The captain's office aboard the Ore-Hauler was a capsule of weathered authority. The walls were panels of dark, salt-stained timber, lined with shelves holding ledgers, rock samples, and a single, well-polished brass barometer. The air smelled of old pipe smoke, strong coffee, and the faint, ever-present scent of mineral dust that no amount of scrubbing could erase. Morning John Belied stood at his solid oak desk, the weight of the day pressing on his broad shoulders like a slab of granite. Outside the thick porthole, the sky over Gora-Gora Island was stained the color of a fresh bruise, purpling with impending dusk.
With a grimace that deepened the crags in his face, he picked up the heavy black receiver of his private Den Den Mushi. It rang with a dull purururu that echoed in the quiet room.
It clicked. The snail's features softened, then reshaped themselves into a visage of stern, weathered stone: a strong jaw hidden by a long, dark beard, eyes the cool grey of sea-worn pebbles, and an expression carved from the same unyielding material as the island's foundations. Grutte Pier Dorian.
The snail's mouth opened. "Morning, how is the—?"
"We have a situation," Morning cut in, his voice a gravelly roll. No time for pleasantries. The words were already bitter on his tongue.
On the other end, a low, resonant groan emanated from the snail, a sound of profound inconvenience. "Continue."
"Gora-Gora was attacked."
The snail's features hardened. "WHAT!" The voice wasn't a shout; it was a sudden, seismic crack, the sound of bedrock splitting under pressure. Morning could almost feel the vibration through the shell.
"Now the island's unstable. There's been a major cave-in. The volcano is…" Morning paused, his vocabulary failing him for a moment. He searched for the word that encapsulated the angry, pulsing glow he'd seen in the fissures, the way the mountain pulsed as if its viens were about to burst. "Volatile."
A beat of heavy silence. Then, Pier's voice, back under iron control. "I will send reinforcements."
Morning let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "That would be helpful. We've detained the assailants, but…"
"Take them to Kamaten," Pier interjected, his tone leaving no room for debate. "Ekkoo can put them to work. A few years treading the screw will drain the fight from anyone."
Morning nodded slowly, the motion unseen. The justice of the Soverien's islands were simple, direct, and exhausting. "That seems fitting…"
BANG! The world exploded.
It wasn't a sound from outside so much as the ship itself screaming. A colossal BOOM, deeper than thunder, punched through the hull. The office didn't shake—it lurched violently to starboard as if slapped by a giant's hand. Morning was flung from his feet. The desk slid, its legs shrieking against the floorboards. Ledgers and rock samples became deadly projectiles. He crashed into a heavy cabinet, the impact driving the air from his lungs in a painful grunt.
Dazed, ears ringing, he lay on the now-tilted floor. From somewhere near his boot, the Den Den Mushi emitted a tinny, urgent voice. "Morning! REPORT! What is—?!"
Ignoring the snail, Morning pushed himself up, his body protesting. He stumbled to the porthole, his heart a cold, heavy drum in his chest.
The view was gone. Not darkened by night, but obliterated. A rolling, churning wall of black and grey, shot through with specks of glowing, furious orange, blotted out the dying light. Ash. Smoke. And heat—a wave of it, dry and suffocating, already seeping through the seals of the glass, carrying the scorched, sulfur-and-cinder smell of the mountain's guts being vomited into the sky. The volcano wasn't volatile anymore. It was apoplectic.
"Gotta go!" he barked at the snail, snatching the receiver and slamming it down, cutting off Pier's demands mid-word.
He wrenched his cabin door open and burst onto the main deck. Chaos, held together by discipline. His crew—miners first, sailors second—were scrambling, their faces pale under a fine, falling snow of grey ash. The sky was a roiling ceiling of doom. The distant peak of Gora-Gora was now a fount of hellish light, a dull red pupil in a socket of black smoke. The very air crackled with static and falling cinders.
"Set sail!" Morning's roar cut through the panic. "Depart at once!"
His men froze, looking at him as if he'd ordered them to swim into the inferno. The island was their home, their life, their work. One of them, a grizzled foreman with soot already clinging to his eyebrows, yelled back, "But sir… the teams still down there! Over! Dusty! We can't just—!"
"NOW!" Morning's voice was a whip-crack, the sound of a mountain deciding to save what it could. "Set a course for Kamaten! Any man who wants to live to dig another day, MOVE!"
The sheer force of his will broke their paralysis. They scattered, becoming a blur of action. "Yes sir!" "Loose the lines!" "All hands! Prepare to make way!"
The Ore-Hauler was a tough ship, built for hauling ore, not for grace. Her engines, great clunking beasts below decks, wheezed and thrummed to life. Morning staggered to the port rail, his knuckles white as he gripped the warm, ash-dusted wood. The dock, a sturdy construct of iron and fossilized coral, was buckling. The sea itself was churning, not with waves, but with violent, convulsive heaves as the island's foundations shuddered. Geysers of superheated water and steam erupted between the pilings.
"Come on, you stubborn bitch," he muttered to his ship, to the island, to fate itself. "Pull!"
The lines were cast off. The propellers churned the ash-choked water into a filthy froth. For a terrifying, elongated moment, nothing happened. The ship was held fast, not by ropes, but by the violent, shifting surge of the water, pushing her back toward the disintegrating dock.
"Full power!" Morning bellowed, spitting out ash. "Give me everything!"
The engine's pitch rose to a pained scream. The ship groaned in protest, metal straining. Then, inch by agonizing inch, she began to pull away. A support beam from the dock, sheared in half, tumbled into the water with a colossal splash mere feet from the stern.
Morning didn't watch the island. He couldn't. He kept his eyes on the emerging path through the smoky haze, on his crew wrestling with the wheel, on the frantic need to escape the mountain's dying breath. But in his mind, he saw the dark tunnels, the glowing fissures, the faces of his people.
His grip on the rail was so tight the wood creaked. He forced his voice to stay level, a captain's calm in the throat of hell.
"Over, Dusty," he whispered, the words stolen by the hot, ash-laden wind. "You better live."
And with a final, shuddering lurch, the Ore-Hauler tore herself free, sailing into the blinding, choking curtain of the eruption, leaving a home turned tomb behind in the furious, glowing dark.
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