Between Prophecy and Proof

The Themes at the Heart of Below the Current

If you pick up Below the Current expecting a straightforward sci-fi romance, you'll get one. But you'll also get something a little harder to shake — a story about what happens when the truth you've been looking for turns out to be about you.

Here's what's really driving Coreni Mekkans' story.

Uncovering Truths, Even When It Hurts

Coreni is a journalist, which means she's professionally committed to finding out what people would rather keep hidden. That instinct drives the plot — but it also puts her on a collision course with herself, because not every truth she uncovers is about someone else.

Below the Current doesn't shy away from the cost of knowing. When the facts you've dug up rewrite the story you've been telling yourself about your own life, what do you do with them? The book asks that question without flinching, and Coreni's answer is at the center of everything.

Heritage, Memory, and the Body

One of the things I love most about this world is how literal it gets with the idea that the body carries history. On Trevort, metal has replaced bone in many people — implants aren't unusual, they're universal. It's just what bodies look like.

Coreni's body is different, and she's spent her whole life hiding that difference without fully understanding it. When she finally learns why, it reframes everything: family, lineage, identity. Heritage in this story isn't just what you inherit emotionally. It's written into your cells. And reconciling with it requires something close to excavation — of the past, of the people who came before, and of yourself.

Trust Built in the Dark

Nobody trusts anyone quickly in this book, and I think that's one of the things readers respond to most. When Coreni is saved by a Fraluma warrior who offers almost no explanation, the relationship that follows is built entirely in the gaps — in the moments where both of them have to decide, under pressure, how much to risk.

That slow, hard-won trust mirrors the larger world of the story. When hidden civilizations and fractured loyalties are the backdrop, suspicion isn't paranoia — it's survival. Watching trust grow in those conditions, knowing what it costs to extend it, is where the romance earns itself.

Destiny as a Choice, Not a Script

Prophecy shows up in Below the Current, but it doesn't work the way you might expect. The story isn't interested in destiny as a fixed destination. It's interested in destiny as a pressure — something that arrives and asks what you're going to do about it.

Coreni doesn't get to choose whether the prophecy exists. She gets to choose whether to run from it or walk toward it. That distinction keeps the story emotionally honest. The most powerful moments don't come from fate — they come from the moment a character decides, with full knowledge of the cost, to become who they were told they already were.

Below the Current is an investigative thriller, a slow-burn romance, and a meditation on inheritance and identity — all at once. It asks you to look underneath the surface of things, including the characters you think you know.

It asks whether who we are was given to us — or whether we have to claim it.