The dream showed the ship's birth. Built with care. With pride. Intended for honest travel and trade. The elderly man poured his life's work into this vessel. His final masterpiece.
But then... The dream shifted. Abruptly and violently. Darkness descended.
The sunlight vanished. The gleaming deck tore apart at the seams. Plunging into a stinking, blood-soaked darkness.
Jack felt the shift like a punch to the gut. This wasn't just memory. It was raw nightmare etched onto the ship's very being.
Figures swarmed the deck. But these weren't craftsmen. They were coarse, brutal men. Their faces grim and stained. Glistening blades dripped red.
The elderly shipwright lay broken on the splintered wood. His kind eyes were wide with shock. His apprentices were butchered around him.
Jack watched, invisible. The pirates laughed. Kicking the dead bodies aside. This beautiful creation, built with love, was now a prize of slaughter.
The dream warped reality again. The ship wasn't docked this time. It was on the open sea. Sails were black against a stormy sky. The deck ran sticky with grime and fear.
Cages lined the lower deck. Filled with terrified faces – men, women, children. Slaves. The pirates were slavers. Traders in human misery.
They raided villages. Snatched innocents. Packed them onto the Brilliant Twilight. And sold them like cattle in distant ports. The ship felt every scream, every tear, every desperate prayer.
It was a prison. A torture chamber. Sailing under a flag of pure evil.
One night, the atmosphere curdled further. A gaunt figure, cloaked in mystery, came aboard. A cultist. He spoke to the Captain. A hulking brute named 'Bloodeye' Dusk.
The cultist's words slithered into the Captain's ear. Into the officers' minds. Soon, crude, bloody symbols appeared on the deck. They were polished with the lifeblood of their victims.
They held ceremonies often. Very often. Too often. They gathered on the main deck under a pale, indifferent moon. A heavy, ornate statue was unveiled. It was lashed securely to the mast.
It depicted a woman of impossible beauty. Serene and regal. Seated upon a blooming lotus flower. The Goddess of Purity. Jack felt a cold knot in his spectral gut.
He knew this cult. The one that killed Linna. His first ghost friend. This was the cult that twisted beauty into depravity. One that worshipped a monstrous perversion of a goddess.
Their path wasn't true purity. It was a lie layered over malice. He'd seen this before. The cult twisted everything it touched into something vile.
The pirates and the cultists chanted. Their voices were a guttural chorus. Devoid of anything human.
They dragged out prisoners, slaves, and even their own crew members. Anyone they deemed 'impure' or 'necessary'.
Torture followed. It was acts so sickening that they clawed at Jack's spectral senses. This wasn't about plunder or survival anymore. It was about feeding something dark and hungry with pain and despair.
And then... They brought out a girl. Young. barely a teenager. She was clad in torn, simple clothes. Her face was pale. Her eyes were wide with terror. But there was a sense of innocence about her that made the scene even more horrifying.
They called her a 'virgin sacrifice'. Claiming her untainted blood would grant them power. Power to summon the goddess's favor for their foul deeds.
Jack's ethereal form quivered with cold fury. The depth of their twisted evil was too much for him.
They raised a wicked, hooked knife. The girl's scream tore through the night. Her blood was bright crimson against the foul wood. It sprayed across the deck as her life was brutally extinguished.
But somehow, something went wrong. The moment her blood touched the deck planks, the ship screamed. Not a sound. But a vibration that shook the very fabric of the dream.
The girl's dying purity. Mingled with her terror and rage. The accumulated misery of centuries of victims. The raw wickedness of the cult. The very essence of the ship's forced complicity... All of them were mixed. And then... ignited.
It was a raw, wild, terrifying power.
The ship didn't just gain power. It transformed. The planks rippled, groaned, snapping free from their moorings. The mast elongated. Twisting into a serpentine neck.
The hull bloated and reshaped itself into a colossal, scaled body. Metal fittings became sharp teeth. The rudder turned into a segmented tail.
The Brilliant Twilight transformed. Into a Leviathan. A monstrous entity of wood and rage. Vaguely serpent-like, yet fundamentally alien.
It thrashed. It was a force of nature born from violation. The pirates and cultists a few moments before were celebrating their barbaric ritual. They were tossed into the churning sea like dolls.
Slaves in the lower decks, still chained, were ripped free. Or crushed as the structure warped.
The Leviathan didn't discriminate. It plunged into the water. It was a gaping maw of splintered wood and jagged metal. It devoured everything it could reach.
Pirates, cultists, slaves – all consumed in a frenzy of uncontrolled power.
Then, as abruptly as it had transformed, the leviathan shuddered. The monstrous form collapsed inward. It reshaped itself back into the familiar shape of the frigate. Of Brilliant Twilight. Albeit it was now more terrifying and decayed,
But it wasn't over. The ship could feel. Every scream swallowed. Every fear devoured. Every fragment of pain and despair. From the hundreds – maybe thousands – of souls it had consumed... was now trapped within it.
The terror of the slaves. The agony of the girl. The dying hate of the pirates. The cultists' fear of backfiring rituals. They were all there. They were the symphony of suffering echoing continuously through its structure.
The dream shifted again. It became a blur of endless, grey sea. Jack somehow knew... years passed, then decades, then centuries. The ship drifted. It was alone. Condemned to wander in nonstop spiritual pain.
It could feel the decay. The salt biting at its non-existent wood. But the suffering stll came from the internal torture.
It searched. Blindly, hopelessly, for release. For an end to the torment it had become. It was a ghost ship. Haunted not by individual spirits. But by the collective agony of its terrible history.
Jack floated there. A silent witness.
The Spirit of Judgement. That was his source of power. He was meant to judge. The pirates? Easy. They were guilty. The sacrificed maiden? Innocent. The cultists? Guilty. The slaves? Innocent.
But the ship? How the hell should he judge the ship?
It was built with hope. Forced to be the vessel of evil. And ultimately became a monster that consumed everyone, innocent and guilty alike. And then, condemned to eternal suffering.
How did you judge a vessel turned victim turned unintentional executioner? There was no neat box for this.
He didn't know how to judge it in the traditional sense. He couldn't condemn it further. It was already in its own hell. He couldn't declare it innocent. It had committed monstrous acts, however unwillingly.
"I guess I have to leave it to intuition this time." Jack muttered. "Let's just try to ease its sufferings."
He closed his ethereal eyes. He focused not on the agony surrounding him. But on the faint, lingering warmth from the ship's beginning. The loving touch of the shipwright. The diligent care of his apprentices.
He moved further. The pure, bright spark of the sacrificed girl.
Jack didn't think. He felt. He reached out with his spectral will. Not to judge this time, but to guide. He nudged the nightmarish currents of the dream. Not towards punishment, but towards a possibility of peace.
He focused on the concept of release. Of finding the origin. Of returning home.
The grey sea of eternal torture began to shimmer. A light appeared on the horizon of the dream. Not the harsh and blinding light. But the soft and inviting one.
It grew. Coalescing into a vast, golden chasm. Not of void, but of welcoming warmth. Jack guided the dream forward. Urging the tormented consciousness of the ship towards that light.
The ship crossed the threshold. The suffering within the ship's nightmare began to fade. Replaced by a profound, resonant silence.
Standing on the other side, were figures. Bathed in the warm, golden light. The elderly shipwright with peaceful expression. His apprentices beside him, solid and whole.
And the young girl. No longer terrified. Calm, faint smile gracing her lips.
The ship drifted towards them. The girl walked forward. She spoke. Her voice was soft. It was inaudible to Jack. But it clearly calmed the ship.
The shipwright and his apprentices approached as well. They didn't look at the ship with fear or anger. But with the same loving care they had shown at its creation.
They began to work. Not building it anew. But unbuilding the suffering. They pulled at the strands of pain. The knots of fear. And the layers of agony that had bound the ship for centuries.
As they worked, the dark, tormenting energy bled away. Leaving behind only the golden light.
Jack felt the pull of reality. The dream was winding down. His task here was complete. He had shown the ship the path. He hadn't judged it. He had facilitated its own salvation.
He was back on the open sea. Floating not far from the ghost ship. The dark clouds above were dissipating. Shredded by an unseen force.
The spectral ship was glowing. A soft, radiant golden light emanated from its decaying timbers. Banishing the shadows. Erasing the terror.
The light intensified. Bathing the undulating sea in a warm glow. Then, the ship simply faded. It didn't sink. It didn't explode. It just... ceased to be there. Gone.
Silence fell over the waves. All that remained was a single object. Bobbing gently on the surface. One crafted from dark, sturdy wood. Its brass fittings gleamed dully. A steering wheel.
Jack drifted closer. It felt significant. He reached out an ethereal hand and touched the wood.
Instantly, the familiar interface flared before his spectral vision.
[OBJECT OF POWER DISCOVERED!]
[NOT ENOUGH POWER INTENSITY. ABSORBED AND CONDENSED INTO 7 ARTIFACT SEEDS.]
[DETECTED THE HOST POSSESSING 10 SEEDS]
[AVAILABLE CONVERSION OF 8 SEEDS TO A PERSONAL ARTIFACT] CHOOSE ONE:
[SHIELD OF DUAT]
[BATTLE MAGICIAN CANE]
[NINE-ANCHOR PORTAL RING]
It was another artifact to choose. Great!