POV: Beth
The island didn’t exist on any map that sane men carried.
Even before Kaine pointed it out—his finger stabbing the air toward a shape wrapped in cloud—I could feel it. The sea changed there. Waves grew heavy, slow, as if dragging chains. The sky bruised purple. Lightning forked the clouds again and again over the same spot, never striking anywhere else.
“Looks cursed,” I muttered.
Alaric didn’t even smirk, which meant it really was cursed. His eyes narrowed on the silhouette ahead, the wind blowing hair across his face. “That’s it,” he said. “The Drowned Shrine.”
The name sat wrong on my tongue. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Only from people who never came back,” Kaine answered grimly, handing me a wrinkled parchment. “Supposedly where the first piece of the Leviathan’s path lies buried.”
I unrolled it. Faded ink, smudged by seawater, showed cliffs drawn like ribs circling an eye. At the center of the design: the same spiral mark burned into my wrist.
“My mark,” I whispered.
Alaric leaned closer. “Then you’re coming with us.”
“Like you’d stop me,” I said.
“Like I could.”
He barked orders—small landing party, no more than four. The longboat hit the water with a splash that soaked my skirts. Every stroke of the oars brought us nearer to the island’s unnatural storm.
The moment we crossed into its shadow, sound changed. The sea fell silent except for the low hum of something enormous beneath us.
Lightning flared—white bones rose from the waves. Not rock. Not coral. Bones. Massive and curved, vertebrae of some creature that had once circled the island like armor.
“Those are not whale bones,” Kaine whispered.
The longboat drifted on its own. I hated that.
When we landed, black sand swallowed my boots. The air tasted of copper. Dead coral trees clawed at the sky. I felt my wrist burning again—my mark pulsing like a heartbeat.
“Beth,” Alaric said softly, “stay behind me.”
“If you say that again, I’ll push you into the sea.”
He only smiled.
We pushed through the forest of coral until we reached a clearing where the ground dipped. At its heart stood a ribcage of stone and bone. The shapes weren’t natural—they were carved. A shrine.
And there, half buried in silt, lay a flat shell the size of a shield, covered in strange symbols.
“The map,” Kaine breathed.
I stepped closer—and the sand moved.
At first I thought it was wind. Then I heard the scraping, like hundreds of shells rubbing together. Bones and coral shards twisted, joining, taking shape. Four creatures rose from the earth, bodies of bone and shell, faces hollow, eyes glowing faint blue.
“Back!” Alaric shouted.
Too late. One lunged.
Chaos exploded. Kaine met a blow with his cutlass. Tammers cursed, hacking wildly. Alaric fought like something born for storms—fast, precise, furious. I barely ducked a clawed swing aimed at my head, rolling into the sand.
My knife found its mark but barely cut through the creature’s coral hide. It screeched without sound. My wrist seared, glowing faintly through my sleeve.
The sea inside me roared.
A creature loomed over Alaric, hook-hand raised. I didn’t think—only reached out. Water answered.
A wave burst from the ground, slamming the monster into the shrine so hard it shattered. For a breathless moment, all I heard was my heartbeat and dripping water.
Everyone froze.
Alaric turned to me, hair plastered to his face, eyes wild. “Show-off.”
“Saved your life,” I said through my teeth.
“Details.”
Another creature lunged. I shoved him aside just in time for it to miss. We both hit the sand, tangled. He rolled us, blade flashing, decapitating the thing in one motion. Bone dust rained on our faces.
Silence fell.
Kaine’s chest heaved. “That all of them?”
“Enough,” Alaric said.
We stood amid broken coral and ash. The air still thrummed faintly with my pulse, the storm above quiet for the first time.
Alaric sheathed his sword and looked at me. Really looked. “You saved me.”
I wiped blood from my cheek. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
He grinned, half proud, half undone. “Guess we’re even for that dungeon.”
“Not even close,” I said.
We approached the altar together. Kaine lifted the shell map from its bed. Lines of glowing blue carved beneath it—currents, coasts, the Leviathan’s spiral. The first piece of the path.
Alaric held it carefully. His eyes flicked from the map to me again. “You’re not dead weight, Beth.”
“Careful,” I said. “That almost sounded like gratitude.”
“Almost,” he said, smiling faintly. “Don’t get used to it.”
We left the shrine as lightning faded behind us. The storm shifted, like the island itself had taken a breath.
For once, I’d been the one to save him. And the balance between us had changed.