You wish to see it?

  The old man had asked.

  She assented there and then, and laid before him precious coins wrought of silver and gold, jewels glittering in the dark of the tavern.

  All of it yours, she had said.

  He need only but to give his assent.

  You wish to save it?

  He asked again.

  Knowing naught what you seek, knowing naught the treacherous path before you?

  The horrors that broke even the resolve of the gods?

  Her companion spoke counsel.

  To withdraw.

  She smiled thinly, she awaited before him, awaiting.

  She lives for it. She said.

  Fiery beauty she was.

  Fiery red her hair.

  A fire in her heart and a fire in her eyes.

  The type that was afflicted with wanderlust.

  As of those who flocked to the banner of the Thousand Leaguers.

  He had known quite a few of her kindred in his immortal youth.

  The adventurous and the thrill-seekers.

  Treasures and gems meant little.

  She heard he was there.

  That he had set foot on it.

  An island that appears only when the stars are right.

  Where its inhabitants worship dragons borne of the void.

  He exhaled then.

  She knew naught what she sought.

  But he had known.

  For he had been there.

  Where the threads of fate hung still and heavy.

  Where the heart lay heavy from indolence.

  Where wanderlust beckoned and one can only hearken.

  But they were both of House Farscaper, the Thousand Leaguers.

  He shalt not deny her this.

  He reached not for her coins, but the ale she brought when they first came over to his table.

  Very well then, know with a heavy heart I set thee forth upon this path, for her salvation lies within a nameless city once borne a name I had stricken from my memories and never revisit.

  Even in my dreams.

  He spoke then, of a nameless isle shrouded in mist, and so resurrect a secret long-held hidden from the world.

  Hearken to my words for they will be your light in a lightless land.

  He spoke then and set her upon the path.

  Go then, beyond the Great Sea and the Wall of Mists.

  There, beyond the Seas of Stars, you will find the Land of the Dead, the decaying husk of a corpse-borne god beyond the void. Seek there within those lands of dead flesh, an endless quagmire where the stars go to die.

  She listened intently.

  She committed each and every word imparted to heart and she took her leave.

  Her companion nodded, swiped the coins the old man declined and departed too.

  For seven days and six nights they combed the city’s docks.

  They sought a ship and a captain who would take them to the isle.

  Every vessel worth her name declined.

  No captain would take her upon her offer.

  It was not gold they declined.

  It was where she wish to go.

  But on the seventh night, where the light of Astraria and Vesperia waned and the glow of their night twin Nautari the Black was seen, she found a captain willing to take her.

  The man and his men were not of repute, and they took no coin.

  On the night without the twin moons, they took their ship and sailed.

  They left the last honest lights of the coast behind them and cut south by southeast, a heading that scraped against every rule of Astrastarian navigation worth keeping.

  The twin moons, Astraria and Vesperia, were held steady off the prow to maintain bearing.

  But for this voyage, the man ordered the helm adjusted until both moons drifted out of alignment, slipping wide and uncertain at the edge of vision.

  The helmsman merely obeyed; had he spoken at all.

  The crew worked in silence, they did not speak.

  For thirteen days and thirteen nights, they held that course.

  The sea was calm.

  Too calm.

  Not the living calm of vibrant waters awaiting weather, but a flatness that never broke.

  Never breathed.

  The sails hung full without wind, the ship advancing as if drawn forward from beneath the waves.

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  Oars were unnecessary.

  The water accepted the hull without resistance, without sound.

  Illara Stormcloak flipped her compass.

  The compass pointed north.

  Then spun.

  She snapped the compass close.

  “Having second thoughts?”

  Matthias the Blade shadowed her.

  He appeared, seemingly unfolding from his cloak.

  A living cloak of shadow and void.

  “No.” she said.

  Matthias cocked his eyebrow.

  She was not her customary cheery self.

  They hardly spoke to one another.

  They heeded the voice in their hearts.

  For the unease they felt, to speak freely among the unnaturally silent crew.

  Thus, they do not speak, save only of trivial and light things.

  He did not like how many were listening.

  “I do not like this, Illara.” He said softly.

  She nodded.

  They were sailing against sea-lore now.

  Not sailor tales or superstition, but the hard-earned knowledge scratched into the margins of star-charts by men who survived only once.

  The ones dismissed off-handedly.

  Currents no longer aligned with moon-pull.

  The compass aboard the ship, forged to point north had begun to spin aimlessly on the third night.

  Its needle trembling as if caught between decisions.

  Illara flipped open her compass again.

  She trusted a different one.

  Older. Stranger.

  Wrought of the sea.

  Pointed to the heart’s desire.

  A man had pressed it into her hands after colliding with her in a Skullport bar, all swagger and apology.

  “It won’t show you north,” he’d said with a crooked grin—then the grin faltered, just enough to matter. “Only what you can’t stop chasing.”

  Its brass casing bore no maker’s mark, its glass scratched and clouded as if it had seen more weather than it should have survived.

  The needle within did not point north.

  It did not point anywhere predictable at all.

  It pointed to what Illara Stormcloak wanted most.

  At the moment, it pointed nowhere.

  Matthias watched it spin in her palm and said nothing.

  He had said everything that needed saying days ago.

  On the twelfth night, the air changed.

  Not in temperature.

  Not in scent.

  It stopped moving.

  But the sails remained full, but the fabric no longer fluttered.

  Loose ropes no longer swayed.

  Every breath became reluctant to drift away once exhaled, lingering close to the mouth.

  The captain and his crew were seemingly unaffected by the malign occurrence.

  If they were, they were not showing it.

  Illara leaned over to her companion.

  “You feel that?” She said without humor.

  Matthias nodded.

  She straightened slowly.

  “Keep your blades close, Nightblade.”

  “My blades are always close, Mistwalker.”

  “Good,” her lips curled. “They will rue the day they cross an Astrastar.”

  They reached the thirteenth dawn without sunrise.

  The sky lightened, but no sun rose to claim it.

  Instead, a dull, pearlescent glow spread evenly across the heavens, flattening shadows and distorting the distance.

  The sea and sky melded together at the horizon, indistinct and shapeless.

  The captain spoke up for the first time since they sailed.

  The island.

  It sat, a lone mass of land within a depthless void-barren sea.

  No wave broke against its shore.

  It crouched.

  A dragon borne of the void.

  It tethered itself to the world, where there had been nothing moments before.

  A tendril of the shapeless void latching unto prime material and assumed its shape.

  From afar, it looked unremarkable.

  A jagged outcropping of black stone rose from the water.

  Its hills barren and sharp, like broken teeth gnawing at the mist.

  White sand curved along its shores in a perfect arc.

  The sand pristine and inviting, catching the false dawn with deceptive beauty.

  Dense swamplands sprawled across the eastern flank, dark and tangled.

  No towers.

  No ruins.

  No temple.

  None that can be seen from the ship.

  Illara frowned. “I do not see a temple.”

  Matthias did not answer.

  His eyes had fixed on the island’s center.

  There, where the land dipped inward, lay a lake.

  It was vast.

  Still.

  Utterly placid.

  The water mirror black.

  It reflected nothing.

  Not sky, not island, not mist.

  What little light striking its surface was absorbed.

  Denied.

  No ripple disturbed it.

  No wind traced its skin.

  It sat half-consumed by the encroaching forest, half-buried beneath the island’s stone spine.

  Timeless and unmoving.

  A mirror, not of the heavens—but the void.

  The compass in Illara’s hand snapped hard and held.

  Her breath caught before she could stop it.

  “That,” Matthias said quietly, “was not there before.”

  They drifted closer.

  Illara averted her gaze and shook her head.

  The longer she looked at the island, the stranger the sensation of vertigo.

  Her usually keen eyes refused to focus.

  Her perspective distorted.

  Hills seeming farther away pulled closer.

  The forest’s edge appeared to breathe and shifted subtly.

  Illara shook her head sharply, breaking the spell. “All right. Enough of this.

  She turned to the captain.

  “Bring us in.”

  The ship slowed of its own accord.

  Mist thickened around the hull, coiling low and deliberate.

  It carried the stench of the sea. Pallid, salt, rot, and something deeper, unfathomable in its depth.

  The sails sagged, not from lack of wind, but from a weight settling into the air itself.

  The keel touched water without sound.

  No splash. No echo.

  The sea parted around the hull like clotting blood.

  Illara swore under her breath.

  Matthias said nothing,

  But they both felt it.

  The tide did not rise to meet them.

  The waves rolled toward shore and collapsed into ebbs from the sand, dissipated.

  They disembarked in silence.

  Illara vaulted over the rail first, boots striking the shallows.

  She straightened, blade loose in one hand, pistol steady in the other.

  She felt nothing beneath her feet.

  She felt the water.

  She felt not, the sea.

  No grit. No pull. No tide.

  No sense of wetness or weight.

  Matthias landed beside her, lighter, quieter.

  He crouched immediately, fingers brushing the pale sand.

  “That’s not sand,” he said.

  Illara knelt and let the grains run through her fingers.

  Too fine. Too dry.

  Something that had once, had been living.

  Bones.

  Powdered down to sand.

  The beach stretched ahead of them, a lifeless scarp of pale powder and shattered black stone.

  From afar, it was deceptively pristine.

  Up close, it was grotesque.

  Fish carcasses littered the shoreline.

  They lay bloated, split open, some melted into unrecognizable shapes.

  A few still twitched weakly, something wriggling within their dead flesh.

  Eldritch flies blanketed every exposed surface, their droning muffled by the oppressive stillness that clung to the air.

  No gulls cried.

  No wind stirred.

  The forest beyond the beach loomed black and silent.

  Its trees twisted and skeletal, more burned than grown.

  They waited.

  Beckoning.

  Illara rose slowly.

  “Charming little place,” she said lightly, “I see why the man was not keen to tell us.”

  Matthias didn’t smile.

  His gaze had fixed on the water.

  Waves rolled toward shore—and died.

  Not broke. Not receded.

  They simply ceased.

  “We didn’t find this place,” he said at last. “It found us.”

  Illara glanced down at the compass again.

  The needle did not waver.

  She snapped it shut.

  “Well, we are here now.”

  A whistle.

  They turned around.

  The captain and his crew.

  They handed them their packs.

  Gently.

  Illara and Matthias nodded their thanks as they took them.

  The two stepped inland.

  Each footfall crunched softly, a dry, hollow sound.

  The sand clung to their boots, powdery and persistent.

  Illara wiped her foot against a rock and frowned as the residue refused to fall away.

  The air pressed against them.

  Thick and heavy, it was as though they move through deep water.

  Fighting the undercurrent.

  “Hold, Matthias,” she called.

  The Nightblade turned to her.

  Illara dropped her pack and unsheathed her blade.

  A huge-crescent blade.

  She swung her blade experimentally.

  The motion dragged.

  Steel groaned faintly as it cut through the air, leaving behind a subtle distortion, as if the space itself resented the intrusion.

  She frowned. “That’s unexpected.”

  Matthias tested his knife.

  He felt it too.

  The air fighting him.

  Not enough to hinder, but enough to throw off his finely-honed combat instincts.

  “Listen,” Illara said softly.

  They stood still for a long moment, listening.

  The silence.

  The whispering.

  Beneath it all lay a low murmuring, words spoken by inhuman lips.

  A long sinuous chant.

  Barely audible.

  Beneath the keen hearing and ken of even the Astrastars.

  A ceremony.

  A ritual.

  The island was not alive.

  It was aware.

  Illara looked up then, her eyes towards the skies.

  “Matthias,” she whispered softly.

  The Nightblade craned his neck too.

  His eyes widened.

  The stars.

  The guiding light of their people.

  The constellations were wrong.

  The words of the old man came back to them.

  An island that appears only when the stars are right.

  “Right.” Illara said wryly, “right to whom?”

  Matthias turned back to the ship.

  The captain and his crew were still there.

  Staring at them.

  Unblinking.

  “Nightblade.” Illara called.

  Matthias whirled and saw Illara pointing her blade towards the distant forest.

  From the treeline, countless slitted yellow eyes opened and watched.

  “So the old men spoke truth,” Matthias said softly.

  Its inhabitants worship dragons born of the void.

  Illara felt them before she saw them.

  The serpentine eyes watching them.

  Unblinking.

  Illara snapped her compass open.

  It pointed north.

  “Well,” she smiled, “we go there then.”

  She took a step forward.

  Matthias glided alongside.

  The mist closed behind them.