“Fuck’s sake, are they moving?” Okurac cursed, his voice barely above a growl as he studied a chart, comparing it to what he saw in front of him.

The half-orc had been watching the horizon with narrowed eyes for the better part of two hours, ever since the jagged isles began to rise from the sea like the bones of some ancient leviathan. Their dark, water-slicked surfaces glistened with algae, giving them the appearance of rotted teeth thrusting skyward from the abyss. Tam had given the all-clear but an hour ago and ordered Elmira to eat something. Which was why she was gnawing on a piece of bacon and a potato when she joined the navigator by the railing.

“Tempest’s Teeth,” Elmira said quietly, studying the rocks. It was an old name, older than the maps, older than any stories that still got told outside the taverns of abandoned ports.

“Sailors’ Trial,” Orwyn added, arms folded and gaze unreadable. “The Widowmaker Isles, in some charts.”

“Personally, I like the name Iron Churn,” Marlo rumbled, lumbering up beside them. “Like something grinding ships down to splinters.”

Okurac snorted without looking at him. “Of course you do.”

They stood in uneasy silence for a moment, the sound of distant thunder filling the space between their thoughts. The navigator cursed a few more times, making notes and doing whatever it was he had to to keep them on course. It was all a different language to Elmira, she understood none of it and was happy to leave it to the burly man. There were other things on her mind and she was still buzzing from her power surge.

Elmira glanced sideways at Tam when the smuggler joined them on the mid-deck, his brow shining with sweat as if he’d been working out. “If this doesn’t work… I will haunt you for the rest of time. And I got friends in high places to make sure that’s a real long while.”

Tam’s usual grin flickered for just a heartbeat before he laughed. “Oh, I see. The crew that just burned a fucking Kraken spawn alive and rode a hell-storm through the eye is afraid of a few small isles. You want me to make you hot cocoa and tuck you into your hammocks?”

“She means it,” Rina called up from the lower deck, stringing her bow. “So do I.”

“There’ll be a line,” Orwyn said dryly, and a few nods followed but their Captain was not fazed. He watched the approaching Erid Straits with a hunger that sent Elmira’s stomach fluttering.

The Scarlet Sphynx glided forward, the sea narrowing into a channel that twisted through the spiked isles like a knife wound. The water here was too still for the currents that lurked beneath the surface. The wind blew strangely, sometimes surging, sometimes vanishing altogether. They all grew a little quieter like the air was too thick to breathe easily. Elmira shook her head. It was just old wives’ tales and nursery rhymes playing with her mind. But…

“Keep your wits about you,” the voice said with a hint of warning.

“Will you stay with me?” It was so stupid to ask it, but she needed to know. To know that even if she was but an ant in the water, someone still noticed her.

“I never left.”

Perhaps she only imagined the smile, but it warmed her despite the chill air. Muscles she did not know had tensed relaxed and she caught herself against the railing. If the others noticed, they did not show it. Everyone too busy to study their next obstacle. Barnacles clung to the rocks and something about the place made even the seasoned crew glance over their shoulders a little too often.

The Erid Straits spread out, vast and shrouded in mystery, and soon they would be wholly within their grasp. Despite everything, the storm, the spawn, the shadow that lingered beneath the water, Elmira felt a strange, reluctant hope creep into her chest. On the other side was the delta of river Ran Fy’eir. A day’s smooth sailing and they would arrive in Kael-Vora, the Gate of the Empire. They were so close now.

“Don’t you worry, hen,” Tam said as if sensing her thoughts, adjusting his coat and stepping up beside her. His voice had its usual cheer, but there was iron in it too. “She’s a good ship. We’ve got this.”

Elmira nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the winding path ahead. They had no choice but to thread the needle and hope they had not made a grave mistake. There was no going back. Tam had agreed to sail through the Straits, and despite all his roguish grins and unpredictable ways, he was nothing if not true to his word. When it suited him.

But something gnawed at her, a quiet discomfort that hadn’t lifted even as land appeared on the horizon. She couldn’t name it. Just a shape in her thoughts, lurking in the corners like a shadow that refused the light. Every day, she checked her belongings, counting the contents again and again. The documentation, sealed and etched in cipher. The odd components she had taken when she made her exit, each one packed with care. She had risked too much to lose them now.

Guilt curled in her gut. With a sudden jolt, she realized that she hadn’t thought of the strikers in days. Or Arman. Not since the storm. Not since the merfolk attack. Not since she had begun moving toward this moment. Those who had followed her, who had believed in what she was trying to do, left behind in a broken system to hold the line while she vanished into the night.

Elmira’s knuckles whitened. She was going back, but at what cost? And what would be left when she arrived? A growl prowled in the depths of her throat. Questions. So many bloody questions and precious few answers. Was she making the right choice? Gut said yes, but the mind did not trust it. I am gonna drive myself mad, carrying on like this, she thought.

The sky had turned a flat steel-gray, and the water mirrored it so perfectly that it became hard to tell where one ended and the other began but it did not carry the same magical effect as it had out to sea. The Scarlet Sphynx cut through this reflection like a wound where there were no birds in the sky or fish in the water.

“They say this place reflects more than just sky,” Okurac told her as she joined him at the helm, watching the compass needle spin wildly, twitching like a spider on a dying web.

Curious, Elmira peered over the railing and frowned as her reflection rippled beside the ship. Short, black hair that was growing a little. Leather armor draped in a dark brown wax cloak someone had dug out of a chest in the crew quarters. But that was not the image she saw. Her eyes were the eyes of the night sky. Her armor a corset over a regal dress of intricate design. Fey design. The figure in the water looked up, meeting Elmira’s gaze with impossible clarity, mouth forming silent words she could not hear. Elmira cursed, staggering back as quick as she could, heart pounding out of her chest.

The solid chest of Okurac stopped her from stumbling, his hands steady on her shoulders. He brought a finger to his lips, clasping the other over hers when she opened her mouth to tell him what she’d seen.

“Quiet. Don’t look down,” he whispered, eyes hard and dark with fear and determination. “The Veil is thin here.”

He was right. It was. She could sense it. The orb she carried on her necklace tugged at her consciousness, like a lodestone.

Then came the sound. A low, rising wail drifting on the wind, echoing amongst the pillars of the Wailing Isles like a thousand mourning voices. The heart of the Erid Straits was the setting for many legends, true and story alike.

“Stay alert,” Orwyn told them, hand gripping the hilt of his sword. “Do not trust your senses. Nothing here is real.”

“It’s just wind,” Rina said, though she didn’t sound certain. “Rock formations do weird things to sound.”

The others murmured their agreement, but no one relaxed. Their usual banter and bickering bent under the tension and it was with grim faces they guided the Scarlet Sphynx onward, following Okurac’s low instructions.

“On my mark: ten degrees starboard,” he called, checking the compass that had gone mad.

Jessa hung low over the railing. “She’ll scratch her belly on the rocks!”

“She’ll be fine. She’s in the air!”

“Barely!”

“Mark!”

Tam turned the wheel, muscles straining, guiding the ship as it skimmed just above the reef-blades. Just like it had in the Darkmerrow Archipelago, there was something about the temperature shifts in the isles that created a dim grey fog that barely let the sun shine through.

It started as wind - just wind, surely? - whistling through jagged stone outcroppings like a hundred cracked flutes. But then it shifted. Rose and fell. Cried and cackled. The sound reverberated off the algae-slicked spires jutting up from the black waters like the ribs of some drowned god. Elmira stood near the mainmast, clutching the rigging tighter than she meant to. Beside her was Marlo, uncharacteristically still. The minotaur seemed shorter somehow as if the very presence of the Straits was too heavy a burden for him.

“Don’t listen too close,” Okurac said, teeth bared in a half-snarl as he gripped the wheel. His voice wasn’t loud, but loud enough to carry in the utter silence of the deck. “They got hooks in that song.”

“Song? What s-” she began to ask but then it was there.

A melody that was air itself, a part of the place rather than something in it. Tragically seductive, enchantingly alluring. It pulled at her, her bones, her heart. It tried to unspool her very thoughts but found no purchase there. She saw her face reflected in the polished brass of the railing, lips parted like she might echo the tune if not for the protection of her blood and her pact alike. It felt like remembering something she had never known. Now she understood why the boatswain was so mellow. He was fighting for his life.

His mind.

Glancing around, only herself and Tam seemed undisturbed. Their eyes locked and her lips parted for another reason. The forever grin had been replaced by a grim expression. His jaw tight, eyes dark and filled with anger and terse expectation. His back was straight as a pole, the knuckles of his hand white where they clenched the cutlass and the other resting on the wheel next to his navigator’s. He gave an imperceptible shake of his head and another small motion, gesturing towards Orwyn where he stood in the bow.

Shadows were coiling around his collar, seeping out from his sleeves. They spilled from him like inky ichor onto the deck, wrapping themselves like a cloak around him. His face was blank, expressionless. The song was in him. Or maybe… something else was. She took a step towards him, but Tam was faster. He was down the stairs and across the deck in a streak of green and black, stopping just a couple of feet away, careful not to touch the shadows with the tip of his boots.

“Orwyn,” his voice sounded like flint against steel. “Old chap. You with us?”

Around them, the world was narrow: columns of stone, the occasional flash of sharp, colorful coral, and waves that broke in silence against the cliffs. Where was their sound? The Sphynx was gliding above the water, weaving through the scattered isles and pillars of rock. Between Nix and Okurac, they did a masterful job of steering the ship, but how long could they keep it up?

The first mate didn’t respond. He blinked slowly, the shadows thickening around his hands, dancing with the curl of his fingers. Elmira reached for him, only for Tam’s hand to shoot out in warning.

“Don’t,” he warned. “Not yet.”

“He’s slipping,” Jessa growled, clutching her own head in her hands. “If they take him, they take all of us with him.”

Elmira frowned. “Who are they?”

Tam’s expression darkened further. “The Wailing Isles don’t just whisper. They find what’s already loose in you and unravel it. And Orwyn… Orwyn’s got deeper shadows than most.”

It was too strange. Her thoughts were muddled. “Ayursha?”

The call was helpless, pleading, that of a scared child calling their mother but it was as if her very core had turned to ice. In all her years, she had never come across anything like this. Like him.

“The dark storm approaches,” the goddess answered and repeated it over and over again, each time it sounded as if it came from the rocks, from the water, the wind itself.

“What does that mean?” Rina asked, and only then did Elmira realize everyone could hear it. The echo of the dark storm approaches bouncing off impossible surfaces. The last of the blood drained from her face. Tam’s eyes snapped to hers for a long second before returning to his friend’s but he said nothing.

As if on cue, Orwyn finally moved. He straightened, head tilting slightly, and turned to face Tam and Elmira. But his face was wrong. The shadows coiled tighter, crawling up his neck and licking at his jaw like a collar. Orwyn shuddered, eyes unfocused, as if caught between here and somewhere far older.

“It’s warm,” he murmured, but not to them. “I remember now. I wasn’t supposed to leave…”

Elmira felt her breath catch. It wasn’t a curse. It was a call home.

“They never forgot me,” Orwyn said. His voice shook now, split down the middle with something other. “I left them. But I never stopped being theirs.”

His eyes darted up, pained, begging, as if he could still fight it. Still say no. “Tell me I’m here,” he whispered, this time to Tam.

Tam didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. “You’re here, Orwyn. And you’re mine before you’re theirs.”

“Captain,” he said, though it wasn’t quite his voice. “They would like to bring me back now.”

Tam stepped forward, cutting a commanding figure with his long coat flaring behind him, the green of his wild hair caught in the half-light. “Yeah, well,” he said, voice low and deadly calm, “they can damn well wait their turn.”

Orwyn’s hand twitched toward the short blade at his side.

“Don’t make me,” Tam said softly.

For a heartbeat, the deck held still. Elmira’s hand was already hovering above her karai’i. She did not have a plan, but she had to do something. Orwyn’s lips parted, jaw clenched tight against a scream or a sob. His body trembled, caught between restraint and surrender, and the shadows writhed around him like hungry snakes, whispering things only he could hear. Then, with a violent jerk, he gasped, eyes snapping wide, then narrowing. The shadows flickered like flames in a bonfire.

Elmira saw it - him - in that sliver of hesitation. A man split in two: one half clutching to the deck of the Scarlet Sphynx, and the other teetering at the edge of something ancient, vast, and cold.

“Help me,” Orwyn said at last. The words cracked like dry timber, small and hollow.

Tam was already moving. With one swift step, he crossed the space between them and grasped Orwyn’s arm hard, tendrils of black beginning to wrap themselves around his forearm. “You’re stronger than them,” he growled. “You chose this ship. You chose me. Hold the line.”

“Let me go,” Orwyn whispered.

Tam only smiled, a sad look in his eyes. “I cannot. They hold me too.”

Orwyn shuddered again, shadows seething like ink in water. Elmira stepped closer too but hesitated because it was apparent now that Tam could not move. Could not get away from Orwyn, even if he tried. This is what Jessa meant. She glanced the tabaxi’s way and saw that she’d drawn her blades, tears in her eyes. Behind her at the back of the ship, Okurac was muttering under his breath in a deep, rhythmic cadence - something old and guttural, not quite magic, not quite prayer.

It struck her that she should not be hearing him at all. The distance was too great. But everything was so silent. A pin could drop and it would sound like a boulder breaking the surface of a lake. Now that Elmira knew what to listen for, she could hear the melody still circling them like a vulture.

But for now - just for now - Orwyn didn’t move.

He stayed.

Only the occasional creak of the hull or the gentle lap of waves reminded them they were still moving. The eerie silence in the Wailing Isles clung to the crew like sea mist. No one spoke for a long while. Only the ship’s engineer and navigator were going about their business with grim determination, aided by their gunner. Lint was nowhere to be seen and Jessa… Jessa was openly crying. Didn’t make a single move to wipe the tears away as they fell into her fur.

Then Orwyn stirred.

Not much. Just a slow inhale, a slight shift of the shoulders, but it felt seismic. Tam didn’t flinch, though Elmira could see the muscles in his jaw tightening. The green-haired captain still gripped Orwyn, and the connection seemed to bleed the strength from him more than it lent support. The tendrils were grazing his chest as if deciding whether or not to take him too.

“I can feel them,” Orwyn whispered. His voice cracked with something close to wonder.

“You’re not going,” Tam said, a ghost of command left in his tone.

But Orwyn only turned his head, the whites of his eyes showing now, just a sliver, just enough. The shadows around him thickened, pulsing faintly with a heartbeat that was not his own.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered, his voice low and hollow. “I never left. Not fully. I am them. How could I fool myself otherwise?”

Elmira took a step back, hand trembling as the warding spell faltered. Behind her, Jessa sobbed once, choked and angry. Okurac’s low chant didn’t stop, it grew louder, teeth clenched around every ancient syllable.

Tam's expression twisted, grief and fury battling behind his eyes. “Don’t do this.”

Orwyn smiled faintly. “I already did.”

And then he let go.

It wasn’t dramatic. No great flare of light, no scream. Just a subtle slackening of the body, a breath let out, and in the next moment, the shadows surged. They swallowed him whole. Up his throat, across his face, down his arms like oil slicks founding purchase. His form rippled, staggered, and then lifted off the deck, as though he were suspended in water instead of air. Tam’s toes barely grazed the wood, unable to let go of his grip. Elmira willed a platform of air under him and lifted him up. It was all she could think to do.

Damn her thoughts were slow and things were moving too fast.

A shudder ran through the ship that buckled her knees. Rina was shouting something, but it was drowned out by the sound of voices not their own, echoing off every surface, rising like a tidal wave.

Okurac swore and shoved the wheel hard. “Hold tight!”

Tam barked: “Okurac, keep her steady - we’re not done yet.”

And ahead, the tallest spire of the Wailing Isles loomed, a solitary jagged horn split at the top like a mouth filled with teeth. Through it, the melody rose again, but now it was laced with fury.

The ship groaned as if the Sphynx herself felt the weight of what was being borne upon her deck. Orwyn floated, suspended in that suffocating shadow alongside his struggling captain who refused to let him go. His face was visible beneath the writhing mass, eyes closed, yet his mouth twitched, forming words that belonged to something else entire.

“Through him, we see you,” the voices chorused. “Through him, we reach you.”

“Lint, cannons - now!” Rina barked, even as she half-stumbled toward the nearest chain-release.

“Can’t!” Lint howled from somewhere. “They froze! It's like somethin’ out there’s biting the levers!”

“Fall back!” Elmira barked at them, stepping forward with her palm alight once more, thespell flared brighter this time, pushed by fury, grief, and fear braided into one. “Tam, shield!”

But Tam didn’t. He just stared at what had been his first mate, the free hand clenched at his side.

“I told you,” he whispered. “Don’t make me.”

Orwyn’s eyes snapped open. They were black. Deep voids laced with stars. Elmira sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. Celestial. And then the shadows lashed out.

A tendril streaked for the helm, another for the mast, another straight toward Elmira. It wrapped around Okurac’s throat, nailing Jessa’s arms to her sides. But this time, Tam moved. Fast. Faster than she expected. His cutlass came free with a whisper, and in one motion he sliced through the shadow heading for them, the steel sparkling with quartz.

Elmira steadied her stance and thrust both palms forward, casting an anti-magic cone directly at the tether that seemed to anchor Orwyn midair. The spell struck true, but it didn’t unravel him. It peeled something back. The shadowed tendril struck her straight in the chest and sent her sprawling. Only the railing on the other side of the ship kept her from falling into the water.

“Orwyn!” Tam shouted. “Fight it! You’re still here, damn you!”

For a heartbeat, everything paused. The sea, the air, even the cursed melody circling them like smoke.

Then Orwyn screamed.

His body jerked, twisted in the air, hands clutching his head as the shadows shattered like glass around him.

Tam’s hand came free and if it hadn’t been more the disc beneath him, he’d fallen. A pulse knocked everyone flat on the deck. When Elmira opened her eyes, he was on the boards, breathing hard, curled into himself.

But the damage was done.

The Wailing Isles had found a crack.

From the thick fog, shapes began to emerge.

Sails. Dozens of them.

Tam pulled Elmira to her feet and met her gaze, eyes sharp and glimmering with madness again. “We’re not through yet.”

Behind them, Okurac had returned to the wheel, bellowing instructions with a raspy voice. Rina loaded what she could into the functioning deck arms and Jessa knelt beside Orwyn, cradling him into her arms, whispering something no one else could hear.

A sudden slam of wind cracked against the sails like a war drum.

The fog thickened fast, swallowing the horizon in choking grey. It coiled around the Scarlet Sphynx like a living thing, dulling every sound, every edge. Then the ghost ships were upon them. Silent, spectral silhouettes gliding through the mist, their hulls splintered by centuries of rot, sails full despite the dead air. There were no crews. Only flickering forms drifting on deck, half-formed shapes made out of memory and menace.

“They’re not real,” Marlo whispered, eyes wide in paralyzed fear.

“They’re real enough,” Okurac snapped from the helm, tusks grinding as he fought the wheel. “Real enough to crush us if we don’t move.”

At the prow, Tam stood motionless, his coat whipping around him. His green hair was plastered to his face, his eyes hard as emerald glass.

“There!” he shouted, pointing into the gloom. “Left of the lead ship’s central mast. Okurac, thread the bloody needle!”

Needing no further argument, Okurac obeyed and the Sphynx groaned as she banked hard, arcane lines beneath her hull pulsing faintly - once, twice - like a heart running out of blood. The solar silk sails flared and flickered, barely keeping her aloft.

Rina joined Tam at the prow, bow drawn, a flare arrow nocked. “Say the word. I’ll light ‘em up.”

“Not yet,” Tam said, voice low.

“What do they want?” Elmira asked, her voice tight.

Tam didn’t take his eyes off the ships as they closed the distance. “What ghosts always want. Company.”

“We can’t outrun them,” Rina said. “And we can’t fight shadows.”

“No,” Elmira murmured, realization dawning. “But we can repel them.”

Tam finally looked back at her. “Go on, then. Enlighten me.”

She stepped forward, flame blooming in her palm, not fire, but light. Ancient and steady. The kind that existed before language, before thought. It pulsed in her chest where the orb sat nestled in its brace, feeding off her will and something deeper.

“We don’t burn the Sphynx,” she said. “We ignite her. Flood the conduits. Turn her into a beacon.”

“Ride through them like a comet,” Tam said, catching on. He gave a crooked smile. “Well, hen. That’s bloody stupid.”

“I’ve learned from the best.”

“Then let’s do it,” Rina called before he could reply, already halfway across the ship.

Below, Okurac began to chant again, low, guttural, a language that seemed to come from the bones of the ship itself. The mist around the wheel shimmered, parting just enough for breath. Elmira pressed her hand to the orb and whispered a prayer. Not just to Ayursha, but to flame and fate, to the silent forces that wove through the Veil.

And the sails caught.

Golden fire lanced through the solar silk, spilling outward like sunrise. It surged through the ship’s veins, igniting runes and conduits, climbing every spar and stay. She roared through the fog like a phoenix reborn. The ghost ships reeled. Some hissed and vanished on impact, scattering into vapor. Others shattered outright, splinters of mist curling and fleeing before the light.

The Wailing Isles screamed. So did Orwyn.

Ignoring the tabaxi, Elmira dropped to her knees beside him, palm to his chest, and forced what power remained into the fraying thread of his soul. But she didn’t sever the link.

She followed it.

Darkness. Hunger. A void with no edge and too many names. But in its center, alone and bound by choice and grief:

Orwyn.

Shadows flared around him, shifting into something monstrous, wrong and aching. A silhouette with too many limbs, too many eyes, a yawning mouth in place of a face.

“There you are,” she said softly, her own soul burning like gold in the black. “Come back. Follow the light.”

In the waking world, she felt Tam drop beside them, tension and shadow still thick around him. But here, inside this strand of ethereal souls and ash, there was only her. Only Orwyn. And the thing reaching for him.

She reached first.

Orwyn gasped, choking, breath sharp and cold, and his eyes flew open. They were his again, but glassy, wide with dread, seeking Elmira’s as she came back into herself. The world tilted dangerously and she had to sit back on her heels to brace herself.

“I didn’t think it would reach me here,” he whispered.

Tam’s voice was quiet but ragged. When had he joined them? “Reach you? What in the deep hells are you talking about?”

Orwyn’s hands twitched. He looked between them all, then past them, voice cracking.

“I was born in the Soundless Reaches. My mother… she said we were the leftovers. The echoes of a people swallowed by the sea.” His eyes drifted, distant. “They’re not gone. Just… changed.”

Elmira felt her blood run cold. The Erid Straits hadn’t just found Orwyn, they had recognized him.

“You knew this might happen,” Tam said, not accusing, but stunned.

Orwyn nodded, just once. “I’d heard the stories. But I didn’t think…” His voice caught. Shadows flickered again at his temples. “I didn’t know they’d remember me.”

“You did not know?” Elmira asked Tam in disbelief.

For the first time since she’d met him, Tam was at a loss for words. Orwyn turned his head to look at her with a pained look in his eyes. “No one knows.”

Someone had. Elmira glanced at Jessa who ducked into herself, still clutching him in her arms.

“They’re trying to take me back,” Orwyn continued, gripping Jessa’s hand tightly. “Pull me back into them. Make me what I was never meant to become.”

“Then we don’t let them,” Jessa said, furious.

Elmira’s hands were already burning but Orwyn grabbed her wrist, not hard, just firm. “No spell can hold what’s inside me, El. Not for long. If I slip, you run. You get the crew out. I don’t care what you have to do. Promise me.”

“I don’t leave people behind,” Tam said, voice sharp before he turned to Okurac, shouting, “Get us past the Lantern Spire!”

Okurac bared his teeth and threw the wheel hard. “Brace!”

As Marlo and Jessa grabbed Orwyn and carried him below deck, Elmira glanced down into a misty gorge between two towers of stone and saw something. A glimmering white shape that vanished as quickly as it appeared. A face, perhaps. Or just the mist and her imagination.

Then Tam faced them, eyes wild with glee, green hair sticking out in wind-whipped spikes. “Did I mention,” he said as a matter of fact, “that we’re the only ship in the last decade that’s made it through here entirely alive?”

“That is not reassuring!” Rina shouted back.

Okurac’s knuckles had gone white on the wheel. “Wind’s shifting!”

“Ride it,” Tam called. “Don’t fight it, dance with it!”

He raced back up the steps to the quarterdeck. And with the practiced fluidity of madmen and geniuses, the crew obeyed. The ship tilted and dipped slightly toward a narrow channel between the two monoliths that whistled like dying breath. The Sphynx glided low enough that sea spray kissed the hull, and then with a sudden rush, caught an updraft Tam had been counting on. She soared, leaping over the final outcrop like a beast uncaged and aglow with the midday sun.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Okurac laughed, deep and thunderous. “Still alive,” he said. “Told you we could do it.”

Tam grinned and patted the railing fondly. “Like threading a needle with a lightning bolt, but gods, it sings, doesn’t it?”

Elmira watched him with a strange, reluctant admiration. He wasn’t just lucky. He wasn’t just reckless. He knew this ship. Knew the winds like a second tongue.

She let herself breathe. Just a little.

They burst from the fog like a phoenix, sails still aglow when a sleek vessel cut across their path, black and gold, flying the seal of Erid Pact.

It said nothing. Only turned and began to guide them inland.

“No message?” Rina asked, tone clipped as she stood beside the ballista.

Orwyn shook his head. “None. Just that flag pattern from the crow’s nest. It’s an instruction. We're to follow.”

Tam clicked his tongue. “Well. They certainly know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

But he didn’t argue. With a sharp whistle and a wave of his hand, the Scarlet Sphynx adjusted course behind the strange vessel. The crew moved like clockwork, tired, bruised, but steady. As the wind shifted again, the fog pulled away like curtains, revealing a sight that took Elmira’s breath.

A great river mouth, yawning wide to meet the sea. Green hills flanked its shores, mist-draped and majestic, rising in tiers like steps to the heavens. White birds soared overhead in spiraling flocks, and the sunlight filtered through the clouds, casting gold upon the water.

Ran Fy’eir. The River of Fire.

The escort vessel peeled away once they crossed the invisible line from salt to fresh water. No gesture. No signal. It simply disappeared again, like a dream fraying at the edges.

For the first time in weeks, the water was calm.

Elmira stood at the rail with Tam, watching the green shores glide past.

“This is it,” she said quietly. “We are almost there.”

Tam gave a soft nod, his usual grin subdued. “Kael-Vora.”

Rina leaned on the railing ahead of them, already scanning upriver with a practiced eye. “We’ll reach the city by nightfall if this current holds.”

Behind them, the crew began to breathe again. Lint laughed softly, pointing out strange birds. Jessa whistled low, impressed. Marlo fell asleep on his feet until Rina nudged him with her elbow. Orwyn slept and no one wanted to wake him up. Some, like Nix, avoided his door now, scarred by what had happened in the Straits. But most, like Elmira, compartmentalized and put it behind them where it belonged.

Kael-Vora lay ahead.

They were no longer chasing it through storms and myths. They were here. Oliria welcomed them into her verdant lands. Elmira slumped to the deck, her vision swimming. They had made it. Somewhere behind them, the Wailing Isles and the Erid Straits shrieked one final time before vanishing into the mist.