The wind combed gently through my hair as I approached Chara, who stood by the helm, her fingers brushing over parchment like it was made of skin.

  “Can I see it?” I asked.

  She held it out in silence, and when my eyes met its surface, I understood why.

  The map wasn’t a chart.

  It was a creature.

  Its skin was parchment, yes—but veined with threads of silver and dark mossy ink, like arteries pulsing just beneath the surface. Its edges were frayed, burnt in some places, water-stained in others, as though it had survived tempests. Symbols curled across it like scales—layered, overlapping, whispering secrets in tongues that flickered between sense and nonsense depending on the light. And the scent—it smelled of old rain and singed bone, like it had once been folded between prophecy and punishment.

  Solmork itself was carved onto the map like a scar—an oval world, crumpled and ancient like a raisin. The eastern edge was all jagged sprawl and clawed landmasses. That was Vithryst—where the beasts roamed and reason lost its grip. The west, where the lines were smoother, lands more domesticated and names more known, was Paxnoctis—our birth place. I’d always been told it was west. But here, on this map, Paxnoctis was drawn as the East.

  “Our course bends westward,” I murmured. “We’re flipping the world.”

  Chara nodded. “That must be how the old voyagers saw it—not from Paxnoctis to Vithryst, but from shadow to flame.”

  My eyes wandered toward the center of the map. There, ink bled into chaos. Rivers spiraled into a single fit of water, narrow and dark, plunging like a knife into the very belly of Solmork. When I traced the river, the ink rippled, as if it remembered being water. There were no borders. No towns. No names. Just a chasm of ink that looked almost alive.

  “How far down does this go?” I whispered.

  “I am not sure,” Chara replied. “I haven't read about it in any tome.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I followed the path. It curved like a serpent, then dipped. And at its mouth, a line had been carved—not written, but cut into the map. The blade had bitten deep.

  “The key is the first heart,” I read aloud. My voice wavered before the words even left my mouth. The air stilled—as if the ship had paused to listen.

  “The key is the first heart?” I repeated, glancing up. “Where in the world did you find this?”

  The bore appeared behind me, chewing on dried fruit like he hadn't just shifted the course of history.

  “I didn’t find it,” he said. “I stole it.”

  I blinked. “You what?”

  He shrugged. “Some hooded lot, real dramatic, guarded it like a sacred limb. I thought I’d lighten their burden.”

  Chara sighed. I groaned. And somewhere between us, the ship hummed.

  A soft blue light began to glow beneath our feet. We turned toward the helm.

  The helm—the one carved from Thalakaros’s heart—was pulsing. Faintly. Blue as drowning starlight.

  Chara’s face paled.

  “That’s what the builder warned me,” she said, voice low. “The helm glows when... something draws near.”

  The wind faltered.

  The sails stiffened.

  A silence crawled across the water, and the waves stilled like prey sensing a predator.

  Something stirred below.

  I stepped to the edge of the deck, peering into the dark. The water, once gleaming with scattered moonlight, began to ripple—not outward, but inward. Toward us. Like the sea was breathing in.

  Then—

  A shadow bloomed beneath the surface.

  It grew.

  And grew.

  A mountain of muscle, a labyrinth of limbs, a mass of slithering hunger coiled beneath the keel. One tentacle—long and thick as a valley—slid into view, slick and gleaming like wet basalt. It dragged along the surface, rippling water into silence. Then another. And another. Until the sea no longer looked like sea. It looked like skin.

  Eyes emerged—more than two. Dozens. Slit and lidless and gold, burning beneath the waves. One of them met mine. And I swear, for a second, I saw myself reflected in it—not as I was, but as I would be if it pulled me under.

  Its beak broke the surface—a thing not made for biting, but for shattering.

  No growl. No roar.

  Just a gurgle, low and seismic, like bones being crushed beneath the ocean’s pulse.

  It saw me. It saw the part of me still afraid to drown.

  I turned towards the others. Chara looked calm and the Bore smirked as if ready to take it down.

  Breath caught in my throat.

  Then I scoffed, with the weariness of someone already too tired to be surprised—

  “Of course. The first day, and it’s a Kraken.”