For two months, the small, unnamed fishing village had been both prison and sanctuary for the survivors of The Sea Lark. They had washed ashore with nothing but their lives and the tattered clothes on their backs, their ship and their captain's spirit broken in equal measure. They were ghosts, haunted by the memory of an unnatural storm and a silent, empty sky.
Finnian had adapted better than most. While the older sailors fell into a sullen despair, he had focused on the practicalities of survival. He learned the local tides, wove fishing nets from dune grasses, and charted the small, rocky bay not by the stars he no longer trusted, but by the shapes of the rocks and the patterns of the seabirds. He was a navigator without a sky, so he had made the earth his map.
Captain Malik was a different story. The man who had been a titan of the sea was now a hollow shell. He spent most of his days sitting on the grey, windswept beach, staring out at the horizon, a man waiting for a world he understood to return to him. The crew, leaderless and lost, had become fractious and resentful, their fear curdling into suspicion of the quiet villagers who shared their meager stores with them.
The news, when it came, arrived on the back of a half-dead horse. A lone Royal Guard rider, his uniform torn and mud-caked, carrying a satchel of the King's Proclamations. He was one of hundreds, spreading the new, terrible gospel to every forgotten corner of Aethelgard.
The village elder, a man with skin like tanned leather, read the decree aloud in the salty wind of the main square. Finnian stood with Malik and the rest of his crew, listening as the words that had been forged in the capital's crisis now echoed in this remote outpost.
"…is not the voice of our shepherd, Qy'iel…"
"…a Celestial Tyrant… an ancient enemy…"
"…Qy'iel is lost to us…"
"…The Covenant of Sacrifice is a venomous lie…"
"…We are silent out of DEFIANCE…"
The proclamation was met not with the defiant anger Eva had witnessed in Aethelburg, but with a wave of utter, terrified confusion. These were simple folk. Their faith was their only shield against a hard world. To be told that their shield was a lie was not liberating; it was terrifying.
"The King has gone mad!" one of the villagers cried out. "He consorts with heretics and blasphemers!"
"He has abandoned Qy'iel!" another shouted. "That is why the sea is cold and the fish are scarce! The King's heresy has brought this curse upon us!"
The reaction split the surviving crew of The Sea Lark in two.
An old, burly sailor named Garek, his face a mask of desperate faith, turned on Finnian. "You see? This is the scholar's madness you spoke of. A god is answering prayers! I've heard the tales from a merchantman who came in last week. A man in the capital prayed for gold and got it! It may be a cruel god, but it is a god! It has power!"
"It killed him, Garek," Finnian said, his voice low and steady. "The power took his life. That is not a god. That is a predator."
"It is a test!" Garek retorted, his voice cracking. "The King is a fool. He tells us to be defiant? Defiance is what has angered our god! I will not stand by and let his pride doom us all. We need to get home. We need a ship. Faith is the only thing that will grant us one."
Captain Malik, who had been listening with a dead, hollow expression, finally spoke. "There will be no prayers," he rasped, his voice rough from disuse. "No bargains."
"Captain?" Garek said, his expression pleading. "We can be home in a month."
Malik's gaze was fixed on the grey, unforgiving sea. "I sailed under Qy'iel for forty years. I knew His presence in the steady winds and the guiding stars. That… thing… that answered you in the storm, the thing that broke the sky… that is not Him." He looked at his crew, a flicker of his old authority returning. "We are lost. We may be damned. But we will not be fools. We do not pray to the monster that is hunting us."
Garek stared at his captain, his face crumbling with betrayal. He saw no leadership, only despair. That night, he made his own choice.
As the twin moons began to rise, Garek walked down to the edge of the water, far enough away for the entire village and crew to hear his defiant shout.
"I do not follow a heretic king!" he roared at the sky. "I follow the god who answers! I pray for a ship! A vessel to carry these men home, to save them from this faithless despair! I offer my life as the price! I make the bargain!"
He stood on the wet sand, his arms outstretched, his body trembling with a mixture of terror and ecstatic faith. For a long, silent minute, the only answer was the gentle lapping of the waves. Finnian watched from the dunes, his heart a cold stone in his chest.
Then, it happened.
The water in the cove began to glow with an eerie, phosphorescent light. The calm surface bubbled, and from the depths, a ship began to rise. It was a beautiful, sleek vessel, its wood the color of pale moonlight, its single sail as white as seafoam. It rose silently, water cascading from its perfect hull, until it floated serenely in the bay, its anchor chains dangling just above the water. It was a miracle.
Garek let out a triumphant, ragged laugh. "You see!" he cried, turning to the stunned onlookers on the dunes. "He listens! He is a god of bar—"
His words cut off. His triumphant expression froze. The light in his eyes vanished, and he collapsed onto the sand, a discarded puppet whose strings had been cut.
The silence that followed was more profound than any they had yet known. The villagers and the sailors stared at Garek's lifeless body, then at the beautiful, cursed ghost ship floating in their bay. The bargain was real. The price had been paid. The King had been telling the truth.
The horror of Garek's public suicide broke the spell of despair that had held the crew captive. The next morning, it was Finnian who gathered the half-dozen remaining sailors. Captain Malik stood with them, but it was to Finnian that they looked.
"We cannot stay here," Finnian said, his voice clear and certain. "And we will not touch that… thing… in the bay. It is a tomb."
"Then what do we do, Finn?" one of the sailors asked, his voice shaking. "We're still stranded."
Finnian looked to the east, in the direction of the distant heart of the kingdom. "The King has declared war. That proclamation wasn't a warning; it was a recruitment poster. He needs soldiers. And if the sky is broken, he is going to need sailors who can read the water, not the stars. He needs people who know the truth because they have lived it."
He turned to face his small, battered crew. "We are not going home. We are going to Aethelburg. We are going to war."
He shouldered his small pack, gave the ghost ship one last, contemptuous glance, and started walking. After a moment's hesitation, the others, including Captain Malik, fell into step behind him. They were no longer shipwrecked sailors, waiting for a rescue that would never come. They were soldiers, turning their backs on a cursed miracle, marching toward the heart of a global rebellion.
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The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Approximately Days 15 through 45 of the Age of Fear
• Victims of The Reaping: 10 (The three-day cycle resumes against a defiant populace)
• Victims of the Covenant: 137
• Total Lives Lost: 147
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— Garek, a veteran sailor of The Sea Lark, on a remote coastline.
— The last known Speaker of the ancient River-tongue in the eastern marshes.
— Rowan, the chief lumberjack of the Willow Creek logging settlement in Verdane.