Many, many years ago, there once was a beautiful city where everyone was content and there were few things that one could want that could not be provided in an instant. This city was not large, but its inhabitants were full of pride and love for the home they had been gifted from the gods so many centuries before. Were any one of them to cross paths with someone from the outside world, they could speak endlessly about the spiraling towers and the almost magical self-maintaining systems powered by a mysterious red powder that kept the city in working order and its inhabitants comfortable.

  But no one who called this city home would ever meet anyone from the outside world, if such people were to even exist, for the entire city was encased by a mysterious barrier known to those inside it as the Edge of the World. Inside the Edge, there was abundant light, but in the World Beyond, the only light was that which escaped through the Edge. It was this light that allowed the city’s inhabitants to peer into the World Beyond and glimpse the strange and bizarre World Creatures that dwelled there. The Creatures came in many different shapes and sizes: some were yellow and had an uncountable number of spikes, and others were smaller and had orange and white stripes. Children often liked to watch the Creatures float by and vanish into the World Beyond.

  One such child was a boy named Enki. On one particular day, he was watching a curious yellow World Creature who had wandered up to the Edge. Enki placed his hand on the Edge’s cold surface, and the Creature enlarged itself, revealing its spikes, before quickly retreating back into the World Beyond.

  “Mother,” Enki mused, turning to face his mother, who was sweeping the cold, hard stone tiles of a walkway only a few feet away, “Are there any other cities out there, in the World Beyond? You know, with people like us?”

  “Of course not,” Enki’s mother replied, without even looking up. She and her son had this conversation so often that it had practically become their own private ritual. “There’s only the city and the World Beyond.”

  “But how do you know? Has anyone actually been into the world beyond?”

  “Of course not; we couldn’t survive outside the city. Why else would the gods have created the Edge, if not to protect us from the World Beyond, and why else would it be forbidden to break through the Edge? And anyway, why would anyone go to the trouble of creating another city when we have everything we could ever need right here?”

  “But what if the other cities came first?”

  “Enki, you’ve been paying attention in school, haven’t you? If there were other cities, don’t you think someone would have known about them? Every text that we have says that we are the only city, even the ones from centuries ago, not long after the city was created.” Enki opened his mouth, about to protest, but before he could say anything more, his mother propped her broom against a nearby fence, turned to him with her arms crossed, and said, “That’s enough, Enki. Now you’re just arguing for the sake of an argument.”

  Enki groaned and turned his attention back to the World Beyond, hoping that another Creature would appear to entertain him.

  Enki’s mother sighed and continued sweeping once it was clear that Enki wasn’t going to ask any more questions. She hated to argue with her son, because she too had once wondered about the World Beyond and had hassled her parents with the same questions. However, she would never admit that to her son, at least not while he was still so fixated on the World Beyond. She had seen others who couldn’t let it go, and she had seen them be crushed when they realized that no one else was willing to risk the wrath of the gods by trying to leave the city and explore. She didn’t want that kind of disappointment for her son.

  Unfortunately, Enki did not learn to let the World Beyond remain a mystery. As he grew up, he would often spend hours in the library, researching both the Edge and the World Beyond. His biggest discovery yet was that the Edge seemed to be made of a rare material known as glass, a transparent substance that had once been fairly common in the city, but over the centuries had become so rare due to breakage and reuse to form other materials that Enki had never seen it used anywhere else before. Even more exciting was the discovery that glass was fairly brittle; with an assortment of common tools, it might be possible to break through the Edge without too much difficulty. He just had to get others in the city on board with his plan, or else he risked being taken away by the city’s peacekeepers before he could make it through.

  Enki’s chance finally came when the city’s water filtration system began to fail. In the past few weeks the water had somehow become strangely salty and undrinkable, and due to the self-maintaining nature of the system, no one alive knew how to fix it. The city was running out of drinkable water.

  At first, the inhabitants of the city assumed that the gods would return to fix the broken system. Eventually, however, after it was clear that they would have to solve the problem themselves, a meeting was called by the queen to determine what to do about the water shortage. Once the day finally came, Enki waited patiently in the city’s common for a chance to speak. Finally, after updates from the team of volunteers who were attempting to decipher the advanced technology of the filtration system, the queen opened the floor for suggestions, and eventually, Enki was granted permission to speak. Nervously, he stood and began to speak. “We could look for drinkable water outside the city.”

  A stunned silence fell over the plaza as everyone turned to stare at Enki. After a few agonizing moments, a faint voice could be heard from the other side of the common. “How can you even suggest that? It is the one thing that is forbidden by the gods. Are you so ungrateful that you would risk their wrath?”

  Enki turned toward the source of the voice, and argued, more determined this time, “This isn’t a matter of being grateful or not. This is a matter of life and death. Do you think the gods would rather that we die of thirst?”

  At that, the eyes of all the city’s inhabitants turned to face the queen, waiting for a decision. After a brief discussion with her top advisors and closest family members, she returned and spoke. “We will continue to attempt to repair the filtration system for two weeks. If we are unsuccessful… we will then attempt to break through the Edge, and search for water elsewhere. This meeting is over.” The crowd broke into a roar, some people cautiously hopeful and some furious, but the queen had already turned and was walking away, her mind clearly made up.

  Two weeks later, the city was feeling the effects of the water shortage. While everyone had enough to survive for now, water was so carefully rationed that the entire population was perpetually thirsty, and the chance to bathe was a luxury one rarely had access to. The team of volunteers had made no further progress on deciphering the ancient technology, and a crowd was beginning to form at the Edge break site, not far from where Enki used to sit with his mother and ask about the World Beyond.

  In fact, the two sat there now, watching the people mill about in silence as they waited for the queen to arrive. Because Enki was the one who had suggested searching beyond the wall for water, the queen had named him the Edgebreaker. He was excited, but also nervous, as he waited to see what the gods had planned for him.

  Finally, the queen arrived, and stood next to Enki and his mother. “Are you ready?”

  “Of course, your highness,” Enki replied, the shakiness in his voice the only thing betraying his nervousness.

  “It’s time, then,” said the queen, before walking over to address the restless crowd and explain the plan.

  “Enki…” The strained note in his mother’s voice made Enki turn to her. “Good luck.”

  Enki’s mother looked concerned, but also hopeful and excited. It was then when Enki knew that his mother had always wanted to explore the World Beyond every bit as much as he did. He smiled and gave her a hug. “Thanks, mother.”

  He then quickly turned away and headed towards the break site, hoping his mother didn’t notice the happy tear he wiped away, as he realized he wasn’t so strange for being curious after all.

  The entire crowd held its breath and watched as Enki prepared to break one cube of glass. The tool he chose from the small pile was a long, metal object with three points at one end that had been dug out from the city’s collection of old tools. He wasn’t quite sure what it was made to do, but he thought it might be a good idea to keep his hands away from the Edge, just in case the World Beyond was toxic somehow. He had done a lot of thinking lately about what the World Beyond would be like, but now that the time had finally come to find out, he was more anxious than excited. What would happen to him after he broke through the edge? No one had ever done it before, after all.

  Pushing his fears aside, Enki leveled his strange tool and timidly tapped the glass.

  Cracks began to spread across the surface of the block, and Enki, emboldened, tapped the glass harder.

  Enki hadn’t been sure what to expect would happen once the block had been destroyed, but he was surprised when a clear liquid started to pour in through the hole. A clear liquid… was it—

  “It’s water,” the queen mused. A murmur broke out amongst the crowd. Had their prayers been answered? Could it really be this easy?

  The queen bent down and stuck a finger in the water, and then brought it up to taste it. Her face immediately turned sour.

  “What’s wrong?” Enki asked, alarmed.

  “It’s… salty.”

  A pained expression crossed Enki’s face. Not only did water surrounding the city make it impossible to further explore the World Beyond, but the water was also of no use to anyone in the city. It occurred to Enki that this must have been where the salt in the water filtration system had come from. They also had the hole in the Edge to deal with. Perhaps the gods had decided to punish their hubris after all.

  Silence fell as one-by-one the people in the crowd noticed the concerned expressions of Enki and the queen. Eventually, someone asked, “What are we going to do?”

  After an intense discussion, the queen spoke. “First, we need to plug this hole, to keep the city from being flooded.” The water, though it was only coming in through a small hole, had already covered the area. A World Creature had even gotten caught up in the flow and was now splashing around a few feet away. “Next, we need to continue trying to fix the filtration system. Since we cannot find water elsewhere, the filtration is our only hope.”

  The crowd remained silent as the queen spoke, as everyone came to the realization that if the filtration system could not be fixed, the city would be doomed.

  Three weeks later, the filtration restoration project had been abandoned and the fresh water had run out. The Edge had begun to fracture where Enki had made a hole, with cracks creeping across the dome. Water was streaming in through the gaps, and had filled the bottom half of the dome, so anyone who hadn’t yet died of thirst was gathered in the highest reaches of the castle in the center of the city.

  Enki watched out the window as the water inched closer and closer. He couldn’t help but feel that he was to blame for the demise of his city. If he had given up his dream of exploration, would they have had the time to have a breakthrough in the restoration efforts?

  “It’s not your fault,” a hoarse voice said from behind him. Enki turned and saw the queen, who looked extremely exhausted and was barely able to stand. She had given the last of her water to others a few days ago and was even more dehydrated than most of the rest of the people huddled in the towers. “Our city was doomed either way. Even if the filter had been fixed, how long would it have been until something else failed? The air filter, perhaps? The real fault lies with us, the people of the city, for not learning how to maintain the systems ourselves instead of relying on prayers to fix our problems.”

  Enki sighed. “You’re right. We were complacent, and now we’re facing the consequences.”

  Together they waited, biding their time and hoping that the gods might have mercy on them after all.

  Many, many years later, Alex was trying to swim around some pufferfish without getting stung when she came upon another set of mysterious ruins. She had seen several of these ever since she arrived in this part of the sea a few days ago. Each one was fairly similar, though they seemed to vary somewhat in size and age. As she grew closer to the broken towers, Alex could see that this particular city was one of the best-preserved ones that she had come across. Whereas many of the ruins she had seen had few full buildings left, this city was nearly intact. Even the large glass dome that must have protected the city’s inhabitants was still partially intact, forming a clear border between the city streets and the sea floor. Knowing she would soon run out of air, even with her enchanted helmet, Alex took one last look at the broken city, and wondered what life must have been like in an ancient dome under the sea.