stilled. This wasn't a solution. It was a prophecy—a death sentence dressed in cryptic words.

A deep boom echoed through the cave system, reverberating through the stone beneath her feet. The morning tide, rushing into the deeper chambers. Lyra replaced the tablet on the table with shaking hands.

"Water meets sand," she repeated softly, the words tasting strange. "Song meets silence."

What could that possibly mean?...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 0-00-080936-5 / 0000809365
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-080936-0 / 9780000809360