Black Brine

The Temple of Sedna is less a place of worship and more a pact scratched into stone and sealed with salt. Here, the desperate kneel beside the devout, offerings clutched in shaking hands—shells, teeth, blood, breath. Sedna is not a kind goddess, but in Black Brine, kindness is for fools. She gives luck to sailors, silence to the dying, and visions to those mad enough to seek them. When the tide’s out, they gather in the cavern’s maw—lowborn, smuggler, cutthroat, all equal in the wet dark. When it comes in, the temple floods, swallowing their voices whole. To the eastside faithful, she’s salvation. To the westerners, a whispering curse. But none deny her power. Not openly. In Black Brine, everyone pays the sea’s toll eventually—and this temple’s the box they drop it in.

The stone breathes cold as you descend, slick with brine and old secrets. The hush of waves echoes through the cavern like a lullaby sung by something vast and unsympathetic. Barnacles cling to the walls. The air tastes of salt, rot, and old prayers. Pools of seawater glimmer faintly, stirred by currents that shouldn’t be there. Candles gutter on ledges, casting twitching shadows of worshipers crouched in reverence or fear—it’s hard to say which. The altar is drowned when the tide comes in. They say Sedna prefers it that way. Wants her voice to come from below, gurgling through the throat of the stone, slow and terrible. The faithful gather when the sea retreats, whispering secrets into the wet air, hoping she’s listening. Or dreading it. Hard to tell. Most who come leave quieter. Some don’t leave at all.