The Voice in the Sea

Termina Temple

After the Mana Crisis, the Old Worlds Order gives you a new task: the displaced gods maintaining the unstable Core created when you merged four timelines demand that you address three dormant threats: the Voice in the Sea, the Rumbling of Cold Thunder, and the Flame of the Beyond. With Swordhaven preparing for renewed war, Victoria can spare little, but she places the former Lightguard temple in Celestia's care as a neutral base for you and Tara.

Tara names the refuge Termina Temple, which Warlic conceals behind a barrier as Celestia, Hans, Muusa, and Maya help establish its defenses and work. Gravelyn, still recovering from her Mana Core wound, sends Shakaz and soldiers. Varga seeks a role in the next conflict, but you challenge the half-truths and political maneuvering of her earlier assistance. Before leaving, she warns that Good and Evil are nearing war and directs you toward the Champions gathered by the Crown on the coast.

Ashray and Sea Base Undine

You travel to Ashray with Tara and Maya while Celestia and Warlic investigate Swordhaven's activity. Captain Rhubarb admits ferrying Aria, Yulgar, Galanoth, and Artix there under Victoria's orders, adding that Aria had asked him to bring Tara. Strange creatures, altered Water Elementals, and singing rocks along the shore suggest that the village's secrecy conceals more than a place of recovery.

Although most of Ashray refuses outsiders, Talis Mikaels quietly welcomes you to the Seaview Inn, where he had sheltered Mi and their family despite their part in Astravia's destruction, unwilling to repeat his own failure to help others. A page from Aquella's journal found on the beach describes her Water Elf community trapped beneath the sea, still waiting for the Champion's power an oracle had promised her. She intended to send a warning before the attackers broke through.

At the inn, Dr. Caesar Mostyma introduces himself with an alias that does little to hide Dage from you. His invitation to the research base needs replacing, so Dr. Ganx, Xang in another disguise, agrees to forge it while searching for medicine for Drakath. The papers name you as both assistant and sibling, but the dockside doctor recognizes you and lets the party aboard a duck-shaped submarine.

During the descent, a Seafoam Elemental attacks your minds, but Tara rejects its vision of Alteon condemning her and helps defeat it. At the underwater barrier, your companions' disguises falter: the dockside doctor is Song, now Vice Head Researcher of Sea Base Undine. Dage privately explains that he had traced Victoria's soul-severing arrows here, with the medical visit giving him a route to your help that the collapsed alliance had barred him from seeking openly.

Song says Sparagmos, the base's psychic defense system, contains the nightmares of Kathool sleeping below so researchers can use the protected facility for medicine and defense. Indradeep escorts Ganx toward the Medical Wing, while weapons consultant Iseul maintains that Good intentions make any action righteous. Even after you clear the intruding creatures, messages pleading for help continue to appear on the monitors, prompting Dage to examine the machinery himself.

In the Sunlight Gardens, Mi soothes the staff with music while Fa helps maintain the base. Another journal page recalls Aquella's visit to Bloodtusk and her doubts about the lullabies that kept her elders isolated, songs that had once calmed Neso herself. A sudden drop in Sparagmos's capacity interrupts the investigation, filling the base with nightmare creatures shaped by its occupants' fears. You and your companions protect the residents and stop Marine Snow from breaching the lower levels.

Head Researcher Adreanna Noelle praises Song's work, accepts Dage's presence, and dismisses the messages and Water Elf traces as Kathool's interference. Elsewhere, Marigold Reignolds tells Celestia and Warlic that Noelle had served among Dethrix Drakath I's six Court Mages, whose experiments had enabled the Champion of Chaos's birth.

During a quieter interval, you bring Aria and Yulgar to the gardens. Yulgar apologizes for blaming you and Artix, explaining that seeing Aria injured had brought back his helplessness when her mother, Lark, died. Song's surgery had helped Aria recover, and he now wants to build a wheelchair fitted to his daughter. With materials prepared alongside the visiting clerics, Aria grows a living wooden chair through her Nature magic.

In the Twilight Zone, Indradeep reports that Artix and Galanoth had left after receiving a private letter from Iseul. With Aria and Abel still recovering, Terrane speaks through Aria to describe the Old Worlds Order's command that the Avatars cease interfering with the Timestream. As the ensuing argument exposes Neso's concealment of a Water Champion while others bore the Mana Crisis, Abel's anger is sharpened by his own guilt: he had been freezing his wounds to punish himself for Kyanos's condition.

When the Water Titan Leviathanius attacks the base and swallows its escape pods, you, Tara, and Fa fight outside with Iseul's assistance while Indradeep shelters the patients. Dage confronts the presence pleading through the monitors. Sparagmos's recovery activates the temple's songs and helps repel the Titan. Afterward, Iseul offers the embittered Abel a path to retaliation.

Aquella’s next journal page records what the Delphyne Oracle told her about the Planar Conflicts. All eight Avatars wanted their planes to engulf Lore, and Darkness was the first to grow powerful enough. The Water Elves made their lullabies to lure Neso’s enemies into the sea and drown them. The Oracle says the Avatars eventually came to value balance through their ties to Champions and worshippers.

You press into the restricted Midnight Zone and find captives from the Legion, Nation, and Shadowscythe being used in weapons trials. Dage concludes that the damage reaches beyond killing: their minds and souls are too ruined either to be raised again or to reach an afterlife. Alongside confirmation that Undine occupies the stolen Temple of Water, Aquella's journal recalls a woman with one blue eye and one crimson eye kindly returning Aquella's lost charm on Ashray's beach.

In the conference room, Song is tormented by Suki's image and the belief that dying for a good cause could redeem her. Noelle acknowledges Victoria's role in developing the temple's power against Evil, hoping that fulfilling the work would let her return to her mother and adopt Song. Following the reboot instructions she supplies when Sparagmos falters, you reach its core and discover Song's alternative to sacrificial researchers: an A.I. modeled on Victoria's memories of Brittany. Its wish to protect its sisters makes it endure Kathool's attacks repeatedly. Tara recognizes its suffering, even as Noelle insists it is only a simulacrum.

Rather than reboot the Brittany A.I., Dage deletes it and cuts communications with Noelle, threatening to leave Kathool uncontained unless you explain the Mana Core and your identity. Refusing the Masks' demands for violence, you promise him the truth. Dage then takes the pedestal himself, drawing Kathool's psychic attacks while you, Song, and Fa continue into the Abyssal Zone.

The murals and Aquella's remaining journal reveal the Drowning Machine's history. During the Planar Conflicts, the Shadow Colossus swallowed a continent and threatened the Temple of Water. The Water Elves’ first shot wounded it and drew it closer. Undine, the Champion of Water, offered herself as fuel for the next strike. The machine tore the Colossus in two, stopping the attack at the cost of Undine’s soul.

One half crawled ashore and hid, while the Water Elves used the half that sank as fuel for the machine. After the Jus Divinum massacred the Water Elves and handed their temple to Swordhaven, the weapon became known as Sparagmos. The scattered pages are bait meant to draw you in with an Evil ally whom Noelle can sacrifice to fire Sparagmos at Kathool.

Kathool, Neso and Sparagmos

Hurrying back to save Dage as Sparagmos nears exhaustion, you face the Ashray Kathool had manifested from the murdered Water Elves while Song joins Dage on the pedestal to share the strain. You hold the creature off until his replacement A.I.s, Chrysoar, Circe, and Lycegenes, restore the defenses, with Orpheus held in reserve. Combining the murals with the Water creatures' behavior, you and Song understand Neso's plan: she is dissolving Kathool to absorb its power, not protecting Lore from it.

After arranging the Water Elves' burial, you leave Dage with the restored system and descend toward Noelle. Tara identifies the depleted leyline beneath the base as connected to the Mana Core. You pass researchers still committed to Noelle's cause and briefly encounter Managarmr of the Ars Panopticon before finding Xang strapped to another draining pedestal. Despite Noelle's objection that helping an enemy invites future harm, Song treats Xang, who then exposes the Head Researcher's service to Dethrix and joins you against her.

On the seafloor, you find Noelle transformed after consuming Kathool's flesh, and during the battle Song begins a Swan Song meant to burn their life force, taking Noelle and Kathool with her or at least slowing Kathool and Neso. Fa changes into her larger form and reaches her sister, but Song warns that the song cannot stop once begun. Fa insists that Song's death would not repair their lives, and Xang forces Noelle to choose between her hatred of Evil and her love for Song. Noelle urges her daughter to live rather than keep trying to earn forgiveness. As Noelle sacrifices herself, Orpheus joins the song with Darkon's voice and helps quiet Kathool's storm. Dage had created it after their connection through Sparagmos revealed Song's self-destructive plans.

When you challenge Kathool's willingness to let Neso consume it, the Primordial calls the experience an interesting escape from boredom, even if it corrupts the Avatar from within. Your offer of divinity within Lore as your Adversary draws a request to name it the God of the Depths, but you name it your God of the Depths instead. By accepting, Kathool binds its new power to your continued existence, removing Neso's prize and giving it reason to keep you from being Silenced.

Water Elf magic carries you to the surface as the others prepare Sparagmos below. Along Ashray's coast, your allies struggle to keep entranced villagers from entering the rising sea as Neso declares that mortals need her protection and begins drawing Lore toward the Plane of Water. With Kathool's new divinity undermining her stolen form, she faces you and calls on the Champion she had concealed: Captain Rhubarb.

After Rhubarb condemns Neso for treating followers and her Titan as disposable tools, he loses control of his own body before Abel and an unidentified ally intervene with ice to remove him from her reach. Below the sea, Dage and Song fire Sparagmos, with Dage activating a shield made from his own bones to protect you from the weapon's path.

Before the blast can destroy Neso, you stop time and offer her a chance to return to her Plane and make amends, prompting her to accept responsibility for the fear and shame behind her actions. When time resumes, The Law and Infamy reject the settlement despite Tranquility's objection. Neso recognizes Infamy's voice but is Silenced before she can explain. The Order forces her back to the Plane of Water, and Tara compares her condition to Kyanos’s.

Although Song and Dage remove the A.I. personalities, Sparagmos refuses destruction, with three charges remaining under Victoria's overriding authority. On the coast, Richard promises an inquiry into the massacre and laboratory, while Mi reports that Iseul and Indradeep had stolen Sparagmos's plans and are already sailing toward Skye with Rhubarb and Abel, answering to Queen Iona.

Back at Termina Temple, Song accepts Noelle's legal inheritance and responsibility for the Yew Mountain Chain, while taking charge of the infirmary. Dage sends Rand to the war room and sends you a protective amulet and the Compendium of Shadows, while Mi and Fa remain at Undine to watch Sparagmos. The coast still bears consequences of Kathool's influence: Holothurian's followers gather around its flesh, and the stolen Water Dragon hatchling Nerites had become fused with a pirate crew. With Celestia, you defeat the fused creature, and Nerites reverts to ooze within an egg you recover from Ashray. With pirates still searching for it, Celestia asks you to find a safe hiding place.

Mana Harvest

Harvest Fest briefly brings the household back together at Termina, but Tara's anxiety about her first holiday with Victoria in years spills into her Mana and transforms the feast into creatures you have to contain. She fears ruining the reunion, but Victoria is glad simply to be with her sister. With help from the temple's residents, you stop the Coiled Cornucopia and recover the celebration. Beneath it all, the unknown presence in the basement continues its rhythmic calls.