Black Brine

Little Sedna sits quiet beneath the shadow of crumbling giants—ancient stone remnants of a long-dead people, now shouldering the weight of new lives. Here, the poor and pious scrape by in the half-light, their homes tucked beneath shattered arches and vine-choked columns. Rainwater runs through carvings no one remembers how to read. It’s a district of murmured prayers and heavy silences. Of pickled fish, threadbare linens, and stubborn faith. The Temple of Sedna rises at its heart like a barnacled leviathan, part cathedral, part warning. Folks here worship in whispers, offer blood in basins, and fear the sea as much as they need it. Little Sedna doesn’t bustle, it broods. No street cries, no sharp steel. Just the hush of tides, the watchful eyes of forgotten statues, and the quiet dread that one day the old stones might wake and remember what they were built for.

The jungle parts like a sullen drunk, just wide enough to let you stumble in. Thick palms hang low, heavy with damp and secrets. Beyond the leaves, Little Sedna waits—all crumbling masonry and moss-bitten quiet. Stone streets wind past crooked houses hunched in the ruins of some ancient, long-dead empire, their walls bearing carvings no one claims to understand. Pools of still water glimmer beneath the branches, catching slivers of light like eyes that never blink. Somewhere ahead, a bell chimes from the Temple of Sedna, low and mournful. The air reeks of wet stone, old smoke, and river salt. Children play barefoot near fetid canals while elders mutter blessings to bones and tide. It’s not the kind of place that welcomes you. It watches. And it remembers.