The Crimson Accord had not been sung of in a generation, yet its anthem returned with the sound of war drums echoing from the hulls of a reborn fleet. In every wind-beaten sail and rusted saber raised skyward, there was a memory of resistance, a chorus of ghosts rising with the tide.
Mara stood at the prow of the Duskwind as the fleet carved a path through the Glassward Sea, the waters gleaming with the reflection of a thousand flame-lit braziers. It was a sight unseen since the fall of the last Rebellion Tide. Fires danced in braziers lashed to each deck, a tradition among the Accord—a signal to friend and foe alike that war had been declared.
They were not hiding now. They were daring Mallik to see them.
"The fleet is holding tight formation," Darion reported from the upper mast, spyglass to his eye. "The Bladed Mirth is on our port side, and the Black Lark's trailing with the stormrunners."
"And the Nightglass?" Mara asked.
Abyr, polishing the edge of his hook-axe, looked up. "Haven't seen her since Karesh. That old witch sails by scent and gut. She'll come when it matters."
Mara gave a grim nod. She did not need to see the entirety of her force to feel it. The storm was behind her. The tide had chosen.
Council of Ash and Oaths
They gathered aboard the Duskwind that night—captains, mystics, emissaries, and renegades. The war room, once lined with maps and sea charts, now bore relics and tokens from a dozen different cultures. One Driftborn chieftain placed a coral-bone dagger on the table; a pirate lord added a strip of blood-dyed sail. A mage from the Hollow Reach set a vial of duskglass—glowing faintly with captured lightning—between them.
Yona crossed her arms, eyes scanning the room. "This Citadel… it's not just a floating fortress. It's a beacon. Mallik's trying to summon something."
Red Veil, half-cloaked in living kelp, hissed, "Not summon. Anchor. He seeks to fix the sea to his will—to chain it."
Gasps circled the room.
"You can't anchor the sea," Lirien said. "That's madness."
"And yet he builds the chain," Red Veil murmured. "Using bone, blood, and abyssal rites. The Bleeding Citadel is only the lock."
"Then we break the lock," Mara said, slamming her dagger into the center of the map. "We break it so thoroughly the sea forgets it ever existed."
Preparations for Fire
Over the next three days, the Accord gathered at the reef-ringed island of Veyna's Reach. There, crafters worked beside mages and engineers. Firecallers melted black powder into flasks of stormfire. Driftborn shamans summoned sea spirits and bound them to harpoons. Iron-plated ballistae were mounted on every ship that could bear the weight.
The days were spent forging weapons and training tirelessly. Every ship, from the swift outrunners to the broad-keeled war barges, was reinforced with what little steel and wood remained. Blacksmiths hammered deep into the night, their forges glowing red across the shoreline like a constellation of purpose. Sailors trained in underwater boarding drills, spear-fighting on slick decks, and silent signal codes in case the storm took their voices.
Abyr led drills on sea combat, barking orders with a voice that carried through storm and silence. Lirien taught the younger ones how to bind wounds between strikes, how to pray without using words. Red Veil, ever the mad prophet, led nightly chants that stirred the blood of even the most jaded.
Mara walked among them, offering not commands but presence. She sparred with the young. She bled with the wounded. She listened to stories of lost homes and shattered fleets. Each tale wove into the cause.
She did not ask them to fight.
She asked them to remember why they must.
At night, the Accord sat by bonfires that cracked against the salt wind. Stories were shared, ballads resurrected. An old Driftborn singer played a harp carved from coral and bone, its melody weaving through the flames like a lullaby for war.
In her tent, Mara stared at a weathered map her mother had left behind. The Bleeding Citadel was marked not as a structure but as a wound. A warning. The tide had turned before, and it could again—but only if the blade was sharp enough.
Dreams of Maria returned. Not as memories, but as omens. Her mother's voice echoed in salt and flame.
"When the sea calls your name, child, answer with thunder."
The Firecall
On the dawn of the fourth day, the ritual began.
On every ship, at the moment of sunrise, braziers were lit with stormkindling—a spark born from lightning caught in glass. Red Veil stood atop a coral plinth, chanting in the Old Tongue. His voice was joined by dozens of others—mages, shamans, sea-singers, and flamewalkers. The air trembled with their unity.
The sky turned crimson.
The sea answered.
A surge of fire and wind swept across the horizon. The ocean boiled in rings around the fleet. Lightning danced like thread across the clouds. From the depths came the sound of something ancient stirring, as if the sea herself had taken breath.
In the far distance, the Bleeding Citadel shuddered.
"He hears us now," Lirien whispered.
"Then let him come," Mara said. "Let him find fire waiting."
Ash Tide Rising
They sailed that evening, faster than any storm. The Accord spread in a crescent formation, cloaked in rain and rolling thunder. The Bleeding Citadel loomed ahead like a scar torn from the sea itself—jagged towers of rusted steel and stone, its core pulsing with red light.
Ballads would speak of what followed. The Firecall Armada struck as the storm broke.
From the decks of the Duskwind, fire and steel flew in tandem. Ballistae shrieked. Cannons thundered. Sea beasts bound by pact surged up to shatter the Citadel's supports. Driftborn saboteurs struck from beneath, laying mines of burning salt.
Mages unleashed storm arcs—bolts of lightning harvested and hurled through enchanted channels. Archers fired arrows tipped with boiling resin that burst into flame on contact. Thunderous gales scattered Mallik's reconnaissance ships before they could send word.
Mallik's forces responded with fury. Massive ironclads surged from hidden docks. Their decks teemed with tide-bound warriors wearing bone masks and wielding tridents of glimmering obsidian. Dark banners rose across the waves. The sky split as blood and lightning danced.
Mara fought at the prow, blade in one hand, flare-pistol in the other. She dueled a Tide Warden atop the enemy tower—a knight wrapped in crimson mail who wielded a spear of coiled fire. Every blow shook the steel beneath their feet. Mara bled. But she did not falter.
The Accord was more than ships now.
It was fury.
It was memory.
It was fire.
She stabbed the flare-pistol into the Warden's gut and pulled the trigger. Flame erupted. Steel screamed. The tower's top cracked open, and Mara rode its fall down to the lower decks, landing hard but alive.
Around her, the Duskwind's colors flew high.
And all across the waves, the Accord burned with light.