Chapter 1 – Off the Coast of Niushan Tao Island, Taiwan Strait — AM
The hull groans.
A metallic wail rises from the cargo holds and crawls through the empty corridors, bouncing off stripped lounges and deserted cabins like a distorted animal cry. The transverse bulkheads vibrate, the girders moan, the sound stretching across the whole spectrum as if the ship were trying to remember its original shape.
The mud around the keel begins to boil.
A cloud of dust—like frantic, swirling snow—lifts in spirals and wraps around the massive steel hull, reassembled by a vertical seam running from the keel to the main deck. It isn't a naval weld. It doesn't follow the ribs or respect the geometry of the frames. It's a scar, a crooked stitch crossing the exact point where the Awa Maru broke apart on April 1st, 1945.
The white cross painted on the bow and stern—meant to guarantee safe passage—is still there, streaked with rust like a mark of guilt.
Suddenly, the groaning stops.
The dust tightens into an electric haze. The hull jerks upward from the seabed in utter silence. The warped steel plates settle against each other with a sharp crackling, like bones snapping back into place.
The ship rises.
Straight.
Perfectly vertical.
No roll. No pitch.
Impossible. A vessel of this size should tilt, sway, rotate.
But something holds it upright, like an elevator.
It emerges from the shadow zone, and the liquid light reveals edges, curves, and joints grafted by inhuman hands. The funnel with the white cross—added for camouflage—isn't hers. It belongs to an old Dutch freighter, recognizable by its truncated cone shape and side vents. The bow antennas are from another era, maybe salvaged from an American minesweeper. The cargo hatch covers don't match the coamings; they've been forced into place like pieces of a puzzle that don't belong together.
The ship keeps rising, vomiting cascades of mud.
The surviving antennas break the surface. The superstructure pierces the water's skin. After more than eighty years, the steel plates—slick with streaming water—meet sunlight again and dry under the sea breeze. Torrents burst from portholes, skylights, and engine-room vents. The antennas snap and tremble in the wind. A mast collapses onto the aft hatch.
The white cross on the central funnel stands tall, streaked with rust.
The bow dips and rises with the waves. The stern settles into its natural draft, as if someone had calculated the displacement to the millimeter. A sharp creak runs along the dark green hull, followed by an invisible push that lifts whiskers of foam around the waterline.
It's done.
After all this time, he has brought her back.
He has stitched together a broken wreck, using pieces stolen from other ships like a surgeon who can't tell compatible organs from foreign ones.
Now someone will spot the ship.
Word will spread.
And the Soldier will hear it.
He'll crawl out of his hole.
He needs more black stones.
And he'll come looking for them.
The hull begins to move, cutting across the Taiwan Strait that hid it for decades. It glides over the waves without a sound, without smoke, without lights. Only a thin wake that closes behind the stern, erasing every trace.
As if the ship had never existed.