Submission (#624) Approved

“Not Enemies, But Not Friends.”
Word Count Goal: 800+ | Prompt Theme: A story of reluctant alliance, quiet rivalry, and unspoken longing—two tatsukoi caught between distrust and dependence, forced to face the ocean, the unknown… and the one who holds both their hearts.

The sea had retreated like a living thing frightened back into its den. What remained of the shoreline was nothing like the Cascades the Tatsukoi had grown up knowing—no soft hush of waves or distant gull cries. Only the exposed skeleton of the seabed, slick with salt and scattered with coral spines, rising like broken ribs from the mud. The sky hung low, bruised with a sun that didn’t look quite right, and the moon loomed far too close—watchful, almost hungry.

Tanzan moved carefully across the uneven terrain, his satchel bumping against his hip, boots sticking now and then in the muck. He wore no armor, only a dark travel coat and a faint shimmer of protective glyphs sketched in ink along the cuffs. In his hand, a small copper mirror spun gently—his preferred tool for locating old ley-lines buried under rock or sea silt. It glinted once, then dimmed, pointing him toward a wall of stone halfway buried in barnacles.

He exhaled. “There you are.”

With a slow reverence, he brushed aside grime and seaweed, revealing the first of the carved symbols—ancient script wrapped in spirals. Not just protective, he realized. These weren’t warning sigils. They were instructions.

“You came all this way to read rocks?” The voice hit like a blade drawn quietly from its sheath—low, dry, unimpressed.

Tanzan didn’t flinch, though his shoulders went rigid. “Zephyra,” he muttered without turning. “I figured you’d show up eventually. You never could resist the chance to scowl over my shoulder.”

Zephyra stepped into view like a shadow peeling away from the cliffside. His presence carried that unsettling stillness—like the eye of a storm that hadn’t quite chosen when to break. His pale golden eyes flicked from Tanzan’s face to the mirror, then to the markings on the wall. “Reading won’t stop the tide from swallowing you when it rolls back in,” Zephyra said.

“And stabbing everything that moves won’t explain why these stones exist,” Tanzan replied without heat. “But here we are. Me, solving. You, glaring.”

Zephyra’s gaze narrowed, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he walked a few steps deeper into the cave mouth, where the floor dipped toward a pool of brackish water. He crouched there, fingers hovering just above the surface, eyes fixed on something Tanzan couldn’t see.

Tanzan watched him for a moment. He hated how graceful Zephyra was, how effortlessly he moved through places like this—places that should’ve been the domain of thinkers, not killers. “You’re not here for Klaus,” he said. “You want the stone. For yourself.”

Zephyra didn’t deny it. “You think it belongs to you?”

“No,” Tanzan said. “But I don’t want to see it wasted on someone who can’t tell the difference between power and purpose.”

That made Zephyra rise slowly to his full height, turning to face him with the barest flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Funny,” he said. “I was going to say the same about you.”

The wind howled low through the cavern mouth, a reminder of the time ticking down. They stared at each other for one long, brittle breath—two silhouettes outlined in dying light and tension. Then Zephyra turned, wordlessly continuing into the dark. Tanzan muttered something impolite under his breath and followed.

The deeper they walked, the colder it grew.

The walls of the sea cavern curved inward like the throat of some long-dead leviathan, coated in layers of glistening algae and jagged salt crystal. Every step echoed beneath them—stone, water, breath. Drip. Crunch. Silence. Tanzan’s lantern floated beside him, casting a soft, magical glow that flickered gold and blue. The bioluminescent algae lining the walls pulsed faintly in response, like they, too, were listening.

Zephyra moved ahead, nearly silent despite the slick floor. Blade strapped to his back, every muscle in his frame seemed coiled—not with tension, but with readiness. The kind of readiness that came from a life of waiting for the world to go wrong.

Tanzan trailed behind, his fingers skimming along the runes etched into the cavern walls—newer than expected, not ancient at all. “These aren’t from the original structure,” he murmured aloud. “Someone’s been here recently… maybe even after the tides started changing.”

Zephyra didn’t stop walking. “Don’t suppose the writing says ‘Turn back before you drown,’ does it?”

“No,” Tanzan replied. “But if you die in here, I’d be happy to come back and carve that on your tombstone.”

A faint glimmer pulled their attention downward—small, fragmented pieces of red crystal scattered across the cavern floor like someone had dropped and shattered a gemstone. Tanzan crouched low to examine them, brushing sand aside carefully with his sleeve. “Residual signature matches the Beastblood stones. But these are just shards. Whatever was whole isn’t anymore.”

“Someone took it,” Zephyra said. “Or it broke during a transformation.”

Tanzan looked up at him. “Is that what you want? To eat one? Become something else?”

Zephyra’s jaw twitched, but he said nothing. He turned and kept moving.

Tanzan stood slowly, brushing dust off his knees. “You’re not even curious what the price might be?”

“I already pay one,” Zephyra replied over his shoulder.

The silence that followed hung heavy. Then, the cave groaned. A low, grinding shift echoed through the stone like the earth was cracking its spine. Pebbles rained from the ceiling. Tanzan looked up just in time to see a fissure open high above—and then a massive slab of rock dislodged, plummeting toward him.

There was no time to cast, no time to run.

But there was Zephyra. He moved like lightning, drawn to ground—grabbing the back of Tanzan’s coat and dragging him bodily out of the impact zone. The stone slammed into the floor where Tanzan had been, cracking apart and sending a wet burst of sea spray across them both. They hit the ground hard. Tanzan coughed, stunned, blinking up at the shifting light through the dust. Zephyra knelt beside him, one forearm braced against the stone, his other hand still clenched in Tanzan’s collar.

“Try not to get crushed before you translate something useful,” he said, voice low.

Tanzan blinked again. “…You pulled me out.”

Zephyra stood, brushing grit from his shoulder. “Didn’t do it for you. Did it for the stone.”

“Uh-huh,” Tanzan muttered, pushing himself up. “You keep telling yourself that.”

They stood in silence for a beat. The dust began to settle. The cavern stretched ahead, darker now—closer, somehow. The air was damp with something that didn’t feel like water. “I think we’re near the heart of it,” Tanzan said at last, voice quieter.

Zephyra nodded once, drawing his weapon. “Then stay close. I won’t save you twice.”

Tanzan gave a small, sharp smile. “Good. I only needed the one.”

The cavern narrowed into a corridor of jagged stone, the walls slick with condensation and veins of faint red light pulsing beneath the surface like blood in glass skin. The air grew humid, heavy, almost electric. Tanzan’s lantern sputtered, its glow dimming with every step.

Zephyra stopped ahead of him, one arm raised to signal stillness.

Tanzan followed his gaze—and there it was.

Nestled at the center of the chamber was a pulsating cocoon of sea-worn bone and coral, half-embedded in the stone like a pearl inside a monstrous shell. Within it, cradled like something sleeping, was a whole Beastblood Moonstone. Larger than the fragments they’d seen. Clearer. The creature inside it shifted faintly in the red glow—only two limbs and minor scales along its back. Watching them.

“I think it’s conscious,” Tanzan whispered, already reaching for a scrap of parchment to transcribe glyphs spiraling along the shell.

Zephyra’s fingers brushed the hilt of his blade. “Then we don’t wake it.”

Too late.

The moment Tanzan stepped past a thin line of chalk-like markings on the floor—runes neither of them had noticed before—the cavern shivered. From the surrounding stone, saltwater began to seep upward, unnaturally fast. And then, from the shadows beyond the stone, something stepped into view. It looked like it had once been made of flesh, but now it was only salt and shadow, a beast with no face, just a jagged mouth and curling horns, its chest cracked open like a broken tidepool. Its eyes burned red with the same glow as the Moonstone—and it charged.

Zephyra met it without hesitation. Steel sang as it cleared his sheath. He struck low, rolling beneath its first wild swing and slashing upward across its side. The blade passed through—but not without resistance. The thing screeched, the sound like glass shattering underwater.

“Tanzan!” Zephyra shouted, ducking behind a coral outcropping. “You said the runes were instructions—then use them!”

Tanzan was already scrambling back toward the markings on the floor, tearing open his journal with trembling fingers. The runes formed a circle—not a ward. A seal. This wasn’t just a guardian. It was something bound. Maybe to the stone?

“Keep it distracted!” he yelled, voice breaking slightly.

“Not a problem!” Zephyra barked, launching himself back into the fight.

The guardian slashed a jagged claw across the cavern, narrowly missing Tanzan, who shouted an incantation in a language only half-remembered from ancient texts. Glyphs along the wall flared to life. The guardian howled. Zephyra moved like he was possessed—ducking, weaving, slashing through water and shadow. His breath was ragged, a cut now bleeding across his cheek, but his focus never wavered.

Tanzan spoke the final word. The runes on the cavern floor erupted in crimson light, and the salt-creature froze, limbs locked mid-motion. Its form convulsed—and then, with a shuddering shriek, it collapsed into salt and bone dust, dissolving into the flooded floor. Tanzan stumbled forward, catching himself against the cocoon. The Moonstone inside had dimmed, but still pulsed faintly. Zephyra leaned against the opposite wall, breathing hard, blood trailing down his temple.

“You okay?” Tanzan asked after a moment, voice hoarse.

“I’ll live,” Zephyra said, then, after a beat, added, “You didn’t do too badly, for someone who thinks books can protect him.”

“And you didn’t die,” Tanzan said dryly. “Miraculous.”

They stood there for a while, neither quite willing to make the first move toward the Moonstone. The tide was already starting to seep deeper into the cave, trickling around their boots.
Tanzan finally pulled out a cloth and carefully wrapped the stone.

Zephyra watched but said nothing.

By the time they emerged from the cave, the tide had begun to return—slow but sure. The distant crash of waves rolled like thunder over the flat expanse of the exposed sea floor, swallowing rock and reef inch by inch. The wind carried salt and storm in equal measure. The sky was stained red from the setting sun, and the too-close moon hung swollen overhead, casting long shadows behind the two now trudging up the sloping cliffs.

Tanzan carried the wrapped Moonstone with both hands, cradled against his chest like something fragile and burning. Zephyra walked slightly ahead, keeping an eye on the rising tide. He still had blood drying on his jaw, though he hadn’t mentioned it once. They found a ledge just above the cavern mouth. The sea would claim this place again by morning. From here, the view stretched wide: endless ocean reclaiming what it had surrendered, glowing faintly under the blood-orange sky.

Tanzan lowered himself to sit, exhausted. Zephyra remained standing, eyes fixed on the horizon as if it had wronged him personally.

After a moment, Tanzan broke the silence. “You want it for her, don’t you?”

Zephyra didn’t answer immediately. The muscles in his jaw tightened—barely noticeable unless you were watching for it. He spoke without turning. “She deserves someone strong enough to protect her.”

Tanzan let out a quiet breath. “She also deserves someone who doesn’t hide behind his own silence.”

That one hit.

Zephyra turned slightly, just enough for Tanzan to catch the flicker of something raw in his expression—guilt, maybe. Or regret. Or just the ache of being seen too clearly. “I don’t hide,” Zephyra said at last. “I endure.”

Tanzan looked down at the stone in his hands. It pulsed faintly beneath the cloth, still warm. “That’s not the same as living, Zephyra.”

The wind pulled at their clothes. Somewhere below, a wave cracked against stone loud enough to shake the ledge. Neither of them flinched. “She lights up when she talks to you,” Zephyra said suddenly. His voice wasn’t angry—just… low. Quiet. “Like the sun’s inside her.”

Tanzan swallowed. “She does that around you too.”

Zephyra turned fully now, stepping closer. Not threatening, but present. Unavoidable. “I’m not good at soft things, Tanzan. I don’t know how to… speak the way you do. She deserves warmth. And I burn too hot.”

Tanzan looked up at him. “Then stop trying to burn brighter than her. She doesn’t need fire. She needs someone who won’t disappear when the smoke clears.”

Zephyra’s mouth curved—half amusement, half something sharp. “And you think you’re that someone?”

Tanzan didn’t flinch. “No. But I’m not trying to make her choose between being safe and being free.”

That landed harder than he expected. Zephyra’s eyes darkened—not with anger, but something colder. Older. A grief buried deep and dressed in armor. “You don’t know what it’s like… to lose someone because you weren’t strong enough.”

Tanzan’s voice softened. “No. I know what it’s like to lose someone because I thought strength was enough.”

A silence stretched between them, knotted with meaning and too much history for those who barely shared any. Finally, Zephyra turned toward the narrow trail. “Tide’s coming in,” he said, voice clipped. “Let’s move before it swallows us both.” He didn’t wait for a reply.

Tanzan lingered a moment, looking down at the Moonstone in his hands. It pulsed faintly, like a second heartbeat—one that didn’t belong to him, but might someday. He tucked it away and followed, steps measured. Not trailing. Not leading. Just… moving.

At the top of the rise, the wind tore through the cliffs like it meant to erase them. Zephyra glanced back, only once. “Next time,” Zephyra said, eyes fixed on the horizon, “don’t get so lost in your theories you forget the ground beneath you can break.”

Tanzan exhaled through his nose, the faintest trace of a smile ghosting across his lips. “And next time, try not to coat ancient glyphs in your blood. Some of us are trying to read the past, not repaint it.”

Zephyra gave a short huff—somewhere between a scoff and a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Not quite a laugh. But not nothing. The wind howled around them, hungry and rising. The ocean below had begun reclaiming the shore with foaming teeth, creeping steadily back into the places it had briefly relinquished. They didn’t walk in step. They didn’t speak. And they sure as hell weren’t friends. But for the first time, they weren’t just walking away from each other either. They were walking toward something.

Even if neither of them had the courage to name it yet.

Reward	Amount
Gold	20
Mana-eater	1
Betwixt The Tides - Design, MYO, Item, and Pet Raffles (Raffle Ticket)	2