The Bell That Chose the Debtor's Daughter Beneath the Tide

During the public tithe, Regent Maud forced me waist-deep into the flooded cathedral to clear the barnacles from the silent Sunken Bell. If I failed, the Salt Guild would take my eight-year-old sister Lottie into debt slavery.

My palm touched the cold bronze. The Bell had been silent for six years, but the moment my skin made contact, it rang.

The dark water shuddered beneath the submerged pews. A golden eye opened in the depths, vast enough to swallow the altar, and a voice rumbled through my marrow: “Little minnow.” Only my mother had ever called me that, and she drowned when I was ten. My brass locket flared scalding hot against my collarbone, its gold-filled crack pulsing in exact rhythm with a matching fracture in the Bell. I tried to wrench my hand away, but the bronze held my skin like a frozen lock.

Up on the stone ledge, Maud caught Lottie by the wrist and dragged her back. “Seal the Bell! Take the child!”

I lunged, but the chime held me pinned. Maud looked down at me with cold triumph, and the horror finally settled into my blood: the Bell had never chosen me to save Bellwether from the coming Black Tide. It had recognized me as a cage recognizes its key. And whatever slept beneath the sunken stones was waiting for my flesh to replace it.