The palace had the kind of grandeur that did not need to announce itself.
From the outside, Atlantis already looked like the relic of an empire too proud to ever truly vanish, but inside the palace that feeling became real. The halls were broad and white, lined with Roman architecture that had been adapted for underwater life without losing their elegance. Everything was built to look ceremonial, stately and expensive.
They swam through it rather than walked, naturally, with the current of the palace's waterways guiding them deeper into its interior. Veneri kept his mask on for a very specific reason. The ship had already proven that his face caused trouble. He was not in the mood to let the entire royal court of Atlantis develop the same issue, and that included the siren commander beside him. She was dignified and clearly accustomed to authority, but she was still a siren, which meant she was not exactly immune to beauty or desire.
She led him through the final corridor without speaking aloud, though the words still reached him through telepathy just as clearly as if she had said them in the open air.
"The Second Oceanic Ruler is waiting for us in the throne room."
The doors ahead of them opened on their own. When Veneri swam through the entrance, the throne room opened before him in a view that made even Atlantis feel larger than it already had.
Seven thrones stood in a grand arc before him. Each one was shaped with an oceanic motif that matched the ruler seated upon it. One throne had the ridges and armored look of a crustacean shell. Another carried the flowing elegance of a merfolk crest. Another was built with coral-like ridges and reef ornamentation. One was unmistakably sea-folk in structure with a half-fish and half-man shape. One carried siren motifs. One was massive, built to support a body of great scale like a whale. The center throne was plainest in one sense, but in another sense the most imposing of all.
That one was humanoid. The one in the middle was the throne of the strongest ruler present.
He sat in Roman-style clothing. A hood covered most of his face but not enough to hide his presence. The others around him gave the impression of being important. He gave the impression of being the absolute pinnacle of power.
The siren commander immediately bowed. Veneri did not. The Siren Queen, seated among the others, turned toward him first. Her expression changed the instant she noticed the lack of respect.
"Why are you not bowing?"
Veneri gave her a look through his mask amd scoffed.
"I'm a ruler as well. I don't bow to weaker beings."
Every ruler except the one in the center unleashed that Divine Presence. It was a coordinated intimidation response that most guests would have felt in their bones before collapsing into submission. Veneri did not move. He just sighed and removed his mask. His face came into view and every woman in the chamber who had not yet seen him as a problem now viewed him as a much larger. The important part was the Divine Presence that came out of him.
Every ruler in the throne room was pinned down by it.
A few of them grabbed their armrests to resist the pressure. Others tried to push back against the force. The siren commander near the door froze with wide eyes. Even the Siren Queen's face changed as the pressure was getting stronger NY the second..Veneri looked around the room with open annoyance.
"I'm not even angry but you people really don't know how to read a room."
He moved between the thrones with his Divine Presence still pressing down on every ruler in the chamber except the strongest one in the middle. The effect became harsher with every step. It felt to them like the water around them was becoming denser and heavier. A few of the rulers groaned under the strain. Their pride was visibly fighting a losing battle against the pressure.
Veneri stopped in front of the Siren Queen and looked at her almost lazily.
"You think you can just order me around after I stopped your battle by myself? Pathetic."
The Siren Queen's jaw tightened. He turned and looked across the room at the others.
"And you're doing all because you think loyalty is something you can demand while acting like this?"
He intensified the Divine Presence.
Several of them actually groaned aloud now. Even the throne room itself seemed to shake. The white columns all felt suddenly smaller under the weight of his authority.
The ruler in the center finally spoke.
"Enough."
Veneri stopped at once and looked at him. The pressure in the room eased just enough for the others to breathe again, though none of them looked pleased about it.
"Now that is real power."
The central ruler slowly stood. He lifted one hand and removed his white hood, revealing a handsome face that would have been enough to dominate any court by itself even without the authority behind it. It was one of the few times Veneri had to stop and genuinely acknowledge someone else's appearance.
He stepped down from the throne.
The distance between them vanished until they stood at nearly the same three-meter height, facing each other like two forces that had finally decided to stop pretending they were not equal in some way. The ruler smiled.
"I thank you for helping in our battle."
Veneri looked at him for a second, then gave a thin, unimpressed smile of his own.
"I came here to see the rulers of the Cornvelia Ocean. Turns out you're all trash."
The reaction this time was more emotional than political. The Siren Queen's eyes flashed. The crustacean ruler stiffened. The merfolk ruler was angry now. Veneri did not care what they thought. He let the insult sit there a moment before he continued.
"None of you have oceanic royal bloodlines except you and the Siren Queen."
The central ruler sighed.
"That is because you are not wrong. I am Leviticus, ruler of the Hydroborn."
"Hydroborn?"
"You know of us?"
"I do, though I didn't expect to meet one here."
"This is not the ideal place for such a conversation."
Veneri glanced at the others still seated around the throne room and gave a short exhale.
"No kidding."
Leviticus turned to face the others. The whole room immediately understood he was about to dismiss them from the private conversation.
"I'll be speaking with him personally."
Nobody argued, not even the Siren Queen.
She looked at Veneri as the others began to leave. As they swam out, she muttered to herself in a tone only barely caught by the lingering telepathic drift of the room,
"A Royal Hydroborn. Who knew?"
This voyage, at least, was finally becoming worth his time.
------
The room Leviticus led him into was almost shocking simply because it had no water in it.
Everything else in Atlantis was underwater but this room was dry. The walls were pale white and shelves of scrolls, maps, carved tablets and ceremonial objects lined the sides of the room. It looked like a royal study hidden inside a palace.
Leviticus stepped in first and the instant he did, the water evaporated out of his body. He exhaled, rolled his shoulders once and laughed.
"I didn't expect to meet my cousin here."
Veneri stopped. For a second, his entire mind simply stalled on the word cousin. Leviticus glanced back at him as if he hadn't just dropped the most absurd line imaginable into the middle of an already bizarre day.
"You're the son of Lysameria and Dilasyus, aren't you?"
Veneri blinked once, then again.
"Yes. How do you know them?"
"Because I'm Yumeran's biological son."
That made Veneri go completely silent. Leviticus watched him for a while, then gave him a patient look and pointed at a pair of chairs in the center of the room.
"Sit. This'll take a while."
Veneri sat because there was no sensible alternative. Leviticus sat opposite from him, rested one forearm on the table between them, and let out a slow breath.
"Yumeran is Lysameria's sister. You know that, right?"
"Yes," Veneri said, still trying to keep up. "I know that part."
"She fell in love with a Hydroborn male. He was one of the ones the Supreme Entities of the Oceans made for her. Her parents to be specific. Veurymeon, the Sculptor of Tides, and Alhalysira, the Heart of the Abyss."
Veneri's eyes narrowed. That part he knew too. Very well, in fact. Well, except for the first created being they made for their daughter. Veurymeon and Alhalysira weren't just names in some old family record. They were ancient oceanic creators and old rulers from the age his family history always treated with a strange mix of reverence and bitterness. He heard the stories since childhood and every version of them carried the same wound under the words.
"I was their grandson. More specifically, the first grandson of the Royal Hydroborn bloodline. I existed during the Beginnia Era."
Veneri knew the old accounts. He knew what had happened when the Supreme Entities grew fearful of the oceans' quiet power. He knew they attacked. They killed Veurymeon and dissolved his body into the currents, leaving his essence to become part of the eternal depths. He knew they had then gone after Alhalysira, stripped her divinity, stripped her memories and remade her into a Primordial Goddess in the Mopherian Pantheon's image. He knew about the twin Nexuses surviving, about Lysameria rejecting the burden of dominion and passing the mantle to Yumeran, who had taken that responsibility seriously enough to reshape the oceans into something no invader could easily cross.
He also knew about the seven sacred islands Yumeran had raised from the ocean floor, creating Inexpelcae, the Uninvadable. He knew about the Hydroborn, the sacred race born inherently Divine, untouched by the ordinary struggle of mortality, ascension, and the Destras Curse.
But he had never heard Leviticus mentioned anywhere.
"Then why aren't you in any of the records?"
Leviticus laughed under his breath but not bitterly.
"Because the Supreme Entities killed me. They saw potential in me. They didn't like that. They killed my father too, just to torment my mother, Yumeran. They didn't stop with that. They feared the strength of the oceans so they took what they could. Veurymeon was dissolved into the currents. Alhalysira was forced into a role she never should've had. Yumeran took the ocean seriously after that. She had to."
He folded his hands and looked towards the side shelves for a second before continuing.
"She raised the islands. She multiplied the Hydroborn. She made sure our race survived. I should be grateful to her and I am, but I also wasn't supposed to be remembered. Once you're killed young enough and the right people decide not to preserve your name, history gets very lazy."
Veneri didn't interrupt.
"That's how I ended up forgotten."
The room stayed quiet for a moment after that. Then Veneri finally asked the thing that had been bothering him the most.
"How do you know me?"
Leviticus looked at him, and this time the amusement returned.
"The Timeless Realm told me."
"The Realm told you?"
Leviticus nodded. "Not in the dramatic way people imagine, but yes. If you have enough power and influence here, you gain access to information in the world. The Timeless Realm remembers things more than people think and more than it should, probably. I used it to catch up on Spheraphase's history and your history."
"You've been spying on me."
"Of course I have."
Veneri didn't say anything, so Leviticus continued, now clearly enjoying himself.
"Tricking a Minor Deity as an Essentia. Outsmarting a Forgotten Rank Krepsuna as a newborn First Enlightenment Divine. Surviving all sorts of things most people would've died from twice over. You've had a very entertaining life."
"You're making it sound like a story."
"It is a story."
Veneri exhaled through his nose, unable to argue with that without sounding worse than he already felt.
"So you really are my cousin."
"A cousin who shares the same blood, yes."
Veneri let that settle in for a moment. Then he asked the next obvious question.
"Why are you here?"
"Because I was forgotten by history. That's what brought me here in the first place. When something is forgotten by the passing of time, it tends to end up in the Timeless Realm sooner or later. I was forgotten. Then I found Atlantis. Or rather, Atlantis found me. It was a myth in your old world, right? Earth, was it."
"Yeah."
"I made it my kingdom. That was millennia ago. Since then, I've been ruling the oceanic beings here. I'm one of the top five strongest immortals in the Immortal Anchor now.and I've got access to go to the Divine Anchor if I want it."
"And you don't want it."
"No. It's fun ruling here. The oceanic races are easier to manage than the divine idiots."
That got the faintest snort out of Veneri. Leviticus noticed and seemed pleased by it.
"Besides, I can't have children with anyone outside my own bloodline."
Veneri's eyes narrowed. Right. That too.
Hydroborn Divines didn't mate with other races. Hybrid Hydroborn didn't exist back then. The rules had always been too strict. Even when his own parents had somehow made hybrid birth possible in other branches of the family, it had never worked for the Hydroborn. However, Veneri and his sister Anamorsia had existed as the exception. They were the impossible result of one in a million chance.
They were the first Divine Hydroborn hybrids in history.
"I don't mind it. I'd rather adopt anyway. I've got thousands of children at this point. Lost count centuries ago. All of them are adopted, obviously. You stop counting when the number starts sounding ridiculous even to you."
"You really are family."
"That's what I've been saying. Just so you know, I have no malicious intentions with you. I know better than anyone to stop anyone a Primordial is interested in. If you're in the Time Trial, that means your Divinities are sealed."
"Yes."
Leviticus nodded once, as if confirming something he'd already suspected.
"Then I can probably help."
"How?"
Leviticus leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk between them.
"I can unseal the Water Divinity for you."
That made Veneri sit still. He looked at Leviticus for a long second, then slowly sat more upright in his chair.
"You can do that?"
"Yes. I'd say that's a useful family gift to my younger cousin."
Veneri let out a very slow breath and looked down for a second, thinking it over. Then he glanced back up at his cousin.
"Yeah. It really is."
"So?"
"So?"
"Do you want it?"
"Sure."