Long before the first lighthouse stood upon the cliffs, the oldest fishermen taught that the sea did not keep itself alive by tides alone. Hidden beneath its darkest waters burned an ancient hearth, a fire older than the world, whose warmth rose through unseen chimneys in the ocean floor. These places were never called vents by those who sailed above them. They were known simply as the Hearths Beneath the Sea, for it was believed they carried the world's first fire into the endless cold below.

Where that warmth escaped, strange black stone gathered around the chimneys like wax dripping from forgotten candles. It grew slowly, year after year, fed by heat no storm could extinguish. Mariners claimed the stone was neither wholly rock nor wholly metal, but something still being fashioned by the earth itself. Some said it listened. Others believed it remembered every sound carried into the depths by the sea.

The creatures of the abyss were said to know this long before mankind did. Pale eels circled the warm pillars in silent schools, blind crabs nested among the cracks, and fish unlike any caught near the surface gathered wherever the dark stone continued to grow. No nets were ever cast there willingly. The elders warned that any place where life flourished without sunlight belonged to older laws than those of the living world.

On rare occasions the sea surrendered a fragment of the black deposit after earthquakes or violent storms disturbed the ocean floor. Such pieces were never carried home for wealth, for no jeweller could shape them and no furnace could truly master them. Instead they were placed beside village bells, for the old keepers believed the stone answered sound more readily than hammer or flame. They claimed a familiar bell could calm the restless warmth sleeping within it, while silence allowed it to remember the darkness from which it came.

For that reason, every recovered fragment was treated with quiet respect. If it remained warm through the heart of winter, no one questioned it. If it seemed larger than it had been the season before, no one measured it. The sea had merely continued the work it began long ago beneath the world, where its hidden hearth still burned beyond the reach of sun or sail. And the oldest fishermen would only smile before saying,

""The sea grows its mountains where no eyes can watch."""