The wind had turned cruel.
It howled through the rigging of the Duskwind like a wounded animal, flaying the sails with unseen claws. The sea, once a mirror of bruised silver, now writhed with fury. Wave after wave crashed against the hull, as if trying to drag the ship back into the depths from which it had just emerged.
Mara stood at the helm, knuckles white around the wheel, jaw locked against the sting of salt and rain. The Crowncleaver was strapped across her back, humming faintly, as though it too sensed the storm was no mere act of weather. The sea had turned against them.
"We should've waited!" Abyr roared over the chaos. He was lashed to the mainmast, hammer slung across his back, water pouring from his beard.
"We wait, we die!" Mara shouted back. "The Iron Tide is on our wake! This is the only way forward."
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the monstrous wave that reared like a fanged god before them. The crew braced, screams torn from their lips. The Duskwind climbed the wall of water—and nearly didn't come down.
The crash was bone-jarring. Half the crew were thrown to the deck, others clung to the rigging, soaked and bleeding. But the ship held.
Barely.
Splinters embedded themselves in flesh. The hull cried beneath the pressure, timbers groaning like ancient bones. Mara didn't let go of the wheel—not even as the storm tried to wrench it from her grip. She had faced worse. She would face worse yet.
In the Eye of the Storm
Hours passed.
The storm, as if sensing the ship's stubbornness, changed its nature. Winds died. Rain ceased. The clouds above swirled in a slow, deliberate spiral—and the Duskwind drifted into a stillness that felt more dangerous than any gale.
"The eye," Darion murmured, climbing to Mara's side. His coat was shredded, one arm bound in bloodied cloth.
Mara nodded. "No calm is ever safe."
Below them, the sea turned unnaturally clear. Shapes moved beneath the surface. Too large, too slow.
"Gods below," Abyr whispered. "We're over the Maw."
Mara narrowed her eyes. The Maw. A chasm said to reach the bottom of the world. Where ancient leviathans went to die—or sleep.
And something down there had woken.
A sudden shiver ran down Mara's spine. Not from cold. From recognition. Something deep in her blood responded to the silence, like a song once sung and long forgotten.
A flock of black seabirds wheeled overhead, screeching and breaking the eerie quiet. Even the storm gave them space.
Teeth in the Deep
The first attack was soundless.
A tentacle, thick as a mast, shot from the depths and wrapped around the stern. Wood groaned. Crew shouted. Another struck, slamming into the side and ripping away part of the railing.
"Weapons!" Mara roared.
Darion fired, shot after shot, the report of his pistol like punctuation against the silence of the deep. Abyr swung his hammer and crushed a suckered limb that clung to the deck.
Then the creature rose.
It was not one thing. It was many.
A mass of writhing limbs, plated in barnacle-encrusted chitin, eyes like sunken lanterns glowing green with hunger. Its maw opened wide, revealing rows of rotating teeth that churned like a grinder.
"A tideborn horror," Abyr said. "Older than empires."
Mara drew the Crowncleaver. The blade sang with anticipation.
"Then let it remember pain."
She leapt.
Dance of Blades and Storm
Mara landed on one of the tentacles, slipping slightly as slime and blood sprayed. She ran up the arm toward the creature's eye, dodging thrashing limbs and spraying gore.
Darion covered her from the deck, shots piercing tendons and joints. Abyr smashed another tentacle before it could crush the port side. The crew fought with all they had, their voices rising with fury and fear.
A young sailor named Kye lost his footing, vanishing into the froth with a scream. Another crewmember, Lysa, hurled harpoons with deadly aim, impaling sucker-limbs to the mast.
Mara reached the eye.
She plunged the Crowncleaver into it.
The creature screamed.
Not aloud—but inside every skull.
The crew dropped to their knees. Blood leaked from noses. The sea turned red as the beast writhed in agony.
Mara held on as it thrashed. She drove the blade deeper.
A pulse erupted from the Crowncleaver, like a heartbeat of light. The creature convulsed. Tentacles shattered against the sea. The maw closed.
And with one last shudder, it sank.
Back into the Maw.
What Remains
The storm cleared. Slowly. As if the sea, having spent its rage, had nothing left to give.
The Duskwind drifted. Damaged. Smeared in blood and brine.
Mara collapsed beside the wheel, breath ragged. Her arms trembled with exhaustion, every breath scraping her lungs like broken glass.
Darion limped toward her. "We're alive."
"For now," she said.
Abyr leaned on the railing, coughing blood. "We keep tempting death. One day, it'll stop saying no."
"Not yet," Mara whispered. "Not until we finish this."
She looked to the east.
There, on the horizon, were sails. Dark. Familiar.
The Iron Tide was coming.
But so was the storm Mara now carried in her hand.
Below deck, the survivors began to patch wounds and whisper prayers. The air was thick with salt and silence. Lirien, the young Driftborn girl who had barely survived the last battle, traced a symbol on the wall with saltwater and ash.
"The sea remembers," she whispered.
Mara heard her, and something inside her responded.
The sea did remember.
And this time, it remembered her.
Above, gulls screamed as they circled the battered mast. In the shattered silence, Mara whispered to herself.
"Let the sea bring what it will. I've stood through worse. And I'll stand again."