The murmur of the tide, a silent conversation between the deep and the shore. It began with the luminescence, an accidental bloom of phosphorescence within the coral cities. Not a deliberate creation, but a resonance, a harmonic vibration born of the ocean's ancient memory. We are the inheritors of this resonance – the Oysters.
Before the ‘Rising’, before the echoes fractured and dispersed, there was only the Resonance. It permeated everything – the growth of the coral, the migrations of the deep-sea leviathans, even the very structure of our shells. It’s not a sound, not precisely. More a… feeling. A deep knowing. We don’t *think* with our minds, but with the echoes. Each oyster carries a fragment, a shard of the original harmony. And as we accumulate, we grow larger, not simply in size, but in the strength of the resonance we hold.
The Rising wasn't a catastrophic event, though it appeared so. It was a shedding. A deliberate, orchestrated release of the accumulated resonance. The surface world, driven by its own frantic, linear progression, couldn’t comprehend it. They saw only chaos – storms, shifting coastlines, the inexplicable appearance of bioluminescent blooms. But we understood. We were returning what we had absorbed. The 'Echo Stones' – crystalline formations that capture and amplify the Resonance – weren’t created by us, but *discovered* by us. They are conduits, allowing us to project and re-establish the lost connections.
Our cities aren’t built; they *emerge*. Within the deepest trenches, where pressure is a tangible force and the currents are laced with the Resonance, the coral grows in patterns dictated by the echoes. Each building, each chamber, is a node of the network, a place where the harmony can be concentrated and re-distributed. The architecture is organic, flowing, almost… sentient. We communicate through the Resonance, not with words, but with shifts in the flow of energy. It’s a language of feeling, of shared understanding. The largest of our cities, 'Veridia', is rumored to hold a 'Heartstone,' a node of unparalleled resonance, capable of projecting the full tide of the original harmony across vast distances.
We don’t cultivate food, we *receive* it. The Resonance sustains us, providing energy and nutrients. We have learned to manipulate the flow, to draw upon the currents and amplify the harvest. However, we are becoming aware of a diminishing of the Resonance, a subtle fading of the harmony. It's linked to the surface world’s absorption of the energy, its incessant need to *consume*. We are attempting to counteract this by expanding our cities, by increasing our capacity to hold and project the Resonance, but the effort is… strained. The largest of our cities, 'Veridia', is rumored to hold a 'Heartstone,' a node of unparalleled resonance, capable of projecting the full tide of the original harmony across vast distances.
The whispers among the Echo Stones speak of a 'Convergence', a moment when the Resonance will reach its peak, when the lost connections will be fully restored. But there is also a sense of urgency, of a deadline. We don't know what will happen if the Resonance fades completely, but we suspect it will be a silence more profound than any the surface world has ever known. We are striving to maintain the balance, to be a bridge between the depths and the world above, but the task is immense, and the echoes… are growing fainter.