It took two sunrises for all to be prepared.

  Two sunrises of frantic breath and firelit toil—gathering blades still warm from the forge, robes stitched from weatherproof hide to withstand the fury of storm-laced winds, a compass etched in obsidian and silver, and sustenance enough to last us through tempests yet unseen. We worked like people bracing for the wrath of gods. Everything we needed to cross into the forgotten parts of the world.

  And still—

  “We have everything,” I murmured, my voice hollow. “Everything but the thing that’ll carry us.”

  A vessel.

  The harbor groaned with forgotten ships, their bellies bloated with salt and barnacle, too weak to brave even the seventh dusk. Their hulls were of driftwood—light enough to float, but cursed to thirst. Marine beasts had turned them into feeding grounds. Brineworms had bored into their skin like decay into flesh. The sea itself turned against them. Marine beasts clung to their pores like sickness to a dying man, dragging them down in slow, sacred drownings. Ships didn’t sink in Solmork; they were devoured.

  That’s when Chara spoke. Her voice—tight, low—was the sound of steel sliding between ribs.

  “We went to him.”

  Silence dropped like a guillotine.

  “Fidi,” she said, as if saying it quieter would make it hurt less. “At first light.”

  His name was always thunder in my chest. That wretched soul wrapped in sadism.

  Fane crossed his arms, jaw clenched like stone. “He agreed. To lend us a vessel—one not of timber, but of bone.”

  “It’s not Driftwood,” he said. “It’s… Thalakaros.”

  The name silenced even the wind.

  I didn’t breathe. I didn’t blink.

  Thalakaros.

  The bore, ever the sentinel of cold facts, stepped in. “Wood cracks. Flesh rots. Even the bones of man and beast splinter beneath the weight of ocean’s fury. But Thalakaros is not just a beast. It was never born. It was conjured. Willed into being by something ancient and vengeful. The sea does not touch it. The sea fears it. Its eyes are sunless voids, vast and lidless. Its mouth opens sideways—too wide, too slow. It does not roar. It hums. The kind of sound that leaks into your dreams and makes your soul forget how to scream. Its wings stretch from one end of the storm to the other, and the scars along its back... they weren’t made by blade or beast. They were made by time itself, clawing to hold it still. The only creature known to possess a skeleton stronger than tungsten yet denser than water. Its bones… are called Godsmarrow—unbreakable.”

  Silence bloomed in the room. It had a presence. A pulse. We did not speak.

  Because to speak would be to break the reverence.

  “We had no choice,” said Chara. “Its remains are priceless. Priceless in the way temples are—worshipped, not touched. The kind of thing that even warlords whisper about. We asked Fidi not because we wanted to… but because there was no other way.”

  Is this how corruption begins? When even monsters start helping?

  The bore hesitated. “If it were within our reach, I would have spilled my own blood in the Crucible to earn it. But even if all three of us fought for a lifetime—obtaining this bone would still remain a dream.”

  He paused, shame written on his shoulders.

  But before he could speak again, I cut in. “Then do not apologize. I know what it costs you to rely on him.”

  The air lightened for a moment. I forced a smile. “So even you can’t defeat Thalakaros, hmm?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Fane flared up, voice too fast to hide the sting. “That’s not true!”

  Chara chuckled, then leaned in, brushing a strand of wind-blown hair from her face. “You haven’t even seen one.”

  Her voice dropped into something reverent, haunted, like a child recalling a nightmare she once mistook for a god.

  “It is vast,” she whispered. “Its wings stretch wide like that born of shadow and moonlight. It doesn't swim. It carves through the sea like the ocean was never meant to be whole. Its tail… its tail could lash the sky in two. I read once that when it breaches, it rains black for a week.”

  A quiet laugh escaped me. I know not why.

  I looked at them—my friends—and saw it clearly. Their habits, their quirks, their fire… had bled into me.

  But something still tugged at my thoughts.

  “Why would he give it to us?” I finally asked. “Fidi doesn’t know kindness. Or charity.”

  Just as Chara inhaled to reply, the door creaked open behind us. That voice. That insufferable, venom-dipped voice.

  “Because,” he drawled, “I owed you something.”

  I didn’t need to turn. My spine recognized him before my eyes could.

  Fidi.

  He stood at the doorway, adorned in gold and arrogance. Rings coiled around his fingers like serpents. His smirk was a blade dulled only by amusement. And his eyes—those cursed eyes—never changed. They cut through you, slow and precise, not to hurt you.

  But to enjoy it.

  “You’ve changed,” he said, gaze sliding to me. “I assume you’re still hopeless with directions?”

  Chara’s smile died like embers in ash. Fane’s hands twitched toward a blade he didn’t draw.

  Fidi, of course, was unaffected.

  “No need to glower,” he sighed. “I don’t expect gratitude. But I will accept silence.”

  I stepped forward. My voice was steel. “Repay me? What debt could you possibly think you owe me?”

  He tilted his head, grin curving crueler. “You entertained me.”

  The room stilled.

  He stepped closer. “Do you know how rare that is for me? Watching you unravel while I told you your origin? Ah, exquisite. Delicious. Rare. I hadn’t laughed like that in years.”

  His gaze sharpened.

  “You ran. I expected to find your bones. But instead, you made it out. You made a name. So consider this—” he shrugged, lazy and lethal— “a gift. Delayed. Unwanted, perhaps. But a gift nonetheless.”

  My blood was tar. Thick. Slow.

  He was chaos wrapped in velvet.

  Fane’s voice cut the room like lightning. “Why are you here now?”

  Fidi looked bored. “To say the ship is ready. Obviously.”

  What?

  Already?

  Of course. Boshaft power. Warlord reach.

  Fidi turned, already halfway through the door. “A debt, a favor— A bet I made with boredom. Call it whatever you want, little girl,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m done.”

  He paused.

  “What you do with it now, Zilar… that’s up to you. Make it out alive.” he said waving his hand.

  Then he was gone.

  The air seemed to collapse behind him. We didn’t move. We didn’t speak. Not until the silence was broken by the breath we’d forgotten to release.

  “So,” Fane asked, grin returning to his lips, “are you ready to set sail?”

  I looked toward the window. Toward the dark line of the horizon. The wind howled. The ocean waited. A storm sat there—breathing. A journey that only madmen would take. We had a dead beast’s bones and the help of a monster.

  But—

  I was no longer alone. I turned to my friends.

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  Citadel

  The candle burned low.

  In a chamber far from sea and storm, two men sat — one reclined in velvet arrogance, the other unmoving, carved from silence itself.

  "Did you tell her?" Barrett asked, his voice devoid of anything resembling curiosity.

  Fidi swirled a dark glass of something older than time. “The line?” he smirked. “‘What you do with it now, Zilar… that’s up to you. Make it out alive.’”

  He sipped. Leisurely. The gold on his fingers clinked against crystal.

  “Yes. I told her. Just like you asked.”

  A beat. Then he laughed — low, cruel, indulgent.

  “Who would’ve thought,” he said, voice thick with mockery, “that the monster who left her behind would be the one to buy her Godsmarrow?”

  He exhaled, a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff. “This was fun.”

  Barrett said nothing. His expression remained untouched. Eyes like still water.

  Fidi leaned forward slightly, searching for a reaction — anything.

  “Nothing to say, old friend?”

  “No.” Barrett’s voice was ice.

  Fidi’s grin disappeared

  The candle flickered. Then darkness took the room.