For a moment, I couldn’t tell if I had truly left that place… or if it had followed me back.
The cabin was cloaked in shadow, the lantern’s flame guttering with a low hiss as darkness licked at the edges of the room like phantom fingers dragging across damp wood. The only sound was the steady creak of the ship, the distant crash of waves against the hull—an eerie lullaby.
All I could focus on was the thirst—deep, unyielding, clawing at my throat. It felt different. Foreboding. My skin was slick with sweat, gasping as I tried to ground myself. The vision still clung to me, coiled around my thoughts like seaweed tangled in the tide.
I raised a hand to my forehead, fingertips brushing the crescent mark. It was warm, pulsing beneath my touch like a second heartbeat—faint but insistent. I caught my reflection in the lantern’s polished brass—and for a moment, the stars weren’t just in my thoughts. They shimmered in my eyes. Beneath my skin, a faint light danced—constellations stirring just below the surface, flickering and fading before I could focus.
I had to face what I'd seen. The paths laid before me weren’t just possibilities—they were promises wrapped in consequence. Which was mine to walk? One was ruin. One was paradise. Both shimmered with power and peril, waiting for a choice only I could make. Was I strong enough to claim the right one—or would I be swept under by forces too old to fight?
What if this vision, this voice, was only another illusion, a snare spun to bind me where I stood? What if the broken city wasn’t the past—but a warning of what was to come?
The thought gnawed at me, but hesitation was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The choice was coming. And I had no choice but to meet it head-on.
I swallowed against the dryness in my mouth, forcing moisture back into my throat. My tongue felt swollen, my lips cracked; every swallow scraped like sandpaper. My body ached, but the thirst was worse—deep, gnawing, insatiable. My muscles cramped with every movement, skin hot and tight, as if it had shriveled beneath the weight of an invisible sun. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else, joints stiff, balance barely holding.
And if my vision had been right—if the choice was mine to make—then everything that came next depended on me. The weight of it pressed against my chest, urgent and heavy with dread. I wanted to believe I had control, that I could steer fate toward salvation, but doubt coiled in the back of my mind like a lurking tide, whispering of a cost not yet revealed.
Was I ready to pay it?
Even here, in the quiet of the cabin, the echoes of the vision clung to me, lingering like salt on my tongue. The ship rocked beneath me, steady, familiar.
But nothing felt certain anymore.
I moved toward the captain’s desk, my fingers trailing along the worn wood. My gaze flickered to the water pitcher nearby, but I hesitated, stomach twisting with an unease I couldn’t name. Even as my body screamed for relief, something in me held back—a creeping dread whispering that water would not be enough. That this was not a simple thirst, but something being pulled from me, drained in ways I couldn’t yet understand. That it ran deeper than flesh and bone.
The room still carried the scent of salt, ink, and aged parchment, the lantern casting gold over scattered maps and open tomes. Near the edge of the desk, wrapped in a length of dark velvet and tucked half beneath a chart of the southern shoals, lay the quartz—or at least, the jagged fragments we had found. Its edges glowed faintly, barely perceptible unless you knew to look. I could feel it pulsing, responding to something in me.
Or perhaps pulling something out.
My thoughts churned as I settled into the chair, tracing the delicate lines of a celestial map, replaying the vision over and over.
Had the voice been real? Or was it something within me, something buried in my blood, finally waking? Perhaps the vision hadn’t come on its own—something ancient had drawn it out. The same force that pulsed from the Artifact tugged at the edges of my mind, like a tide coaxing secrets to the surface.
As I shifted, my gaze caught on a book near the edge of the desk. I reached for the water pitcher first, hands trembling as I poured a glass. My throat seized at the first sip, the liquid like fire onsand. I drank greedily, desperate, but even as I finished, it barely took the edge off the ache inside me. Still parched. Still hollow.
The leather-bound book beside it caught my eye—cracked, softened by time and use, its pages thick and uneven. Unlike the pristine maps and scrolls, this one was personal.
A journal. Alaric’s journal.
I hesitated, my fingertips brushing the cracked leather, rough and warm beneath my touch. Part of me recoiled at the thought of violating his privacy. This was his—something deeply personal, meant for no eyes but his own. I could almost hear his voice, low and sardonic, teasing me for being nosy. The sound anchored me, made him feel closer—and somehow, that made it harder to resist. If he held secrets about the sea, about himself, then maybe they were worth knowing.
The rational part of me knew I shouldn’t.
But another part—tangled in curiosity and the gnawing need for answers—compelled me forward.
I opened it.
The scent of old salt and worn leather rose from the pages, familiar and strangely intimate. The first few leaves were filled with notes, scrawled in precise, deliberate strokes—maps, coordinates, sketches of strange symbols I didn’t recognize. He had documented places I’d never heard of: some scratched out, others marked with annotations in the margins. The ink bledslightly, worn by time and seawater, but the words were legible enough.
As I flipped further, the tone shifted. The writing became less precise, more erratic. Fragments of thought—memories carved into the page as though they’d been torn from him in the moment he wrote them. These were not the careful notes of a captain, but the confessions of a man who had seen too much and carried it all in silence.
The sea whispers in dreams, and I wake with salt on my tongue. I no longer know if they are mine or borrowed from her.
I see the same stars, the same tide. I chase what I should leave buried. She follows the same pull, but I fear the sea wants her more than it ever wanted me.
It invokes voices older than time. Her voice is among them now. I hear it in sleep, in the echo of my own breath. I’ve tried to shut it out, but silence only invites it closer.
A chill traced down my spine as I read. There was something raw in these words, something that made Alaric seem less untouchable, less assured than he pretended to be. Beneath the clever banter and unwavering command, there was something else—a man trapped between duty and damnation, unable to let go of the past that haunted him.
