Barnacles crust the skin as if the sea itself has claimed them. Water seeps from their mouths.
And at the center—one face I do not recognize—smiles.
“Little thief.”
The voice resonates through every throat at once. Wet. Layered. Deeper than Oreth’s, but cut from the same rot.
“The captain wants you.”
Its gaze fixes on the coins at my belt. I feel the cold of them even before it moves.
“Alive,” it continues, the gold tightening around fused flesh. “If possible.”
The mass moves.
Not a charge. A glide.
The chains pull it forward in a lurching, unnatural stride, stone grinding under its weight. A fused arm lashes out, claws forming from knotted bone and gold.
I drop, roll, feel the rush of air as it tears through where my head was a heartbeat ago. I come up throwing my knife. The blade sinks into one of the faces embedded in its shoulder.
The face screams.
The whole thing doesn’t even slow.
The young guard is suddenly at my side. Pale. Steady.
“Go!” he snaps.
“Like hell?—”
“The captain needs you breathing! Go!”
He launches himself forward before I can grab him. His blade drives between two torsos, severing a chain. Gold shrieks like metal under strain. The creature roars—every stolen throatjoining the sound—and slams him aside hard enough to crack stone.
Not again.
I am not watching another boy die buying me time.
The pouch is in my hand before I consciously reach for it. The coins burn cold against my palm, hungry and aware.
“Hey!” I shout.
The fused faces turn toward me.
“You want it?” I shake the pouch. “Come earn it.”
I fling it—not at the monster—but past it, through the torn breach, out toward the cliff edge and the waiting sea.
The coins arc once in the torchlight.
Every chain in the creature’s body snaps taut.
Orders or hunger—hunger wins.
The mass twists violently, limbs tearing free from one another as it lunges after the gold. The combat fighter, bloodied but upright, uses that split second. His blade hacks downward with both hands.
He severs the thickest chain at its spine.
