The deep channel opens beneath us. I can see it through the phosphorescent murk—a darkness that goes beyond mere absence of light. The Wrecktide’s heart. The place where theSilver Fortunelies in eternal rest, now with Gyla’s ships, surrounded by gold that glows with hungry luminescence.
I dive.
The pressure builds immediately, squeezing my chest, forcing air from my lungs in steady streams of bubbles. I’ve made dives like this before—with Finn, during our salvage days, pushing the limits of what human bodies can endure. But this is different. This water doesn’t just resist—itwants. Every stroke downward feels like swimming into a mouth that’s learning to swallow.
Zoric stays close. His hand closes on my ankle once, steadying me when a current tries to drag me sideways. The contact is brief but grounding—a reminder that I’m not alone, that whatever waits in the darkness, I have someone at my back.
TheFortunematerializes from the gloom.
She’s exactly as I remember from my last dive—masts standing impossibly straight, hull preserved against all natural law, gold scattered across her decks in drifts that pulse with organic rhythm. But now there’s something else. Someone else.
Finn stands at the bow.
Not the drowned thing that visited yesterday—that puppet wearing his corpse. This is different. This is a projection, a manifestation, the hunger taking his shape from my memories rather than his remains. He looks exactly as I remember him from the day he died. Dark hair plastered to his forehead. Brown eyes crinkled at the corners from a smile he never quite stopped wearing. The easy grace of someone who believed nothing could really hurt him.
“Aviora.” His voice echoes through the water, reaching me without needing sound to carry it. “You came.”
As I land on the deck beside him, the water moves away from me like it’s being repelled. Repelled by ancient magic. Stale air surrounds me, replacing the water. Zoric follows a moment later, positioning himself at my shoulder, his cutlass drawn despite the futility of the gesture. You can’t cut what exists only in wanting.
“I came.” My voice sounds strange in the deep—distorted, distant, like I’m hearing myself from far away. “But not to bargain.”
“No?” The Finn-shape tilts its head, and the movement is wrong. Too smooth. Too deliberate. “Then why are you here, love? Why dive into darkness if not to give me what I need?”
“I’m here to give you something. Just not what you’re expecting.”
The hunger wearing Finn’s face goes still. Behind it, around it, I can feel the ancient want pressing in—vast and patient and endlessly empty. It doesn’t understand what I’m offering. Doesn’t understand that what I’m about to do is the opposite of everything it feeds on.
Good. That gives me an advantage.
“You want stories.” I step toward the projection, leaving Zoric at my back despite every instinct screaming to keep him close. “You want the thing that makes mortality precious. Thegrief. The guilt. The endless ache of wanting things to be different.”
“Yes.” The Finn-shape’s eyes glow brighter. “Give me that, and I’ll sleep. Give me your pain, Aviora, and I’ll trouble this coast no more.”
“I’m not giving you my pain.” I stop an arm’s length from his face—the face I’ve seen in nightmares for years, the face I’ve blamed myself for erasing from the world. “I’m taking it back.”
“I don’t?—”
“You want human emotion?” I draw a breath of air. “Then take this: I forgive myself.”
The hunger recoils.
The Finn-shape stumbles backward, its features flickering, its form destabilizing. Around us, the phosphorescent light pulses frantically—the ancient want trying to understand what I’ve just said, trying to consume it and finding nothing it can digest.
“That’s not—” The Finn-thing’s voice wavers. “You can’t?—”
“I couldn’t save him.” The words pour out of me now, years of poison finally finding release. “I swam for the surface while he drowned. I made the choice to live when living meant leaving him behind.”
“Yes.” The hunger leans toward me, sensing something it can feed on. “The guilt. The shame. Give me?—”
“No.” I hold up my hand, and the gesture stops it cold. “I’m not giving you guilt. I’m letting it go.”
The Finn-shape shudders. Cracks appear in its surface, light spilling through from somewhere within—not the hungryphosphorescence of the deep, but something else. Something warmer.
“I carried him for years.” My voice grows stronger as I speak. “I let the guilt eat me alive. I turned myself into someone who runs from everyone who gets close, because getting close means losing people, and losing people means drowning in regret.” Tears stream from my eyes—or maybe it’s just the salt water, I can’t tell anymore. “But I’m done. I’m done punishing myself for surviving. I’m done letting his death define my life.”
“You owe me.” The Finn-thing’s voice has changed—deeper, older, carrying the weight of centuries. The mask is slipping. The hunger beneath is showing through. “You owe me the story. The pain. The?—”
“I owe you nothing.” I step closer, and the ancient want flinches back. “Finn died because of a storm. Because of a route we both agreed to take. Because the sea is cruel and luck runs out, and sometimes people don’t come home. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t his fault. It was just—” My voice cracks. “It was just life. Terrible, unfair, heartbreaking life.”
