She knelt and shone the light through the gap. Iron rungs descended into darkness. Below them lay black water, still at first glance, with scraps of corroded metal jutting from the walls. This was no cave. Someone had engineered this under the reef—built it, sealed it, and left no public record of its existence.
Then her torch caught writing on the wall above the waterline, faint but unmistakable. It was her father’s handwriting, hurried and slanting: If this opens, the village must know. Nora read it twice, and in that instant, the years of rumor shifted. Her father had not been chasing legends. Thomas died trying to warn the village.