SALT IN HER BLOOD
Ren couldn't sleep. The deck groaned above her, and the sea sighed like an old god murmuring forgotten truths. But the sound that kept her awake wasn't from the ship.
It was from inside her. A heartbeat slow, deep, and wrong. Like her own, but ancient. As if someone or something was borrowing her body to remember what it had once been.
She sat up in her hammock, breathing hard.
The pendant her mother left her, the silver-and-sapphire wave, pulsed faintly against her skin. Every time it glowed, she felt something watching not in malice, not exactly. In recognition. She was being remembered.
Earlier, after returning from the Hollow ship, Verek had spoken with her alone in the captain's cabin. The old maps, the cursed compass, and even the dried kraken bone laid out on his table didn't seem half as dangerous as his voice when he said: "You carry the blood of tideborn. It's not just a legacy. It's a claim. The sea knows its own."
But Ren wasn't so sure.
She hadn't asked for magic. She hadn't asked for birthright or prophecy. She'd come looking for her brother.
And now, the ocean wanted to give her back a destiny. She walked barefoot to the main deck. The sea stretched out in all directions, moonlit and strangely calm.
Mistress Ansa stood there, as if waiting.
"I didn't summon you," Ren said.
The old seer didn't smile. "No. But the sea did."
Ren hesitated. "You know what I am, don't you?"
"I know what you might be," Ansa said. "Tideborn. A conduit. A key. Or just another soul swallowed by salt and grief."
"I don't want to be a priestess."
Ansa turned her pale, glowing eyes toward her.
"No one ever wants to be chosen by the sea, child. They either sink… or rise."
She held out a bowl of seawater.
Ren stared at it.
"What is it?"
"A mirror. But not of the face."
Ren stepped forward. The water was cold, the surface trembling under her breath.
"Look," Ansa whispered.
Ren peered into the basin.
At first, she saw nothing.
Then herself, but changed.
Her eyes shimmered blue. Her hair floated around her like kelp. Silver veins traced her arms. And the sea bowed to her feet.
She staggered back.
"No," she whispered. "That's not me."
"But it could be," Ansa said. "You think your power is something to carry. But it's something that carries you."
That night, Ren dreamed.
She stood waist-deep in dark water. Around her, voices rose not language, but sound. Music in reverse. A deep, impossible choir.
She raised her hand, and the sea obeyed.
Ribbons of water coiled upward, shimmering with starlight. Fish leapt through them. The waves circled her in devotion.
Then came the shadow.
A creature with too many eyes and no face. Its body made of tide and teeth. The Sea God. The one her blood remembered. "You are mine," it said.
"My Voice. My Vessel. My Vengeance."
Ren opened her mouth to scream, but water rushed in.
She woke choking. Morning came gray and damp. The crew moved with haunted silence. No one spoke of the Hollow ship, or of the drowned captain who'd stepped from myth to memory. But eyes followed Ren now not with fear, but distance. Like they didn't quite see a girl anymore. Verek called her to the helm.
"You're changing," he said plainly.
"I didn't ask for this."
"No one asks to be pulled into the deep."
She looked at him. "What if I lose myself?"
Verek's face softened just slightly.
"Then you fight. You anchor yourself. Not to the sea. To choice."
He reached into his coat and handed her something wrapped in oilskin.
Inside was a saltblade a thin dagger forged from crystallized salt and steel, etched with old sigils.
"For control," he said. "A tideborn must bleed a circle when they lose grip. The salt draws the magic outward. Contains it."
Ren stared at it.
"I'm a threat."
"You're a weapon. The difference is who wields it."
Later, Ren stood alone at the stern, the wind catching her hair.
She whispered words she didn't know she'd learned.
The air grew still.
Then a ripple.
The waves in front of her twisted upward. Not violently gracefully. A spiral of water rose, hovered in the air, and began to dance.
Ren raised her hand. The water followed.
She flicked her fingers, and it burst into droplets, freezing midair like falling stars.
She didn't smile.
She was terrified.