The sky did not scream. It watched.

  Clouds, bruised and brooding, hung above like beasts waiting to feast. The sea held its breath, trembling beneath the weight of something ancient—something that didn’t belong. Beneath Zaratharos, the waters coiled and moaned, whispering warnings to those wise enough to listen.

  And from the helm, Chara’s voice cut the silence clean.

  “Zilar. Fane. Listen—now. Its strength is second only to Thalakaros. But its weakness...”

  Her eyes did not blink. Her hand pointed like prophecy.

  “...is in the tentacles. All ten of them. Sever each one, and it will bleed the sea itself. I will control the helm. We must protect the ship. If it drags us under, we will never leave our mark on Solmork.”

  I stepped forward—not cloaked, not hidden—but armored in the aftermath of everything I’d survived.

  Black leather, weathered and cracked, held together by bone-plate stitched with runic scars from the Crucible—each one carved in blood, not ink. Blades hung from my hips like sins I never confessed. This wasn’t armor for glory. It was armor for someone who expected the sea to bite.

  There was no time for fear.

  Only the sound of blades leaving sheaths, the taste of salt turned metallic on our tongues.

  The bore stepped forward too, brushing his knuckles along the bonewood rail. His grin—sharp, dangerous—split the tension like lightning.

  “Zilar,” he drawled, eyes gleaming with the storm,

  “Let’s see who can cut more.”

  I smirked, heart a drumbeat between rage and thrill.

  “Yes, may the bones remember.”

  The Kraken rose.

  Not like a beast—but like a mountain waking from its burial. Its limbs—long, blackened, ribbed with glowing lines of pulsing orange—snaked across the sea, carving rifts into the waves. When it moved, the water recoiled. Each tentacle glistened with slime and gore, ending in suckers wide enough to crush a house. Its beak clicked open and shut, tasting the sky.

  We moved.

  The bore leapt first, blade catching the moonlight as he carved into a reaching limb. Blood sprayed—black and steaming—and the Kraken shrieked, a sound that bent the wind.

  I dove, rolling beneath the lash of a second limb, and slashed upward—my blade kissing flesh with fury. The tentacle reared back, twitching.

  My sword didn’t pull free. It lodged deep, the Kraken’s flesh clamping around it like muscle refusing death. I gritted my teeth, twisted the hilt until cartilage popped, and tore it out in a spray of black ichor. It splattered across my garment, burning holes through the fabric, hissing as it touched air—boiling like oil fed to the sea.

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  One.

  But the Kraken retaliated.

  A third limb cracked through the air like thunder and whipped the side of the ship—

  The bore didn’t move fast enough. The limb clipped his side and flung him into the railing. I heard the snap before I saw him—splinters embedded deep in his shoulder, blood soaking through his sleeve like a wound blooming. But he stood. Silent. Jaw clenched. Sword raised.

  We flinched.

  And yet—

  Zaratharos stood.

  No shatter. No splinter. No tilt. The ship didn’t just resist the strike. It absorbed it.

  The deck groaned, not from pain—but from awakening.

  The bore looked at me. I looked at him.

  “It’s alive,” he whispered.

  I nodded. “No more restraint. We have bled enough.”

  We became motion.

  Steel, sinew, and stormlight.

  The bore ducked and weaved, his movements surgical—slashes clean, efficient, purposeful. His blade didn’t scream. It sang.

  I danced across the deck like a flame unchained, leaping over rails, rolling beneath coils, striking with every ounce of hunger the Crucible left in me. The sky cracked open with thunder, as if watching.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  The sea hissed, boiling beneath black blood. The Kraken flailed—two tentacles coiled around Zaratharos’s sides, tightening like death itself.

  The limbs writhed with rage, their suckers sucking air and splintering wood with every twitch. One slammed into the mast, sending a shockwave down the deck that cracked open crates and tossed supplies into the sea. Its shrieks grew worse—seismic, wrong, rupturing air like thunder inside a closed chest. My ears bled. Chara’s rang. The bore’s nose dripped red.

  Its blood boiled wherever it spilled, painting the sea with fire-veined rot. The saltwater hissed in protest, and Zaratharos’s bone-slick deck became a slaughterhouse of divine anatomy.

  But the ship breathed.

  The Godsmarrow hull pulsed with obsidian light. The bones beneath us thrummed with memory, defying gravity, fury, gods.

  Zaratharos roared with no voice—only power. The coils snapped back, scorched where they touched its skin.

  We pressed on.

  Five.

  Six.

  Another limb reached for the mast—fast, violent.

  Fane hurled a knife straight through its eye.

  Seven.

  I slashed the eighth, spun on my heel, and brought the blade down with a scream.

  Eight.

  The ninth was already wounded. Fane and I moved together—like breath and heartbeat—and it fell.

  Nine.

  Then—silence.

  Only one remained.

  It curled behind the smoke and steam, undetected… until it shot straight for Chara.

  The tentacle dragged bits of ruined timber in its wake, its suckers still bearing the teeth of crew long dead—scraps of bone, cloth, a rusted ring. It moved too fast. Too smart. Like it knew she was the helm.

  She did not flinch.

  She did not shout.

  She stepped forward.

  Her sword slid from its sheath like the wind slicing through night.

  Her stance was elegant. Unshaken. A column of stillness in the storm’s eye.

  One breath.

  One step.

  One strike.

  The tentacle split clean in two.

  No sound followed. Only the soft fall of severed flesh hitting the sea.

  The blood that gushed from the wound hissed on contact with Zaratharos’s hull—but the ship drank it, glowing briefly with obsidian fire.

  It wasn’t just alive.

  It was feeding.

  I didn’t react. Neither did Fane.

  We had known it since before.

  Chara wasn’t a warrior.

  She was the storm.

  The bore and I, together? We were barely half of her.

  The waves stilled. The sky held its breath.

  The Kraken sank.

  And so did the sun.

  The Kraken bled, the sea fell silent—If this was only a whisper, I wonder how loud the sea can really scream.

  Darkness swept the horizon as Zaratharos rocked gently in the tide, triumphant and bloodstained. But as I looked up, past the blood-washed sails and smoke-stained clouds, I saw stars scattered like shattered glass across velvet. And for the first time in a long time, the dark didn’t feel like death. It felt like survival with a view.

  Strange, how the world still dares to look beautiful… even after you’ve made it bleed.

  It keeps its beauty, even after you've carved it open.