Tor had been on the bottom for three days.
“Three damn days,” he thought, spitting sand and blood between his teeth.
And no one had come for him yet.
It had all happened in an instant.
A blast from the docks, then another, closer.
And then his caravel.
The wood had screamed, the ropes snapped like torn-out entrails.
Many had been flung into the air like rag dolls, others engulfed in flames, bodies burning before even hitting the water. Some had simply vanished into the dark, cold waves.
Tor had fought like a dog, clinging to everything: planks, shredded sails, even a companion already dead.
The sea makes no distinctions: it swallows you without asking.
When he woke up, he was alone.
The current had dragged him to the seabed, among wreckage and rusted chains.
And he remained there, half alive, half dead, with lungs burning and head throbbing with each heartbeat.
Three days on the bottom are not three days: they are eternity.
Every drop of water seeping into his wounds felt like a blow, every shadow passing over him seemed like a predator watching.
And the thought hammered in his skull: no one is coming. No one.
He wasn’t floating, but lying in the submerged hold, surrounded by broken wood and slack ropes moving like serpents.
The wreck groaned and creaked, slowly yielding to the pressure of the sea.
His leg was trapped under a twisted beam. Every attempt to free himself tore muffled cries from him that dissolved in silent bubbles.
Yet there was light.
A crack in the hull let a milky glow through, fracturing on the sand below, flickering among suspended grains and floating debris.
Every reflection seemed alive, every sparkle a breath.
Tor thought of the life he had not chosen.
He could have stayed inland, among the Root People’s merchants, breathing earth and resin instead of salt and wind.
But that life had always suffocated him. He had chosen the sea, the storms, the endless horizon. And now that sea was swallowing him.
Next to him, just a few hands away, a stack of crates remained intact.
Ordered, compact, tied with waterlogged ropes and fastened to the floor and walls of the hold.
Incredible. Incredible and infuriating.
If the crates fell, perhaps the beam trapping him would move. Perhaps.
With trembling hands, scratching himself, Tor began to free the block, levering with all the weight of his torso, tearing and yelling underwater.
The wood snapped with a sharp crack.
The beam shifted just enough to free his leg.
Tor dragged himself away like a wounded animal, gasping, heart hammering as the light from above cut through the shadows like a cold knife.
He stopped in front of the crates, panting, trembling.
Pushing through the cold water, he opened a crate: inside were not provisions or supplies, but black stones, glossy like obsidian. Some pulsed faintly, casting violet reflections. Tor shivered: it wasn’t just reflected light, the stones seemed to breathe underwater.
Then he noticed a leather tube, half-hidden among the stones. Sealed with cracked wax.
Tor grabbed it. Icy. Heavy. It felt like it contained the winter of the sea itself.
He tore the seal with his teeth, spitting bitter fragments.
Inside, a roll of parchment. Despite the water, the ink was intact, dark as pitch, almost alive.
Tor unrolled it with trembling hands.
Circular, obsessive symbols ran across the parchment. Among them, a few words in the common tongue, written in a hasty hand:
“Do not let them fall into the Abyss. Not all at once. Never.”
Fragmentary sentences, prayers or curses. One, however, was violently underlined:
“When the Black Prince has his Stones, the sleep will end. Cheva.”
Tor’s heart raced.
A stone slipped, bouncing on the wood and illuminating the floating corpses with greenish glows. For a moment, he thought the empty eyes of the dead were staring at him.
The document trembled in his hands.
And the sea around him seemed to hold its breath.