Eli couldn’t sleep. The Memory Coral’s faint glow still haunted his thoughts, a silent echo of the stories Lapis had hinted at but never fully shared. Each night, the sea around his home seemed darker, heavier—like it was pressing closer, demanding he uncover the truth.

  He found himself diving deeper, returning to Lapis again and again, desperate for answers.

  “Tell me,” Eli urged one evening, voice trembling. “Please, Lapis. What really happened? Why do you hide?”

  Lapis’s eyes flickered, haunted and distant, as if a storm raged behind them. “It’s not safe... you shouldn’t ask.”

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  But Eli’s mind was already unraveling. The more he pressed, the more the edges of reality blurred. He obsessed over every fragmented word, every shadowed glance, piecing together a story that twisted in his mind like coral branches — tangled, sharp, and unforgiving.

  His friends at school noticed the change. Eli stopped laughing. He stopped playing. He barely spoke, swallowed by the weight of a secret he was chasing like a phantom.

  “Why can’t I forget?” he whispered into the cold night water, fingers trembling. “Why does it burn so deep?”

  Lapis watched, a flicker of sorrow in his gaze, knowing the poison was creeping into Eli’s soul—the same poison that had claimed him.

  And Eli didn’t see the warning signs.

  He only saw the need to know. To understand. To save.

  But some truths came at too high a cost.