"You know it's basically impossible to cross the ocean."
Serena's words landed flat, but heavy. She didn't raise her voice or seem to be saying this to discourage Kain; she didn't need to. It was a fact. Her eyes fixed on Kain's, waiting for him to deny it. He didn't.
Kain only nodded, solemn, as if the acknowledgment itself were an admission of defeat.
Because she was right.
The ocean wasn't a simple stretch of water separating continents. It was the greatest natural barrier this world possessed—an aquatic hell wider and perhaps even more merciless than the Abyss itself. Anyone foolish enough to think of it as "just water" never returned to tell their story.
----------------------
The first problem was the creatures.
The shallow coasts already teemed with predators, but the further one ventured out, the stranger and deadlier they became.
Leviathans larger than cities moved in silence beneath the waves, their shadows darkening the sea from horizon to horizon.
