Even the light knew better than to linger here.
The silence pressed close, thick and unnatural—not the calm of still water, but the hush of something waiting. Watching.
Brine and decay filled my lungs as I stared into the abyss ahead. The trench split the ocean open like a wound, its jagged peaks rising like blackened teeth. It wasn’t just a place. It was a gaping maw, and we were sailing straight toward it.
The crew whispered legends about this place—ships swallowed whole, voices calling men into the deep—but what unsettled me most wasn’t fear.
Garen, one of the older crewmen, sidled up beside me as I stared out at the horizon. A jagged line ran from his cheekbone to his jaw, his scowl carved there by wind and salt.
“Ye’ ever seen anythin’ like this?” he asked, not turning his head. “No,” I admitted. “Not even close.”
He grunted, a sound halfway between a laugh and a curse. “Didn’t think so. Seas like this—they don’t let you pass for free. Always take somethin’ from a man. Or worse—send him home with somethin’ he’ll wish he left behind.”
I glanced sideways at him. “So, you believe the stories, then?”
He finally looked at me, eyes dark as tar, just as unreadable. “Aye. I believe what I’ve seen.”
“But… you came back?”
He huffed through his nose—something that might’ve been a laugh. “Not all o’ me, lass.” A pause, then quieter. “And not all o’ them, neither.”
The words hung heavy in the salty air. After a long moment, his expression eased—barely.
“Still,” he said, a ghost of a grin tugging at his mouth, “somethin’ tells me you ain’t the runnin’ sort.”
I snorted. “I’m not the dying sort, either.”
He chuckled low in his chest. “Heh. We’ll see ’bout that.”
And just like that, the silence between us shifted—less guarded, more watchful. Not quite trusting.
The crew’s unease was more than superstition. It was rooted in something real, something unspoken. That conversation with Garen only confirmed what I had already begun to suspect: something had happened here.
Something terrible. Not the kind that haunted dreams, but the kind that rewrote men from the inside out.
Their silence wasn’t just fear. It was remembrance.
The way the crew flinched at the trench’s name, how even the most hardened among them avoided looking too long into its depths—it wasn’t fear of the unknown.
It was fear of memory.
Something inside me pulled toward it—a silent call that resonated through my bones. Even in all its horror—even surrounded by decay, dread, and silence—I was fascinated. Just as the quartz had shimmered in my palm, humming with strange warmth, the trench echoed with that same hidden energy. It vibrated beneath the surface—not in sound, but in sensation.
A tether.
Between it. And me.
The trench terrified me, but it also beckoned. There was beauty in its desolation, in the way it defied the natural order, in thesecrets it refused to surrender. It felt ancient. Untouched. A relic of a forgotten time.
And I, for reasons I didn’t understand yet, wanted to know it. To unravel it. To understand why it felt like it had always been waiting for me.
I flexed my fingers, the ghost of my magic still thrumming beneath my skin—a pulse of something conscious and wild.
The surge had drained me more than I cared to admit. My limbs felt weighted, every movement sluggish, like swimming against an invisible current. My magic, usually a steady hum beneath my skin, flickered unevenly—distant and restless. The exhaustion ran deeper than muscle. It gnawed at something quieter, closer to my sense of self.
Was I strong enough for this?
Could I uncover the truth of who I was without losing myself in the process?
