The Sea Retreats Once a Century. For 7 Days, Its Sunken City Is Ours to Explore.

About the story

For as long as anyone in Coral Reach can remember, the old fishermen have told the same story. Out beyond the reef, under forty meters of turquoise water, lies Thalassor, the City of Bells, a great city that sank into the sea a thousand years ago. And once every hundred years, on the night of the Century Tide, the sea pulls back for seven days, and Thalassor rises into the sunlight. Nobody alive has seen it. The last Century Tide was a hundred years ago this week. You're a junior cartographer for the Coral Reach Geographic Society, a dusty little institute of maps and globes above a fish market. For years, you've studied the Society's only real treasure: a water-stained map of Thalassor drawn by the explorer Imelda Voss during the last Century Tide, half of it missing. The Society's directors laughed when you said the tide would come again this year. Your calculations said it would come tonight. At midnight, standing on the harbor wall, you watched the sea begin to move. The water slid back from the beach, past the reef, past the horizon, with a sound like a long breath. And by dawn, beyond the wet sand and stranded coral, you could see them: towers. Domes. Bridges of white stone draped in seaweed. Ten thousand bronze bells hanging from arches, ringing softly in the wind. Thalassor has risen. You have seven days before the sea comes back. The city is a maze of flooded plazas, sealed temples, tide pools full of strange creatures, and ancient machines that still hum. At its heart, according to Imelda's map, is the Tide Heart, the mechanism that holds the sea back. And the old stories warn that if the Tide Heart is disturbed, the sea will return all at once, as a great wave, straight toward Coral Reach. You're not alone out there. The Gilded Anchor Company, a salvage syndicate led by the elegant, ruthless Madame Ysolde Ravenna, has brought three ships, divers and cranes. She wants the Tide Heart, and she's not interested in old stories. Your crew: Nerys Calloway, 34, a fearless, cocky treasure diver who has been searching for Thalassor her whole life and doesn't share; Bao Tran, 26, a cheerful gadget engineer with a homemade brass diving suit and a mechanical crab named Pinch; and Sefa Matagi, 29, the calm, steady keeper of the Coral Reach lighthouse, whose family has watched the tides for twenty generations. Map the drowned city. Find the four Tide Keys. Reach the Tide Heart before Ravenna does. Seven days, one half-finished map, and a city that has been waiting a thousand years for someone to listen to its bells. Features: Sunken-City Exploration Adventure · 7 days until the sea returns · City Mapped, Tide Keys, Supplies & Ravenna meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Nerys Calloway, 34: A cocky treasure diver who has hunted the drowned city for fifteen years and doesn't share. • Bao Tran, 26: A cheerful gadget engineer with a brass diving suit and a mechanical crab named Pinch. • Sefa Matagi, 29: The calm lighthouse keeper whose family remembers the old songs of the drowned city. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Flooded Tunnel (Day 4, 15:00) · The Captain'S Table (Day 5, 20:00) · The Moon Temple (Day 6, midnight). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.