The Sunken City

Chapter One: The Coordinates

Dr. Hana Moritsu found the coordinates etched into the inside of a bronze astrolabe that should not have existed. The astrolabe was recovered from a shipwreck in the Aegean, dated to roughly 800 BCE, and it contained navigational markings for a location in the mid-Atlantic that no ancient civilisation should have known about, let alone been able to chart with sub-degree accuracy.

She checked the coordinates three times, ran them through every database she had access to, and found nothing. No islands, no seamounts, no recorded geological features. Just open ocean, three thousand metres deep, in a patch of the Atlantic that shipping routes avoided because of what the old Portuguese charts called Zona de Silêncio—the Zone of Silence, where compasses spun and radios died.

Hana booked a research vessel. Her department head called it career suicide. Her ex-husband called it typical. The coordinates called to her in a way she could not explain and did not try to, because explaining it would have meant admitting that she had been dreaming about the city for months—its towers, its light, its vast and patient hunger.