Atlantis appears in the book not as a visited place but as the setting of a remote catastrophe: the shattering of the sea floor that released Myrkur from beneath the earth. That ancient origin gives the present dangers around the sea a history far older than the shipwrecks and curses now troubling the characters.

The Catastrophe and Myrkur’s Release

The account links Atlantis to a split in the sea floor and to Myrkur’s release from the under-earth. It offers no further description of Atlantis’s geography, society, or ruins; the place matters through the rupture associated with its destruction. Myrkur is identified as a Curse-Breather rather than a Curse-Maker, and her emergence brought darkness and turmoil to the heart of the seas.

That distinction makes Atlantis the setting for a mythic beginning, not merely a lost kingdom. Myrkur’s power predates the curse-making tradition: she taught many of the original Curse-Makers. The account therefore places her outside and before the systems of magic that later characters confront.

From Primordial Rupture to Present Danger

The book connects this ancient origin to present maritime peril without suggesting that Atlantis itself is the location of the current action. Prince James recounts that, a fortnight earlier, his ship was driven into Serpent’s Pass, the ring of protruding stones between Hanter-broder and Hanter-hwor. The wreck left the crew lost, while James survived after being taken to shore by a woman whose singing eased his fear. Galahad later identifies that rescuer as Meira and discovers that Myrkur’s bargain has tied her human form and survival to marriage with the prince.

Galahad’s account to Reola interprets the wreck as part of Myrkur’s design: the Sea Witch arranged the shipwreck and exploited Meira’s attachment to the person she saved. Atlantis is not named as the direct cause of that scheme. Instead, its ancient catastrophe establishes the deep history behind the being now manipulating events at sea.

Narrative Significance

Atlantis functions as an origin point in the book’s mythology, disclosed through an account of Myrkur rather than through a journey to the place itself. The narrative moves from a vast rupture in the sea’s distant past to a specific wreck, a survivor’s memory of singing, and a curse that threatens Meira. That scale shift makes the present crisis feel like an expression of an older maritime disorder, while keeping the characters’ immediate choices—not Atlantis—as the focus of the action.