The Duskwind sailed away from Rask's Teeth with the reluctant blessing of a dozen pirate flags and the promise of fractured unity. Above, clouds like bruises crawled across the sky. Below, the sea churned with unseen tension, as if the abyss itself was restless.
Mara stood at the stern, wind tugging at her coat, the Shardfang sheathed but restless. Its obsidian surface hummed faintly, reacting to something unseen but unmistakably close. Her eyes tracked the shifting horizon, aware that the next step of their rebellion lay in ancient waters best left undisturbed.
"How much farther?" she asked.
Darion stepped beside her, a salt-cracked chart in his hand. "Half a day. We'll reach the Threshold by dusk. If the old maps are right, the Vault lies beyond the Maelstrom Scar."
Abyr joined them, arms crossed, brow furrowed. "You're really going through with it? Opening the Abyssal Vault?"
"If there's a weapon in there that can tilt the scales, we need it," Mara replied.
He grimaced. "And if it's not a weapon? If it's something worse?"
Mara didn't flinch. "Then we lock it tighter than before. But we have to know."
The Scar
By nightfall, the sky had turned to slate, and the wind moaned like a chorus of the drowned. Lightning sketched veins across the horizon, illuminating the gaping wound in the sea—the Maelstrom Scar. It spiraled downward like a living thing, massive and wrong, devouring light and sound.
The Duskwind shuddered as it approached the swirling maw. The currents pulled with a hunger that threatened to snap the ship in two. Lirien tightened her grip on the wheel, sweat beading her brow. "We're not sailing into that," she muttered. Her voice trembled, but her hands stayed firm.
"No," Mara said. She held up the key taken from her mother's chest. It glowed faintly blue. "We dive."
The crew stared. Even Darion looked rattled. "Dive? You mean below?"
"This ship's Driftborn-forged," Mara explained. "Her bones remember how to breathe beneath the waves. We sail into the Scar."
With a groan of timbers and a chorus of muttered curses, the Duskwind angled toward the vortex. The scar swallowed the ship like a mouth, and the surface vanished behind a shroud of black water.
Beneath the Sea
As the ship descended, bioluminescent lights flickered from the hull—ancient Driftborn glyphs awakening after generations of slumber. The pressure groaned against the planks, but the ship held, sealed by water magic older than kingdoms.
The world below was an eerie symphony of silence and shifting shadows. Fish with translucent skin and teeth like daggers drifted past. Faint whispers echoed through the hull, or perhaps they were only imagined. The deeper they descended, the more the crew felt time itself bend.
Cabins filled with uneasy murmurs. The cook, old Garthin, swore he saw something blink through the porthole. One of the younger crewmates refused to leave the hold, whispering a prayer to spirits she claimed she saw swirling beyond the ship.
Outside, massive shadows drifted past—serpents of coral and bone, ancient leviathans watching from the dark. One brushed the hull, and the Shardfang vibrated in its sheath, responding like a tuning fork to some forgotten frequency.
Below, the sea opened like a broken cathedral. Pillars of stone rose from the seafloor, twisted into impossible shapes. Faint currents swirled with shimmering sediment, like stars adrift in a void. And at the center stood a monolithic door of obsidian and gold—the entrance to the Abyssal Vault.
The Vault Opens
Mara stepped off the ship onto ancient stone, the key pulsing in her hand. The crew disembarked behind her, blades drawn, breath held. Abyr muttered a prayer under his breath, while Darion scanned the shadows, pistol ready.
They passed carvings etched along the walkway, depictions of beings not quite human, with coral for hair and glowing runes spiraling across their arms. One relief showed the sea splitting open as a ship not unlike the Duskwind sailed into it, bearing a sigil matching the one on Mara's key.
The door loomed tall, covered in carvings—serpents, crowns, screaming mouths. Symbols none of them recognized, yet all of them felt. With slow purpose, Mara pressed the key into the heart of the seal.
The stone screamed.
Light spilled outward, a pulse that hit like thunder. The doors split apart with a hiss, revealing a chamber flooded in pale green glow.
Inside were relics. Weapons etched with runes, armor forged in the shape of sea beasts. Banners bearing sigils lost to time. Bones lay scattered like warnings. But at the center, on a pedestal of bone, rested a sphere of glass.
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Mara stepped forward. The Shardfang flared violently. "It's not a weapon," she murmured. "It's a memory."
Awakened
As her fingers brushed the sphere, the chamber trembled. Visions exploded in her mind—battles fought before history, gods drowned by mortal hands, and the first Iron Tide, born from betrayal and blood.
She saw her mother—not Maria the sailor, but Maria the bearer. The seal-keeper. The one who turned the tide the first time. The cost she paid. The memories she hid away.
Then, a whisper: *"You must finish what she began."
Mara collapsed, the sphere clutched in her hands.
When she awoke, her crew surrounded her.
"It showed me... everything," she whispered. "The Tide can't be stopped. Not with blades. Not with ships. But with remembrance."
Abyr looked confused. "What does that mean?"
Mara stared at the sphere, now quiet. "It means we turn their oldest weapon against them. We make the sea remember. We don't just fight their soldiers—we awaken the tides against them."
Darion sat back on his heels. "And what if the sea remembers things we wish it wouldn't?"
"Then we learn from them. We atone, or we drown."
The Return
The Duskwind rose from the abyss, carried by currents that no sailor could chart. The crew stood in stunned silence as the Scar vanished behind them like a dream. Above, the sky had cleared, stars blinking into view as if they too were drawn by the sphere's awakening.
Mara remained on the deck, the orb nestled in her lap. Darion joined her, silent. For the first time, she looked unsure.
"Will they believe us?" he asked.
"They won't have to," she replied. "They'll feel it."
That night, the sea sang. It wasn't wind, nor wave, nor whale. It was something deeper—a tone that shook the masts and made every creature aboard the Duskwind pause. Mara recognized it. The sea was remembering.
And far across the sea, on the deck of an Iron Tide warship, a Seer gasped and fell to her knees.
"She found it," the Seer whispered. "The Tidebreaker is awake."
The admiral narrowed his eyes. "Then the war truly begins."