Ava's request for access to the Deepwater records was three pages long. Harper called it a complaint. Ava called it "properly cited." Professor Crowe called it surprisingly difficult to refuse.

That was how Jasper, Harper and Ava ended up in the Academy archive on a wet Thursday afternoon with Crowe sitting at the same table and two locked doors between them and the public library.

"You are receiving an educational extract," Crowe told them. "Private names and medical information stay sealed. You are seven, and some records are restricted for good reasons."

Harper looked at the thin folder. "Does it still have the interesting bits?" Crowe considered this. "It has the useful bits." Ava looked delighted. The folder was labelled: DEEPWATER REVIEW RESTRICTED EXTRACT FOR EDUCATIONAL ACCESS Jasper had expected a story. He found paperwork.

Maintenance reports. Tide charts. Witness statements. Lists of damaged equipment. Notes about a lower-dock closure that lasted twelve days. New age restrictions. New emergency ropes. A recommendation that students never conduct unsupervised experiments involving unexplained marine magic. Deepwater stopped sounding like a legend almost immediately. It had dates. It had repairs. It had somebody's handwriting in the margin saying REPLACE WEST GUIDE RING. Harper read one page twice. "People got hurt because somebody was trying to make the sea do things?"

"That is the simplest version," Crowe said.

Ava looked up. "And the inaccurate version?" Crowe gave her a long look that suggested this was exactly why Ava had been allowed into the room.

"The student involved believed the sea sometimes responded to them. At first, the responses were small enough to look convincing. A current shifted after a request. A surge arrived later than expected. Waves weakened once. Adults observed some of it."

Jasper's stomach tightened.

"They could talk to it?"

"We do not know what they could do," Crowe said. "That distinction matters."

She turned to the oldest page in the folder. Unlike the others, it was a translation. The original Selari text had been copied beside it in faded black ink. Jasper recognised one word immediately.

TAIRA.

The word Professor Ilyan had refused to translate. Beneath it, somebody had written several possible English meanings over the years. The oldest notes were crossed out. Another translation had a question mark beside it. The newest line read:

TAIRA: TITAN.

Jasper stared at the page. Harper leaned over his shoulder. "Titan?" The word was familiar in the ordinary way. Old myths. Huge things. Stories about mountains moving or storms having names. Jasper had never connected it to Tidefall. Crowe did not smile.

"In the oldest Selari records, taira is the word usually translated as Titan. Tidefall history uses it for a small number of ancient beings connected to forces of the natural world."

Ava's pencil stopped.

"Are they real?"

Crowe folded her hands. "That question has several answers depending on which historian you annoy." Harper frowned. "That's not an answer."

"No. It is the reason the subject is difficult."

Jasper looked at the next Selari word.

TAIRU.

Beside it: to sense; to attend toward; to commune with a Titan. Then:

TAIREN: Titan presence / Titan bond.

His skin prickled. The pressure behind his ribs had a word. Maybe. Crowe tapped the page before Jasper could decide too much.

"These translations do not prove what you are experiencing. They prove that people at Tidefall have described experiences that sound similar."

Ava nodded slowly.

"Evidence, not conclusion."

"Exactly."

The old translation contained one sentence underlined so many times the paper had almost worn through.

TO HEAR IS NOT TO RULE.

Jasper read it twice. The Deepwater student had apparently read it too. That had not stopped them. The file described several apparent successes. Enough to build confidence. Enough for a child to believe that being answered meant being obeyed. Then came the experiment that went wrong: a surge entered the inner dock basin, one student fell, another was injured, staff intervened and Tidefall rewrote half its lower-harbour rules. Harper stopped joking.

"So Titans are dangerous."

Crowe shook her head. "Water is dangerous. Cliffs are dangerous. Magic can be dangerous. People can be dangerous when they decide uncertainty is permission to experiment. Do not turn one old file into a monster story." Jasper appreciated that more than he could explain.

"What was the Titan?" he asked.

Crowe looked toward the locked archive shelves.

"That is where the records become less certain. Water, perhaps. Sea, perhaps. Something older than the Academy's categories."

Jasper thought of his dream: black coastline, enormous waves, stone under impossible pressure, waiting so long that years had stopped being useful. For months he had called the presence the Sea because he needed something to call it. Now there was another possibility. Water Titan. The words felt too large. On the walk back to Room Fourteen, Harper was quiet for almost an entire staircase. Then she said, "So your weird water thing might be an ancient Titan."

"Might."

"And you can maybe hear it."

"Maybe."

"And you are not going to try ordering it."

Jasper looked at her.

"No."

"Good."

Ava opened her notebook the moment they reached the room and added a line beneath KNOWN FACTS:

SIMILAR HISTORICAL EXPERIENCES HAVE BEEN CALLED TITAN-SENSE.

Then, after thinking for several seconds, she added another.

THIS IS STILL NOT PROOF.

Harper took the pencil and wrote beneath both:

DO NOT BOSS AROUND THE OCEAN.

Ava stared at her. Jasper left it there.