The storm had not relented for three days.
Black waves crashed against jagged cliffs like roaring beasts, tearing at the edges of a tiny, forgotten port village nestled along the eastern fringe of the Douluo Continent. The sky above raged with thunder, and the ocean howled with fury, as though the heavens themselves mourned something they could not name.
Inside a creaking shack, barely held together by wood and hope, a woman lay on a bed of tattered cloth and straw, her body drenched in sweat and her lips pale as ash. Her hands gripped the sides of her swollen belly as another scream tore from her throat.
"Push, Lan'er! Just one more!" cried an old midwife, her hands trembling.
Outside, a man stood in silence beneath the eaves, soaked to the bone. He clenched his fists so tightly the nails drew blood from his palms. He dared not enter. He couldn't bear it.
Another scream. Another thunderclap. Then—silence.
Followed by a cry.
A cry not of pain, but of life.
A boy's cry.
The man's knees buckled. He stumbled into the room, his breath caught in his throat.
The midwife turned, holding the child in trembling hands. "He's... alive," she whispered, astonished. "Even after all this... he's breathing."
The woman on the bed—Lan'er—smiled faintly, her eyes barely open. Her voice was a mere whisper.
"Let me... see him."
The midwife gently placed the child into her arms. The boy was small, frail, but his eyes—oh, those eyes—they shimmered with a strange, deep azure, as though the entire ocean had been captured within them.
Lan'er brushed a hand along his cheek, tears blending with rain that leaked through the broken ceiling.
"He's beautiful," she murmured. "Like the tide…"
Her husband knelt beside her, wrapping both of them in his arms. "You did it, Lan'er. You held on. He made it."
Lan'er shook her head slowly. "We have nothing, Liang... no food, no medicine. No future here."
He stiffened. "Don't say that."
Her lips trembled. "We can't raise him. Not here. Not like this." Her gaze shifted toward the window, to the sea that continued to rage outside. "But the sea… she has always taken what we offer and returned it blessed or broken. Maybe she will listen once more."
Liang looked at her, horrified. "You can't mean—"
"It's the only way." She cradled the baby closer. "He's not normal. I felt it the moment he touched me. He belongs to something... greater."
The baby cooed softly, staring at the ceiling with eyes far too calm for a newborn.
The midwife hesitated, her mouth open as if to protest, but said nothing.
The storm outside calmed slightly, as though the sea itself listened.
-----
The storm had quieted, but the sky still wept.
The shoreline was bathed in silver moonlight that shimmered over the restless tide. The waves no longer roared with fury—they whispered now, as if mourning alongside the couple that stood barefoot in the wet sand, a small wooden casket cradled between them.
Liang's hands trembled as he placed the final strip of oiled cloth around the seal of the casket. His fingers lingered just a moment longer than needed, unwilling to let go. His face, once weathered by salt and hardship, was broken now—twisted by the quiet grief of a father who had nothing left to give.
Lan'er sat beside the casket, her knees in the cold surf, her body wrapped in a soaked shawl. Her hair clung to her face like seaweed as she leaned down and pressed her lips against the smooth lid—right above where her baby's heart would be.
Lan'er pressed her forehead against the lid, whispering words between sobs.
"I carried you for nine moons," she whispered, her voice cracked and raw. "I dreamed of holding you when you cried, of feeding you when you were cold. I dreamed of hearing you say 'mother'… even just once."
She placed a small, sea-polished stone next to him, one she had found on the night she discovered she was pregnant. "For luck," she said softly. "For protection. For home."
Tears streamed freely down her cheeks. "We're not giving you away, my little Ling'er. We're… we're giving you to the only thing that still listens to us. To the sea. She's cruel… but sometimes, she's kind."
Liang knelt behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders as his voice cracked. "Maybe… maybe someone better will find him. Someone who can feed him. Raise him. Someone who doesn't have to choose between firewood and medicine."
Lan'er let out a sob, biting her lip until it bled. "I want to hate myself," she whispered. "I want to hate you. But I can't. I only hate that we were too poor… too powerless to even keep our son alive."
Liang's throat tightened, and he kissed the back of her head. "He won't die. He's not like other children. You saw his eyes."
Lan'er nodded, barely able to speak.
She rose slowly, and together, they carried the casket into the shallows, the tide curling around their ankles.
They hesitated.
Just one more moment.
Just one more breath.
Lan'er pressed her hands to the lid again. "We love you. We will always love you. And if you ever find us again… please don't ask why. Just know we had nothing… nothing, except our love for you."
With aching hearts, they let go.
The tide pulled the casket gently away from their reach.
Lan'er fell to her knees with a broken cry, reaching out with trembling hands. Liang held her, burying his face into her shoulder, his sobs lost in the wind.
And so the child drifted away, carried not by accident, but by fate.
Far across the endless blue, beyond mortal reach, hidden in the mists and divine tides, stood a sacred island—Sea God Island. At its heart, a vast temple loomed over crystal shores, radiating divine energy so pure it bent the air around it.
Bo Saixi, the former High Priestess turned divine remnant, opened her eyes within the heart of the temple. Her spirit stirred as ancient energy surged through the island's core.
"A child... born beneath the mourning tide," she whispered. "Not one chosen by man, but by the sea itself."
She turned her gaze toward the horizon, where a faint glimmer, no larger than a star, approached across the water.
"The sea does not abandon her own."
-----
As the casket drifted over the moonlit waters, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Most newborns would scream if separated from warmth, if taken from the scent of their mother's skin, if placed alone in a vessel and pushed into the unknown.
But not this little one.
Inside the casket, swaddled in worn wool and lined with leaves, the child did not cry.
His ocean-blue eyes were wide open, reflecting the moonlight above. He gazed upward with a strange, serene expression—curious, quiet, as if he understood far more than he should have.
No tears. No fear.
Just peace.
The waves rocked the casket gently, and the baby's small fingers curled around the air, as if feeling the rhythm of the tide.
The cold didn't seem to touch him.
The sea, which chilled and terrified most, seemed to welcome him.
He blinked once… then smiled.
A faint shimmer of golden-blue light pulsed from his chest—subtle, delicate, yet divine. The air inside the casket hummed with a silent resonance, like a lullaby sung by something ancient and vast.
He didn't belong to the shore.
He belonged to the sea.
And the sea, with currents older than any man's memory, seemed to recognize him. It did not toss him, did not crash around him. It bore him like a cradle, guiding him forward.
Across the vast blue, toward a fate the world had long forgotten.
Toward Sea God Island.