Yellow Jacket

Overview
Off the coast, where the sea deepens into a broad blue bay, lie the remains of a drowned city known as the Sunken Spires. By daylight, the ruins are invisible beneath the rolling surface, but at night sailors and fishermen swear they hear bells tolling from below. Low, sonorous tones rise across the water, carrying for miles, a rhythm that feels too measured to be anything but deliberate. The city is real; divers have charted toppled towers, colonnades, and collapsed streets covered in coral and silt. But the bells themselves remain absent. Not one fragment of bronze or iron has ever been recovered. The sound persists all the same.

The City Below
Exploration has revealed a city astonishing in its preservation. Wide avenues remain intact, their mosaics still visible beneath a carpet of sand. Statues of long-forgotten rulers and gods lean in silent procession, their features worn but unmistakable in their grandeur. Public plazas are overgrown with kelp forests, swaying as though they still hold audiences. Amphitheaters and civic halls loom with hollow mouths, their stages now roosts for fish. Most striking are the spires themselves, narrow towers rising like broken teeth from the seabed. They bear the grooves and supports of bell frames, yet they are empty, their hollows silent.

Divers remark on the surreal beauty of it all. Shafts of sunlight filter through gaps in the towers, turning dust and plankton into golden motes. Sea life thrives among the ruins: schools of silver fish, coral glowing faintly in the dark, crabs crawling through what were once windows. It is both tomb and reef, history and habitat, something both human and other.

The Bells
The mystery of the bells defines the Sunken Spires. Above the surface, their tolling is unmistakable: deep notes that reverberate through the chest, drawn out and resonant. Entire crews have sworn to hear them, the tones rising in rhythm with the tides or storms. Yet once beneath the waves, the sound disappears. Divers report only silence, no matter how long they descend. Many have climbed into the empty towers themselves, running hands along grooves where chains once hung. No bells, no fragments, no rust. Not a single trace of their existence.

Green Zone scientists deployed sonar and sound recorders, only to return with silence. No readings, no vibrations. They concluded the bells are not there. And yet, the sound persists for everyone who listens from the surface. The contradiction has only deepened the legend.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Folklore
The bells have spawned endless stories:

The Drowned Mass. Locals say the bells are the voices of the city's dead, still gathering in worship beneath the water.

The Toll of Death. Fishermen claim the bells ring for drownings. Whenever someone vanishes at sea, the sound grows louder in the days that follow.

The Name Toll. Some sailors swear the bells call names. More than one man has leapt from his boat into the dark after swearing he heard his own name carried across the waves.

The bells have become a kind of superstition in coastal culture. Travelers throw coins or scraps of food into the sea when passing nearby, not as offerings to the gods, but to "feed the bells," lest they grow hungry.

Historical Speculation
What drowned the city is uncertain. Some say it was an earthquake, others claim flooding from a redirected river or collapsed dam. A few insist it was punishment, the city struck down by the gods, the bells left behind as a warning. No surviving records name the city. Whatever its people called it, that name is gone. Only the ruins and their phantom song remain.

Modern Encounters

Navigation Hazard: Captains avoid passing directly over the Spires. Compass needles shiver, currents twist, and ships drift off course.

Salvage Attempts: Princedom expeditions have tried to recover artifacts. They brought up statues, carved stone, fragments of mosaic, but never the bells. More than one salvage crew was lost entirely, their boats found empty, drifting on calm water.

Tourism: Despite the danger, there are always those who seek to hear the bells for themselves. Some leave disappointed, claiming silence. Others return pale, whispering of music so loud they felt their bones shake.

Status Today
The Sunken Spires are neither shrine nor treasure. They are a mystery embedded in the sea. Proof of a city, visible to the eye and touch, yet paired with something intangible: sound without source, presence without matter. The ruins are beautiful in their silence, haunting in their song, a reminder that the Old World is not gone, it simply lingers, unreachable, tolling its memory across the waves.