The sea was quiet, unnaturally so. The storm that had torn through the horizon was gone, but its memory lingered in the air like smoke after a battlefield blaze. The Duskwind rocked gently in the swells, her masts splintered, her sails ragged. The deck was slick with seawater, blood, and ash. It smelled of iron, salt, and endings.
Mara stood barefoot at the bow, her body bruised and bloodied but upright—always upright. The sky above her was a bruised purple, the kind that came before the sun fully surrendered to night. In her hand was a small leather pouch. It was soft and weather-worn, filled with coarse salt. The salt was sacred. A ritual. A memory.
She dipped her fingers into the pouch and scattered the first handful over the water.
"One for the dead," she whispered.
Behind her, the crew of the Duskwind gathered in silence. Driftborn warriors with kelp-bound braids and tattooed skin, sea rogues with knives still wet from the battle, and ex-slaves whose chains now lay at the bottom of the ocean. They had survived the Obsidian Wrath—barely. And the silence they now shared was heavier than any song.
Mara closed her eyes and whispered the names of the fallen into the wind.
"Kellen, Oryn, Jessal, Hara. Salt to guide you. Salt to free you."
Wounds and Survivors
Below decks, the wounded moaned in pain. Driftborn healers moved among them with baskets of herbs, coral-inked hands slick with salves and blood. Abyr lay on a table with his shirt cut away, his ribs bound tight. Each breath he took came with a wince. Darion sat nearby, his shoulder freshly stitched, his eyes unfocused.
"I counted twenty-three dead," Darion murmured.
"Thirty-one," corrected a healer. "Eight more gave up their ghosts while you were sleeping."
Darion clenched his jaw. "That storm wasn't natural. Mallik brought something with him."
"He brought the Iron Tide," Abyr rasped. "We met it head-on. And we lived."
"But at what cost?"
No one answered.
Letters Never Sent
Later that night, Mara sat alone in her cabin with a stack of parchment before her. Each page bore a name, a story, a family. She dipped her quill in ink and began to write. Not because she had to—but because no one else would.
"To the family of Jessal Tidecatcher,
She died with her blade drawn, defending the quarterdeck from three boarders. She laughed as she fought. She was fearless. You raised her well. And she died free."
Letter after letter. One for each. A rebellion against the forgetfulness of time. She sealed each with wax, stamped with the broken crown that had once been her mother's.
Return to the Shoals
The next morning, the Duskwind limped into the Shimmering Shoals—a sacred Driftborn labyrinth of glowing reefs and haunted currents. A place where the sea remembered its dead.
They were met by the Matriarch of the Driftborn: a woman older than the bones of most ships, with shark teeth braided into her hair and skin that shimmered with salt magic.
"You bleed the crown's death-song," she said to Mara.
"I bled for my crew," Mara replied. "And I called for you because no one else would come."
"We came not for you," the Matriarch said. "But for the sea you summoned. You are your mother's daughter. Maria Graveblood bled here, too. And the sea drank deeply."
Mara's voice hardened. "Then I am here to break what she began. I won't wear chains of salt or gold."
The Matriarch studied her, then nodded. "Then you must drown your past in something heavier than regret. Come. The dead wait to hear your promise."
Salt for the Living
That night, at the heart of the glowing reefs, the Driftborn performed the Rite of Passage. The crew of the Duskwind stood in a circle, holding torches as the Matriarch chanted in the tongue of the deep.
One by one, the names of the fallen were cast into the sea, carved onto stones and weighted down with salt. Mara stepped forward last, tossing the final stone into the depths.
"The sea remembers," she said. "But so do we."
The torches dimmed. The water shimmered. And for a moment, it was as if the dead breathed with them again.
Reckonings
After the ceremony, Abyr found Mara staring at a tide chart by the navigation table.
"You look like your mother did before the battle of Hollow Break," he said.
"I'm not her," Mara replied.
"No," he said. "But the sea doesn't care. It only remembers the blood."
Mara nodded. "Then let it remember mine."
Darion entered with news. "Scouts saw black sails on the horizon. Mallik's still hunting us."
Mara looked up, her eyes sharper than the horizon. "Then let's give him something to find."
A Captain's Oath
Back in her cabin, Mara opened a rusted chest beneath her cot. Inside was a key, a faded map, and her mother's journal. The entries spoke of an ancient vault beneath the Sea of Sighs—one said to hold weapons and truths powerful enough to drown an empire.
"We sail east," she told Abyr and Darion the next morning.
Abyr blinked. "To the Sea of Sighs? That's suicide."
"It's a message," Mara said. "If Mallik wants to choke the world with fear, then we open the floodgates."
Darion's lips twitched into the ghost of a grin. "A storm for a storm."
Mara fastened her cloak. "And salt for the dead."
The Tide Turns
As the sun broke over the Shoals, the Duskwind raised her torn sails. The crew stood ready—wounded, weary, but unbowed.
The sea stretched before them. The Iron Tide loomed behind.
But in Mara's eyes, there was no retreat.
Only reckoning.