[ChicletPrime]

• okay... this next chapter starts out immediately with:
  Lemurians who seeketh Absolute Power
  Combat the treacherous tides
  Dive into The Deep for pearls
  Find a true love
  When blessed with a true love's kiss,
  claim her heart by your own hand.
  A heart pure, flawless - and filled with love. It is the best offering humans can give Lemurians. - something something from the Tome of the Sea God
  
• kinda wish i'd manage to get to Golden Sands before City of Mirrors showed up, but alas. Because those parts would have hit a whole lot different if i'd already read this!
  
• okay, time skip - Half A Month Later 
  
• i have now figured out the secret combination of Getting The Hell Out Of The Palace apparently, because i'm sitting on the edge of town in a stable, wearing my Water People clothes and a cloak for extra disguise
  
• sand storm has uncovered something? 
  
• and Our Boy shows up with waterskins. i guess i am not as good at getting out of the palace as i thought if he still has to come fetch me out of it every now and again.
  
•  when i ask how far we're going, he says its someplace i wished to see. ooooh! off we go to The Sea, or whatever remains of it, i guess. little dust filled pond in a tiny oasis? 
  
• hey, another Water People person! only this one is buff apparently. oh. eh. its just Amund. hi Amund. and here i was hoping for a jealousy side plot.
  
• "If his eyes were weapons, I'd be gravely wounded." muahah! yeah Amund, i know, i know. sorry. in her defense, she doesn't know what she did either. 
  
• "You dare speak the name of the God of the Sea?"   my reaction: "!?"   spoilers!
  
• he bows right to the floor, i hide behind Rafayel before i get flayed alive or something, Rafe demurs being anything and that Amund should not be listened to and my conclusion is: "Lemurians are rather weird."  yas, girlfriend. but they are weird with very sharp knives so, you know. be careful?
  
• A-camel-back we go. aww, we're on the same camel! with my arms wrapped around his waist.
  
• innocently questions: "Amund called you the God of the Sea. Are you the strongest Lemurian?"
  
• "A god of war would be a more apt title for that."   soooo, is that a yes? 
  
• tales say the God of the Sea died long ago, or "slumber"ed, so how can there still be one. Rafe wants to know if i know why he perished.  ... testing out what we know? or don't know as the case may be.
  
• "His heart was stolen by humans."
  
• but he... he gave it away. admittedly, we ran with it afterwards, but he definitely gave it to us.
  
• hah! love it. we stick a hand on his chest to check for a heartbeat.
  
• he snatches our hand away with "Don't... touch me," as only Rafayel's voice actor could manage to say it. 
  
• interesting. i'm struggling to walk in the sand but Rafayel isn't.  i guess walking on any sort of wave is just inherent to the guy. 
  
• i am a very, very, VERY demanding princess.
  
• "Does your Highness require me to a hold a parasol?" ... now that you mention it.
  
• we walk until the sun goes down and then sit in the sand around a fire. "The black flames don't flicker. They burn silently like the man who lit them. No energy, no warmth and no hope in sight."   that's very evocative and poetic.
  
• i am feeling the distance, the farther we go. huddle for warmth? mebbe? 
  
• oh. blanket. well, if needs must.
  
• i am SUCH a naive fool. "Can you sing for me? I've never heard a Lemurian sing before."  i just have a death wish, it seems, no matter what the timeline i'm in.
  
• "Ask for something else."   kiss!
  
• "Did you say we shared a bond? Why aren't you fulfilling my requests?"  because you're a BRAT.
  
• "Bonds can change." 
  
• huh. huh huh huh. what does THAT mean.
  
• we ask him about his past, he says naught can be said. so... he doesn't have a past? no memory? 
  
• we ask him for something we don't know and he says "such as an intruder committing murders?"
  
• well, that took a sudden dark turn
  
• i ask if he kills humans for revenge and he says both he and i know that revenge is meaningless.
  
• IS IT RAFAYEL? IS IT REALLY? 
  
• Ah, there's the thing you spoilered for me several pages ago on a different thread.. that the seas have been sand for 30k years, and that "we" (i assume he means Lemurians) only want one thing. To go home.
  
• "We must awaken the seas and return to our homeland."  uh.  /stares around the miles upon miles upon MILES of dunes. 
  
• we arrive wherever we're going to and it seems like the sands are silvery white in the moonlight "similar to the waves in my dream." and... ruins! 
  
• The Island of Songs.  now just crumbled masonry buried in the dunes.
  
• nice! "Something is calling out to me. Not waiting for Rafayel, I hurry and run into the ruins."
  
  
  

[ChicletPrime]

• oh hey, that's the title card background!  /screenshot
  
• "I've walked these streets... I've seen these roof tiles..."  City of Mirrors? although   /scrolls back a bunch. yeah, that's not quite on, is it? when i dreamed of this place, i was in a "hut". this is obviously a ruined town at the very least, if it has streets and actual buildings. although i guess it could have all gone to ruin with the sea surrounding it until only i was left waiting to die.
  
• "The loneliness and silence from my dream materialize, wrapping around me." like arms. awww.
  
• "Your Highness remembers."   not really. but this is awfully close to my heart.
  
• "doing the same thing over and over .. and next to me was..."   i start to dig. i find a slab, cracked, in the ruins.
  
• Tome of the Sea God?!
  
• again, confirmation that only those bound to the Sea God can read the Tome. 
  
• fishtail beacon.. fishtail beacon... i'm SURE i packed it somewhere...
  
• we hold it together.
  
• "The pain will last for a moment."
  
• oooooh crap. uh. okay, i'm going to make tea and de-agitate, i will be right back. his eyes are So Beautiful
  
• oh thank little sea urchins. he just slashed my hand, not my throat. our blood mixes on the slab.
  
• new... new prophecy? ooooh, anticipation!
  
• I KNEW IT. golden symbols manifest before us. Lemuria's history and the Sea God's prophecy.
  
• human that i am, i only recognize one glyph. the one that is 'me'
  
• oh, interesting. because the slab is damaged from being buried in the sands, there are gaps in the prophecy. not only cryptic but also incomplete!
  
• "When the God of the Sea is revived, the seas will awaken. To take back what he's lost, the God of the Sea must kill his beloved."
  
• ah. at the critical junction, she actually figures that part out. her heart belongs to the God. i.. go into a small trance, as meaning colesces?  "If his heart is not returned, the fire will fade. An eternal slumber awaits him."
  
• "I lift Rafayel's hand. A black fire burns his palm. I clench my fist, blood dripping onto the flame. It burns brighter. In those fires, I see us of another time."
  
• "Desiring the sincerest worship of mortals, thou must offer an irreplaceable object." "The Sea God's heart, mine heart. Dost thou want it?"
  
• aaaand i put it together. "You're the god who gifted me this heart." 
  
• OH NO NOT AGAIN. or... whatever. you know what i mean. timelines, they are so shifty.  "I take Rafayel's hand which holds a dagger and press it against my chest." 
  
• "We made a vow. You are the God of the Sea who has my sincerest devotion. My heart exists for this very reason."
  
• what do you mean, you can't accept it back? 
  
• this sounds very important. "A God protects his followers. If the legend pertaining to the God of the Sea is inevitable..." Rafayel lifts his hand - in the floating words, every symbol that represents me is consumed by a black flame. "Shouldn't the God of the Sea himself change the story?"
  
• oh. wow. he's burned my name out of the Tome, out of the prophecy.
  
• NO
  
• my memories of Rafayel begin to disappear
  
• "If the ending is fixed, let us start anew and be rid of this tale." 
  
• ohhhhh he's burning the vow right out of my heart.
  
• aaaand i'm staring at him... why am i here? Rafayel! a familiar name. how did we meet?
  
• there is only emptiness.
  
• "Lemurians must rewrite their own story, with their own hands." 
  
• (Who is Rafayel?)
  
• The person before me is a stranger.
  

/ow ow ow oh this huuuurts

• "Goodbye, my beloved bride."
  

[ChicletPrime]

i am aghast. i did not expect that. AT ALL.

• the sound of waves crashing on a shore, but i'm back in the palace.
  
• "I dreamed a long dream. No gray waves, no lonesome islands. A desert of blue - I think if the desert is azure, it ought to look like the sea. In boundless blue, a young man, the God of the Sea, holds a girl's hand. They walk to the horizon. The God of the Sea gestures for waves to bloom under the girl's feet. Fish swim. White gulls circle overhead and sing as they land on her shoulder. To the God of the Sea, this is the happiest day of his life. And when he kisses her, he devotes the entire ocean to his beloved."
  
• Waking up from my dream, I don't recall how the God of the Sea appeared.
  
• oh. Natasha. yeah. i do seem different, don't i? 
  
• i am not sure why either. did i misplace something? 
  
• time skip? 
  
• i ask if Natasha knows who gifted me the fish in my rooms. she says "Your Highness' most important person."
  
• time skip?
  
• why am i by the lake again? Natasha is distraught by it. yet i have feel i have walked on this peaceful surface before.
  
• (i double dog dare me to try)
  
• oh. oh, no. i actually did step in. my feet are submerged in water, the impulse was so strong. 
  
• time skip
  
• my life is calm and boring yet i have no will to leave the palace. a dark shadow is burning my heart like a flame.
  
• (THE WOMB TATTOO. sorry. just thought of that.)
  
• falling into this abyss, i am slowly being eaten away.  Natasha tries to convince me to see a new development in the city. the guards have found the enemy's base.
  
• that was my thought too!  "The enemy?"
  
• ah, the Lemurians responsible for the recent assassinations. The king wants to capture them all and leave them to dry in the desert. Natasha thinks {he wants to do it} because their ultimate plan is to awaken the seas, even though they have long since dried.
  
• "To awaken the seas," I say slowly. Then: "Where's Rafayel?"
  
• oooh! i am stunned the moment this name drops from my lips. howso is this so familiar? 
  
• Natasha thinks that was the name of the young Lemurian boy i was gifted as a child.  within my mind, something bursts forth like a butterfly from a cocoon.
  
• I go to my pillow and from underneath it bring forth... "The Fishtail Beacon?!" Natasha exclaims. hey. Nat. how do YOU know what this thing is?  well, she recognizes it as a Lemurian weapon.
  
• it's ... reminding me of things. when i saw it on my balcony.  a note i was waiting for. a cut line in my palm. and.. "I'll be able to sense Your Highness' presence, holding it like this." 
  
• Tinkerbell, I believe!
  
• Natasha, I have an important meeting today. Clear my schedule. No, the slightly glowing weapon in my hands has nothing to do with this. Bring me my nice city slippers.
  
• oh. finally i do something appropriate and hug Natasha for all she'd done for me over the years. 
  
• i pay no attention to the city, once the object of all my wishes. i run through the streets, grasping the beacon. i don't realize my hand is bleeding.
  
• everything i've forgotten is a dream left behind in the Island of Songs along with the burnt remnants of the ancient Lemurian prophecy. I am a dreamer waking up from her dream. I remember everything.
  
• "Rafayel you have to wait for me!" 
  
• the beacon glows but i'm too busy to notice.
  
• Amund and Rafayel wait at the city's edge. Amund remarks that Rafayel is the first God of the Sea who dared rewrite the Tome. (is that approval or censure I hear?) "Refusing to take her heart, Your Quintessence's life must burn away. Your..."
  
• "What matters is our opportunity to return home."  
  
• eh? 
  
• oh ... no? this is seems like very much an OH NO moment but i'm willing to hold out hope.
  
• "A sensation akin to sprouting vines slowly climbs from his heart, ensnaring his very soul." 
  
• pain sound. i do not like the pain sound.
  
• Amund, bright eyed Elder spots the glowing Fishtail Beacon. "Didn't your Quintessence say the bond was destroyed?"
  
• I AM GREATER THAN ANY TRITE ELEMENTAL BOND, BITCH
  
• "Rafayel turns back. Among the humans, he can only see a disheveled white robe. She is a butterfly, or rather a silvery white fish swimming towards him."
  
• "How...?"
  
• I LOVE YOU RAFAYEL DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT ME I DIDN'T PACK ANYTHING BUT MY DEVOTION I HOPE THAT'S OKAY
  
• i mean
  
• uh
  
• i skid to halt somewhat near the object of my utmost desire. "You're going to abandon me and leave alone?" I cry for gods and the heavens and half the city street to hear in my best harridan voice. "If gods do exist in this world, then Rafayel, you must be the worst one." 
  
• sing it, sister island song
  
• "How could you leave your follower behind?"
  
• i'm not crying, you're crying. its all onions here.
  
• "You also promised to show me the sea. I am not the one who easily forgets." 
  
• your honor, i would like to enter into evidence that my client has good intentions but seems incapable of honest self reflection
  
• Rafe: "Do you even know where we're headed?"
  
• nope. don't care neither. i... forgot a waterskin. you have more, right? 
  
• aww. "Our vow is eternal. You'll have to do more to be rid of me."
  
• "You've decided then?"  He helps me mount the white camel, sliding into place behind him. "I may actually take your heart." 
  
• IN MATRIMONY. and possibly some bedtime shenanigans, but i'm willing to be patient if you need to work up to it.
  
• "I told you before. If you are a god who can claim my heart, then... claim it. Take me away." 
  
• yay!
  
• ooooh
  
• we ride off on the white, divine camel. deep in the palace, the little blue fish slowly turns to a silver scale and sinks to the bottom of the glass bowl.
  
• Philos' seas have dried up for 30,000 years. The prophecy of gold has faded. Maybe there will never again be churning rivers or boundless seas. The Princess with a god's heart, the God of the Sea who saved her - the Lemurian who rescued her from a cage time and time again... they will meet once more."
  
  
• "Rafayel, where are we going?"
  
• "Didn't you want to visit the sea? We'll head to Whalefall City."
  

And I earn the title of Princess!

[ChicletPrime]

[Coldsaturn]

- wish i'd manage to get to Golden Sands before City of Mirrors showed up
I totally understand your point, but consider that all Raf's myths are meant to echo each other. Whoever played Abysswalker first went "OH!" when they played Romirro, and whoever played Romirro first whent "OH!" when they played Abysswalker. The only important thing was watching Forgotten Sea before both, because that was necessary as a prequel to Romirro and as a direct reference in Abysswalker. Other than that, players are meant to fall into Raf's storyline based on their luck in getting his cards, so it is kinda meant to be a path you can start walking in any direction. You'll start drawing patterns and echoes anyway.
If I have to find something that would have been better had you played all the old myths first is that the quality of the game is increasing as months go by. Romirro is technically, stylistically and visually more cohesive than the others. So if you play them out of order (in terms of publication date) you might get a bit of whiplash when it comes to the quality of the product you have in your hands.

- "His heart was stolen by humans." but he... he gave it away.
That's why I think he doesn't genuinely remember that part. He has fractured and incomplete memories just like Sea God Raf before completing his ascension. He's repeating what Lemurians and the Tome narrate of the Ceremony event, which is that his follower stole his heart (and Lemuria's flame).
You might wonder "but Romirro???" and this is where we either get into the multiverse (Romirro is another branch following Forgotten Sea, Abysswalker another one), into a retcon (writers hadn't finalized Romirro when they wrote Abysswalker, so Abysswalker only references Forgotten Sea), or into a forced in-game rationalization (he doesn't have his memories and Amund is brainwashing him into believing the Tome states she stole from him).

- "Don't... touch me,"
I'm emotional because Forgotten Sea Rafayel also didn't like being touched, but then in all timelines he becomes such a cuddly cutie <3

- "Bonds can change."
Possible misdirection so the princess shuts up. Unless he also has wrong info about it, the bond cannot change and is permanent. Unless he's referring to the part where he can kill her and take back his heart, thus dissolving the bond. But that's actually something not explicitly stated by the game: after he kills her, is she still branded as his one follower? So that in the next reincarnation she will still be the chosen one? Or maybe the follower is meant to be just one just like the sea god should be one, because the next sea god would choose their own follower. With MC and Raf things get fucked up because of the reincarnation thing.

- there's the thing you spoilered for me several pages ago
I'm never forgiving myself for that one. I was SO SURE it was established right at the very beginning.

- City of Mirrors?
I mean, you are technically correct. Whalefall City and Romirro are one and the same. The Island of Songs is close to Whalefall City. In this myth they'll keep on referencing the God of Tides myth exclusively, because that was what was out.

- "Shouldn't the God of the Sea himself change the story?"
Raf
- "Goodbye, my beloved bride."
I seem to recall that in a direct translation he says "Goodbye, bride of the Sea God"
because he never reclaimed godhood, so it's like he can't even claim her as his own bride.

- "Your Highness' most important person."
Raf was both her first and second most important person <3

- "Refusing to take her heart, Your Quintessence's life must burn away. Your..."
let me just skip ahead and also quote
"deep in the palace, the little blue fish slowly turns to a silver scale and sinks to the bottom of the glass bowl."
And reference back to Romirro where Raf's tail turned white when he was dying. This ominous signs kinda point toward the fact that if Raf doesn't really take her heart back, he's going to die pretty soon.

- "Didn't your Quintessence say the bond was destroyed?"
That's actually an interesting bit. He technically changed the prophecy in the Tome, and he technically erased her bond. But her bond just reformed like nothing was amiss, so what does that say about the prophecy? Can they actually escape fate?

- I am not the one who easily forgets.
Facepalm moment

- "Didn't you want to visit the sea? We'll head to Whalefall City."
In Forgotten Sea, the dream MC has of the Abysswalker timeline takes place once they arrive in Whalefall City. And well... it ends with Raf taking her heart.
It is unclear whether that was a vision that will still happen, or if now that Raf has changed the Tome he has avoided that ending.

- the two cities next to each other
SUSPICIOUS. But very coherent. Close to Linkon are the ruins of Lemuria, and here they're close to the city where the princess lives.

[ChicletPrime]

I got a bunch to say (and I'm going to go back over all three myths again and take some specific notes) but:

"Refusing to take her heart, Your Quintessence's life must burn away. Your..."

let me just skip ahead and also quote

"deep in the palace, the little blue fish slowly turns to a silver scale and sinks to the bottom of the glass bowl."

And reference back to Romirro where Raf's tail turned white when he was dying. This ominous signs kinda point toward the fact that if Raf doesn't really take her heart back, he's going to die pretty soon.

I grant you that interpretation, it makes total thematic sense. Although I will point out that although the tail turning white is a thing, black flames without a spark and blue ice shot through with darkness is ALSO a thing. I guess the writers just like black or white to symbolize some sort of corruption of purity (instead of, I don't know, rotting his tail and heading for zombie-horror land).

WHAT I REALLY WANTED TO SAY WAS

I didn't read it the same way though.  When the Sea God made the vow and gave his heart, it was a little blue fish that turned into a (disguised) blue shell/scale that she could wear as a necklace. Is that symbolic of the "vow" they made which is a set of words/a contract? Or was it literally his actual beating heart, now outside his body? 

In Mirrors, the shell-scale cracks and starts to fall apart as she wears it. in Golden Sands, it was never a scale, just a fish in a bowl that she kept near. He gifted it to her, when she had no way of knowing what it meant, she never spoke a vow to him (in this lifetime).

And leaving THAT aside, when Rafayel burned her name out of the prophecy, essentially resetting everything including her memory, the fish (vow and heart) were fine.  It's not until she reclaims her memories (some magic how, some magic way) and reunites with him that the fish:

• loses color
  
• turns into the scale we know
  
• sinks, in some sort of metaphor for lost and/or forgotten
  

Yes, Rafayel was going to die without his heart, that's perfectly clear right at the end, but now they bound by neither vow nor given heart because otherwise the fish would have stayed blue, or the scale would have kept its color (going by worldbuilding logic). So the whole damn thing has been re-set, has it not? 

There is no prophecy anymore that the Beloved must die by the Sea God's hand. The fish/heart he gave, never formally accepted, has faded / is now without power and has been left behind. So.. Rafayel is free to chose as he wishes going forward as a man, and not as a God? He left everything in the sand-dust and is no longer shackled by it? The devotion that is now being given wholeheartedly by his Follower, under no coercion, is what he truly needed?

[Coldsaturn]

Your way of reading it is what I also want to believe in desperately. Them finally having one myth where things end on a hopeful question mark rather than tragedy and death. But it's infold and I don't trust them, so I always have that alarm ringing off in my ears.

"Or was it literally his actual beating heart, now outside his body?"
in Romirro he says that the specific scale he made into a necklace is /part/ of his heart, whether it's metaphorical, magically linked, or literal.
I remember reading a meta post on twitter where it was pointed out that those blue fish are his scales, so every time he conjures up one he's technically giving MC one of his scales. 
- "the shell-scale cracks and starts to fall apart as she wears it."
Yes because it mirrors the state of Raf's heart and his terminal condition.

- "it was never a scale, just a fish in a bowl that she kept near."
That's the thing though, it was never just a fish, because we see at the end of the story that it turns into a scale, its original form. He does the same in Forgotten Sea when he tests her to see if she will run away from him, he turns one of his scales into a fish that then guides her around Whalefall City before going back to Raf and turning back into a scale. In Sea of Golden Sand he gave the fish/scale to her when he was first gifted to her (and she freed him), and it also has the added implication that he tamed himself for her, since removing a Lemurian's scale allows for people to tame them.

- "the fish (vow and heart) were fine."
I took it as the scale being related to the state of Raf's heart more than anything else, just like in Romirro MC's necklace only responds to Raf's deteriorating state.

- "but now they bound by neither vow nor given heart"
That's where I struggle though: yes we can assume he was successful in breaking their bond (he wasn't actually, it reformed again shortly after), but did she ever give back her heart? I think it was still in her, which is why when she reunites with Raf he tells her "I may actually take your heart". In Romirro she doesn't just command him to take back her heart, but also to end their bond, because those are two different things and you can have one without the other.

I really really really want for Abysswalker to have an open ending or even a happy ending like your interpretation highlights, I'm just too cynical by now to believe infold would actually go in that direction lol
But I would love for you to be right so much.

[ChicletPrime]

....at least we can all admire Rafayel's dagger skills.

[Coldsaturn]

Here I am again, had a little bit of a chaotic weekend.

asuduhkdasjdlaskjdsakljd Raf's dagger skills are no joke in more ways than one we'll see