“He wasn’t the first,” I said. “And he won’t be the last. The ocean takes what it wants. It doesn’t ask.” I exhaled slowly. “There are places in this world that don’t forgive. And this trench remembers every hand that’s ever dared to reach inside.”
I hesitated, the echo of old memories brushing too close.
“And sometimes,” I added quietly, “I wonder if he ever really left at all.”
I let the silence stretch, watching Nerina closely. She leaned over the railing and looked down at the water below, as if searching it for some hidden truth. A shiver passed through her—notfrom the cold, but something deeper, something unsettled. Yet she didn’t step away. Instead, she squared her shoulders and exhaled slowly, steadying herself against the weight of the story. There was no fear in her expression, only curiosity.
"And what was he after?" she finally asked, voice quiet but edged with something I couldn't quite place. Not dread. Not disbelief. Something else. Something that made me wonder if she had already decided that she wouldn't share the same fate.
“Some things aren’t meant to be taken,” I said, glancing sideways at her. “Some things take you instead—turn you into something else. Something monstrous. Until even your own reflection looks like a stranger.”
I watched her reaction carefully, though I kept my expression still. Maybe I’d said too much—again. But she didn’t flinch. Just stared out over the waves, calm and unreadable. Like she wasn’t sure if I’d told her a ghost story or offered her a glimpse behind the curtain. Maybe she thought it was just a pirate’s fable. Maybe I hoped she would.
She turned her head slightly, just enough that I caught the edge of her profile in the misty light. "And maybe," she said at last, voice soft but certain, "some things are meant to be taken back."
The water didn’t ripple—it stilled, unnaturally calm. Mist recoiled from the surface like it had been exhaled, and the very air around us thickened with dread. I straightened, instincts thrumming, the weight of inevitability pressing between my shoulders.
The water shifted. Not with current—but with intent.
A pulse echoed through the hull of the Black Marrow, deep and resonant—like the warning toll of a bell rung beneath the sea. The deck shuddered beneath my boots, timbers groaning in protest.
My stomach dropped. Not again.
The crew felt it too—heads snapping toward the stern, hands freezing mid-task.
“All hands! Stations!” I barked, already moving.
Garen started bellowing orders as he hauled on the starboard lines, blood slicking his hands as the rigging burned into his palms.
“Cut it loose!” he shouted, kicking a deckhand back from a snapping rope just as it tore free and whipped across the deck like a living thing. He barely flinched, teeth bared against the pain, eyes locked on the sails like the ship itself depended on him.
It did.
Men sprang into motion on instinct alone. Sail handlers cut loose lines before they could snap and take arms with them. Two deckhands scrambled to secure the starboard rigging, fingers bleeding as they hauled rope through salt-slick pulleys. Someone dragged a wounded man clear of the rail just as the sea beneath usheaved.
The mist curling along the water recoiled—drawn sharply inward, like a tide yanked away from shore.
Then the sea ruptured.
A column of water surged skyward, a wall of foam and salt and raw force that slammed into the hull like a fist. Lanterns tore free from their hooks, glass shattering as they swung wild. The ship pitched hard to port, and men went down in a tangle of limbs and curses. TheMarrowshrieked—wood screaming against pressure it was never meant to withstand.
It rose from the sea like a storm given flesh—vast, monstrous, impossible. Its massive head broke the surface first, crowned with jagged ridges that caught the faint light like shattered obsidian. Water cascaded from its armored hide, each scale layered like plates of some ancient god-forged war engine. Its body stretched on and on, a mountain of serpentine muscle coiling through the air, wings of spined flesh unfurling with terrible grace.
Fissures of molten light pulsed along its spine, glowing like veins of lava beneath abyssal skin—like the beast itself had been stitched together from the ocean and nightmare. Its eyes—slitted, unblinking, scattered down the length of its massive skull—opened one by one, each blinking in slow, predatory rhythm.
Aleviathan.
Marisol skidded across the tilting deck, slamming shoulder-first into the mast as the ship pitched. She swore viciously, shovedherself upright, and dragged a fallen crewman clear just as a tendril smashed down where they’d been.
“Move!” she screamed, shoving bodies toward cover, her knife flashing as she severed tangled lines before they could strangle anyone unlucky enough to trip.
I grabbed the railing tighter as the ship tilted beneath its shadow, knuckles white as the deck bucked. Around me, crewmen shouted orders over one another—some obeyed, some froze, some prayed. A crate tore loose and skidded across the deck, crushing a rope coil and nearly taking a man’s leg with it.
“Hold fast!” I roared.
A tentacle slammed down, splintering planks where three men had been seconds before. Another whipped across the deck, sending a barrel hurtling into the sea and taking a lantern with it. Darkness swallowed half the ship.
I slashed through the nearest limb, steel biting deep into abyssal flesh. Black ichor sprayed across the planks, sizzling where it struck bare skin. The beast recoiled—but not in retreat.
