The closer I stepped, the heavier the air became, pressing against my chest like deep water pressure.
It wasn’t just energy. It was sentient.
It was alive.
The moment I touched it, it felt like the sea cracked open.
The pressure in my chest eased—just slightly. Not relief. Not freedom. But enough to notice. Enough that the constant strain inside my ribs loosened for the first time in years.
I saw her.
A woman with silver hair and a crescent on her brow.
I didn’t know her. But something about her called to the buried parts of me. She looked straight into me—as if she already knew who I was. As though she’d been waiting for this moment.
For me.
Not with fear.
But something worse.
Expectation.
It felt like she was there with me, standing in the wreckage, the pressure of her gaze more real than the deck beneath my boots—staring into my soul and seeing everything I’d tried to bury.
Her presence hit like a wave to the chest—powerful, disorienting, impossibly familiar. My knees buckled. My heart raced with a fear I hadn’t felt since the curse first took hold.
I staggered back. The vision burned behind my eyes, its remnants clinging like salt to skin. The hold felt colder now. Emptier.
Whatever had filled it had only been meant for me—meant for the curse. Whatever bound me was close enough to touch it.
The hum of the artifact still echoed in my bones, but it was her gaze that haunted me. That knowing. That pull.
I slipped the shard into my coat pocket, the fabric instantly warming against my chest.
“Bring the rest aboard,” I told Garen. “Carefully.”
Back on the Black Marrow, I studied the artifact. Its glow wouldn’t fade. Its hum wouldn’t stop. It was watching me. Waiting. I found myself wondering what it was—whether this shard was only the beginning. The pulse it emitted felt incomplete, like a verse cut off mid-chant. If this fragment couldburn like this in my palm, what could the whole thing do? And where had the rest of it gone?
I had spent centuries scouring legends, bartering with monsters, and bleeding through every cursed current for something—anything—that might sever the chain around my neck. Every path had led to dead ends, false prophets, or blood-soaked regrets. But this artifact was different.
I could feel it.
It didn’t just hold power. It radiated it—raw, ancient, unyielding. Significant.
I didn’t understand why, but the moment I touched it, something inside me shifted. It wasn’t just curiosity. It was instinct. A feeling buried so deep it had outlived reason:
Belief.
For the first time in centuries, I felt like the artifact could mean something—not because it promised escape, but because it wanted to be found. Like it had waited for me. Perhaps the sea itself had hidden it away for a reason—and let me find it now.
And I couldn’t help but hope. Hope is dangerous for men like me. It means you haven’t completely given up.
I remember a time—years ago—when I’d placed my hope in a relic dredged from a sunken temple. I bled for it. Offered sacrifices. Whispered every incantation known to the deep.
And still, it did nothing.
Another time, I followed the promise of a seer who claimed she could undo any binding. She drowned before she could speak the final word.
