I valued my crew. Their loyalty had carried me through more storms than I could count. But their fear—their whispered doubts—were weights I couldn’t afford. I didn’t blame them. Mydesperation had led us into the Trench before. My hunger. My arrogance.
If guilt curled inside me, rusted and heavy, I kept it buried. If I let it surface, I’d never rise again.
One truth mattered more than all of it. I had to break this curse.
No matter the cost.
I couldn’t spend another decade trapped between sea and shadows, bound to a ship I could never leave.
There was a time I wanted more than blood and saltwater. A life. Maybe a family. A home onland. To grow old. To die quietly.
The sea took that too.
I’d tried spells. Bargains. Blood sacrifices. Nothing worked. But the artifact—
It pulsed with power older than the ocean. Older than the goddess who cursed me.
I believed—no, I knew—it was tied to the moment everything went wrong. To the key that might undo it.
I would drag fate down with me before letting it slip away.
At dusk, with the sea bleeding red beneath the sinking sun, I retreated to my quarters. The storm raged on, but another stormchurned in my chest—doubt, defiance, and the relentless pull of something inevitable.
The artifact remained in my pocket, humming stronger now, aware. The crew’s whispers. The ocean’s warnings. Kael’s defiance.
None of it mattered against the hunger clawing at my ribs. This wasn’t desperation anymore.
It was obsession.
The curse had taken everything—my life, my choices, my future. I wanted to break it not just to be free, but to reclaim the man I’d been before the Trench.
I needed to know if salvation was possible. And I was certain the artifact was the key. It remembered something I didn’t.
And it wanted something from me in return.
My curse hadn’t been born from a drunken brawl or a careless night with a witch.
It was forged in ruins buried beneath black water.
The Forgotten Trench was still days away, but the sea refused to grant us even a moment of mercy. In my quarters, lantern light flickered across the crescent artifact, its surface gleaming with secrets just out of reach.
I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Its hum prickled my skin, pulsing faster in my hands than ever before—a second heartbeat, erratic and insistent. I tried to ignore it, to focus on the crew and the course ahead, but it refused to be forgotten.
My fingers traced the carvings, searching for meaning. If a fragment held this much power, what would the whole thing become?
A knock at the door cut through my thoughts.
“Captain,” Garen said. “You need to see this.”
I set the artifact down, reluctance biting hard. “What is it?” I asked.
“You need to see it for yourself.”
I followed him onto the deck. Wind howled. Rain struck my face in sheets. Garen pointed toward the water.
“There.”
