Then nausea hit again.
It climbed my throat thick and suffocating. My limbs trembled—not from fear, not from magic, but from the cost of channeling something I’d never been trained to hold.
I staggered to the rail, knees buckling, and vomited over the side.
The world spun. My grip locked onto the wood as bile burned its way free, remnants of power curling in my throat like smoke.
Alaric’s voice cut through the fog. “Check the starboard hull! Get those fires out—move!”
I turned toward him.
He was there—commanding, alive, scorched but whole.
Behind him, damage sprawled across the deck: splintered rails, scorch marks, ropes cut or charred. One mast leaned precariously, its base cracked where a siren had struck.
A few crew members lay bloodied and unmoving. Others crouched beside them, shouting for help, tearing cloth into makeshift bandages. One man clutched his side, red leaking between his fingers. Another had burns down the length of his arm.
And still they moved with grim efficiency—the steadiness of people who had met death before and learned how to keep breathing anyway.
They were alive. Barely.
And then there were the ones who hadn’t made it—dragged into the sea mid-scream, pulled down by clawed hands and honeyed lies.
Somehow, we survived the sirens. Somehow,Isurvived.
10
Alaric
The Black Marrow, On Course to the Forgotten Trench
Remember what I said about choosing your battles? Sometimes they choose you.
The crew began the grim work of clearing the aftermath. Boots scuffed against the planks as bodies were dragged toward the banister—some to be returned to the sea, others already beyond recognition, claimed by the abyss before we had a chance to save them.
Salt air hung heavy with the metallic bite of blood and the lingering stink of char. The deck was slick with siren ichor, its sickly glow fading into nothing. Ragged breaths and muttered curses carried between men as they wiped gore from their hands, fingers still unsteady.
Dr. Gideon moved through the chaos with practiced ease, pale eyes assessing wounds with meticulous attention. His skeletal prosthetic hand worked with calculated precision, fingerstightening bandages with an almost unnatural steadiness. Deep creases cut his face—etched by hardship and something far darker—yet his expression never shifted. His skin was pale gray, dark veins webbing beneath it, making him look more corpse than man.
The crew parted instinctively as he passed—some with wary glances, others with quiet respect. No one questioned his skill; he’d saved more lives than they cared to count. There was an unspoken understanding that he wasn’t like them.
He was something else.
Some still feared him, muttering superstitions—whispers of curses clinging to his name, omens following in his wake. They believed he carried death itself, that his presence invited the sea to claim them sooner. Others accepted him with grim practicality. A necessary evil. A price paid for keeping men alive and stitched together.
“Try not to die just yet,” he said dryly. “I’m running low on things to stitch you back together with.”
I scoffed to myself. You’d think a bunch of cursed pirates—bound to a ship and the ocean for eternity—would be harder to shake. Apparently, centuries of supernatural torment hadn’t made them any less superstitious.
Maybe that was the problem.
We knew what haunted us. We knew the shape of our own damnation.
And if there was something out there worse than our curse… that was enough to rattle even the damned.
Gideon hadn’t been part of the original crew. He hadn’t been cursed alongside us. His fate had been different—worse, in some ways. He’d been brought back by a witch, bound by necromancy to a half-life of endless service. I found him on a ship we raided—already reanimated, already resigned to what he’d become. Opportunism made him mine. Cynicism made him tolerable. And he never failed to do his duty.
Gideon had no illusions about what he was: an experiment in defying death, sustained by forces no man should meddle with. Some still refused to share a drink with him. Despite his dark humor and lack of sentiment, he kept this crew alive.
