The morning after the Wreath's fall dawned in hues of bruised gold and sullen grey. Mist curled around the Duskwind like ghostly fingers, unwilling to release the ship from the grip of what it had witnessed. The sea, once rippling with the remnants of Leviathan power, had quieted to an eerie calm. But no sailor aboard believed the silence would last.
Mara stood on the deck, wind cutting through her soaked coat, staring at the point where the sea had swallowed the dome. The water no longer glowed. The chains were gone. And the Leviathan, ancient and unknowable, had vanished into the depths, leaving only the weight of its gaze burned into her memory.
Darion stepped up beside her, his voice hushed. "Did we release salvation, or damnation?"
"Both," Mara replied. "Because we didn't come here for either. We came to break what was binding us. We came to show the sea it doesn't own us."
Abyr limped toward them, his shoulder wrapped in fresh kelp bandages. "We've bought ourselves a ripple in the tide. Mallik will feel it. But he'll see it as weakness before strength."
"Then let him come," Mara said. "We've stared into the abyss and pulled something free. That's more than he can understand."
Fragments Beneath the Hull
Below deck, Elsha spread a newly drawn map across the long table, her hands sketching the Wreath as it was before it imploded. Not from memory, but from what she had seen with her second sight—a vision painted through the vibrations of the sea. Symbols etched in salt lined the parchment, and each line shimmered faintly under lanternlight.
"There are more forges," she signed. "Dormant. Chained in different seas. Not all are sleeping."
Red Veil leaned in close, her eyes narrowing. "The Leviathan was not the only god buried beneath Mallik's chains. He's using them—feeding off their dreams. If we shattered one, he will awaken the rest."
Darion frowned. "And what does that mean for us?"
Mara's fingers traced the etched lines of the sea. "It means we become stormchasers. We break the chains before he turns them into weapons."
The table fell silent. Each person there had tasted death in some form—on the sea, beneath it, or beside it. But they hadn't yet stared down the future.
Now they did.
The First Hunt
The Duskwind sailed for Ashbar's Grave, an island half-drowned and cursed by old tides. Rumors spoke of a second forge sleeping beneath its caverns, kept hidden by the Mistwardens—an ancient order of monks who once served the Deep.
The journey took days longer than it should have. The wind stilled for entire mornings. Ghost currents tugged the ship sideways at night. Strange reflections appeared on the water's surface—mimics of stars that shifted out of rhythm with the sky. Once, at twilight, a chorus of distant cries rose from the sea, like weeping whales mourning a sunken moon.
Darion noted them in his journal. "Something's watching. Not Mallik's men. Older. Hungrier. More... expectant."
By the time the cliffs of Ashbar's Grave broke the horizon, the crew was weary, the sea swollen with tension. Jagged outcroppings jutted from the waters like rusted blades, each one covered in bone-bleached algae. They looked less like stone and more like the ribcage of some colossal beast, half-submerged and long dead.
As the ship approached the black cliffs, strange currents resisted them, tugging at the keel like an unseen anchor. The wind screamed down from jagged peaks, and gulls avoided the skies. Crabs the size of shields crawled among the rocks, hissing like kettles.
"We're not welcome," Abyr muttered.
Mara stood firm at the wheel. "Good. Neither are we here to ask."
Into the Temple of Silence
The cliffs opened into a natural bay, where a stone temple jutted from the rock like the ribs of some giant drowned god. The crew disembarked into a fog that hummed with low, pulsing sound. Their boots made no echo on the smooth, water-worn stone. Every step felt like treading upon hollow memory.
Red Veil stopped at the threshold. "This place remembers. It hates us."
Elsha signed a warning—sigils carved on the walls spoke of a gate only opened by song, a melody lost to time. But Mara remembered the Queen's Whisper, the lullaby her mother sang by the fire, back when she was still whole.
She stepped forward and sang.
Her voice wavered at first, then caught on the notes like wind catching a torn sail. The temple groaned. Vines shriveled. The mist thickened, then parted.
The temple breathed.
They entered.
The Mistwarden's Gambit
The inner sanctum was filled with whispering fog and statues draped in seaweed and silver. At its center stood the High Warden, a figure blindfolded and barefoot, his skin etched with rune-scars. The air was thick with memory and judgment.
"You opened what should have remained drowned," he said, voice echoing through the chamber like a tide returning to forgotten shores.
"We unshackled what Mallik would enslave," Mara countered.
The Warden lowered his blindfold. His eyes had long turned to pearl. "Then you will face what you freed."
From behind him, the mist coalesced into a form—another guardian. But this one, unlike the Wreath's, was not memory.
It was rage.
The Warden did not move. He became part of the fog, a passive observer of the trial he had invoked.
Clash of Tides
Steel rang in the temple as the guardian attacked. Its form shifted—first a serpent of water, then a colossus of barnacled stone. Darion's blade scraped harmlessly across its hide. The creature's roar shattered stalactites, and the very ground quaked beneath its fury.
Elsha tossed a fire rune, illuminating weak points. Abyr roared and charged with his anchor hammer, cracking through the foglike skin. Red Veil whispered curses in tongues not spoken since the age before ships, her voice a string of daggers.
Mara watched. Then moved.
Calm amidst chaos, she drew her sea-iron dagger and cut the sigils binding the altar. Power surged through the chamber. The moment she did, the guardian faltered. Just enough.
Darion drove his blade into its chest. Abyr smashed its knee. Red Veil sang a final word.
The guardian dissolved, leaving behind a gust of seawind and silence.
The Second Chain
Below the altar lay a second chain. Not yet glowing. Not yet awake.
Mara crouched before it, pressing her palm against the cold metal. Visions flickered—other chains, other guardians, sleeping beneath oceans vast and forgotten. Voices—faint and mournful—brushed her ears like rising tides, whispering of futures lost and battles unwon.
"One more link broken," she whispered.
Elsha pointed to the map again. Five more.
Mara stood and looked to her crew. Scarred. Breathing hard. Eyes burning. The Mistwarden remained silent, merely nodding once before vanishing into the fog.
"We keep sailing. We keep breaking."
The tide had turned.
And the storm was just beginning.