❝
"Memory thus bent on the nightmare shall never lie at rest; rather, one day, it shall return, uninvited and unwelcome, to knock at the chambers of thy mind."
THE TEMPESTS shrieked the same old song they had sung many years ago. By now, the rain had not graced the ship, but overhead, the sky twisted ominously with colors of dark. And somewhere between the increasing chaos, somewhere far off, Captain Azalik felt the past grinning back at him, clawing, fighting its way back in.
He was fourteen again.
A boy among boys—barefoot, windburned, and sun-tanned—all of them stood shivering on the water-slicked deck of an old ship, far smaller than the one he now commanded. The air had tasted of salt and metal. The challenge was straight: a hunt for lost treasures strewn over the Roaring Seas. Whoever should survive and prove his worth would claim the title of his generation's captain. Their rite of passage.
Azalik back then had thought of nothing else but pride. Of winning.
The waves on that day had been equally cruel, thick, rolling, wild. And the sea air was thick with something colder, something heavier than usual. One by one, some of the boys began coughing, feverish. Halfway into the second night, Azalik had felt it—the chills, the vomiting, the sunken eyes.
"I'll tell Father," he thought. "He'll know what to do."
He flew to the captain's quarters—his father's room, a chamber that had always intimidated him more than comforted him. But just as he was about to reach for the handle, he stopped.
Voices.
He could hear the sound of an argument through the wood. His father's deep baritone clashed against the voice of a man who had been heart-wrenchingly familiar to him, rough and desperate.
"They're only children, Captain!"
"They're warriors-in-training. We all got sick once."
"But one of them might—"
"We will finish the hunt. The sea doesn't wait."
Azalik stepped back, feeling his stomach wrench. He didn't push the door open. He didn't speak. A part of him broke at that moment—he had never known until then that duty could make a father choose pride over life.
Something snapped him out of the reverie.
"Azalik!"
It was Rama, or perhaps it was Baran? Now he could not truly recall, only the wild look on the boy's face as he pointed toward the deck. "Jolan! He has collapsed!"
Azalik did not stay to contemplate. He ran.
The rain started then. Sheets of it: biting, and cold. Thunder rumbled through the sky louder than an angry roar, shaking the sails. Jolan lay sprawled on the deck, ghostly pale. Azalik knelt beside him, trying to hold him up, barking orders at the others as panic surged in his throat like bile.
And then the sea screamed.
A sound emerged from the abyss of the ocean: a deep, low groan, rumbling beneath the waves, as if the earth itself had drawn breath. Then it deepened further into something else: a wail, an unearthly cry, an infernal sound rending the air without a resonance that any storm could ever replicate. Not the shriek of the wind, not the wrath of thunder—it was older than that. A sound that was never meant for human ears. A voice from the depth.
The boys were frozen where they stood, their hearts gripped by a terror too raw to name. Clinging to their trembling bodies were their drenched garments; their eyes were wide, searching the chaos. The storm howled, the sails whipped violently in the wind, but every other thing seemed to fall into a silence so dreadful.
"There!" Someone screamed. Azalik could not remember who. The voice was nearly drowned by the wind, but it united them all in pointing to the sea.
With lightning tearing the sky apart, the illumination of blue-white shone upon the turbulent waters. And in that flickering instant-fleeting yet eternal- they saw it.
Something broke the surface.
Huge. Huge.
A creature of impossible dimensions, undulating just below the waves in a form that seemed to stretch to infinity. Its skin glistened, wet from the seawater, patterned with ridges and barnacle-covered scales the size of shields. A jagged fin crested the surface like a sword, and the motion of serpentine coils was slow yet terrifying, as if the storm itself bowed to them.
And then they saw its eyes.
Two luminescent spheres glared through the mist, enormous and motionless-the eyes that beheld the ocean eons before their kin set sail-eyes that were merciless and ever-invulnerable to any kind of recognition, an indifferent coldness born out of something, something that rose out of the darkest corners of the ocean. An apex of legend.
A Leviathan.
The deck pitched violently under them. There was a thunderclap above, so loud it felt as though the sky were splitting open, and the ship creaked as the slamming fists of a vengeful god smashed against the hull for both sides.
Screams rang out. Boys scattered; some slipped; others clung to the rails. One fell to his knees weeping. Azalik forbore and held to Jolan's fevered body as he twisted his arms around him, trying to shield him as another wave, higher than any before, crashed down.
Only a beat to react.
He twisted his body in a shield for the boy below.
Then an impact. He awoke gasping.
Azalik's eyes flew open. His chest was slick with dew from the sweat of the night chill, and his breathing was quick and shallow. The sound of the wailing wind tugging against the ship's hull was in his ear, but this was not memory. This was real.
From the outside, one could gauge a storm beginning to rear. His fingers curled into the sheets beneath him. For a moment, he stared at the wooden ceiling above, as if looking up, that it might vanish and show him the stars he saw as a child. But there were no stars this night.
Only clouds and the storm rolling overhead.
His chest rose with a heavy breath. Memories clawed at the edges of his mind, but he swallowed them. That was a different time. Another ship. Another Azalik. Not a scared little boy any longer. Captain now.
And once again, the sea had come for him.
The door of the captain's quarters crashed open to the raging wind and would have torn away its hinges had the wind continued to push against it.
Boots stamped a furious tattoo across planks of wood.
Azalik stormed up the stairway, his mantle whipping about him as from his bare chest the furious wind swept against him and the pattering of rain spattered on the decks as he finally emerged onto the damp deck.
"WHAT IN THE HEAVEN'S NAME IS GOING ON!?" bellowed his voice through the wind like a blade cutting through air.
Charlotte and Saevionh quickly turned away from the edge of the deck as they looked up. Both were driven by the sea spray, illuminated by the pale, flickering light of the moon, half-swallowed by roiling clouds.
Charlotte's hair was plastered to her face; her arms were still rigid from clutching the rail just before Saevionh blocked her path. "It came from nowhere," came her breathless response.
The howl of wind was louder yet. Above them, the sails creaked and strained. Ropes cracked against the mast like whips.
From one side of the ship came thrumming on deck a mint-blue ponytail flinging her head this way and that, her bandanna almost stripped off of her head. Kali rushed forward as she attempted to catch up, the soles of her boots thuddingly hollow on the wood floors as she pushed through with the rest of them in confusion smearing her face.
"WHY IN ALL THE SALT AND SEA DEVILS HAS THERE TO BE A STORM AT THIS HOUR?" she screamed, squinting up at the heavens as if trying to penetrate through the swirling clouds. "But just hours ago, the air was calm!"
"That's what I've been saying!" From above came the response.
It was Nyoka the scout yelling from the crow's nest as he clung to some ropes. Alarm grew in his increasingly wide eyes as he surveyed the horizon. "Dark clouds aren't around the horizon today! It hasn't been that way all day! Clean and steady even after the feast!"
"I closely watched the weather," stammered Makena, the carpenter, as he staggered up from below deck. "Never even a leaf could float before sunset." This–this isn't natural!"
Saevionh turned to the first mate, frowning slightly, repressing a bit of Charlotte's slight frame even as the wind blew against them again. "How could this happen so suddenly? A storm with no signs, no shift in pressure, no front? Impossible."
For half a breath, Azalik stood immobile; the wind was tangling the loose braids in his hair; his sharp eyes narrowed under the shadows cast by a thundercloud above. Below, the sea was churning like an angry restless beast, and the sky flickered with warning—not yet striking lightning, still rumbling in its throat.
Then there was a click.
He didn't say anything, at least not first. Instead, he turned-slowly-rigid in body, gaze blank for a second too long, as though something terrible had just smashed into his thoughts. His chest rose with a shallow breath, but not because of the wind or the cold. Fear–pure instinctual fear crawled down his spine like seawater seeping through armor.
The hairs on his arms stood on end.
His voice dropped to a low grumble, grim as if he were relaying a tale to himself.
"…It's not a storm."
Saevionh stepped forward, eyebrows knitted against the sting of salt in the air. "What?" he hollered across the building wind. "What do you mean it's not a storm?"
Azalik wasn't an immediate responder.
He searched the sky, but not for clouds. Then the water—not wave tops but depth. His gaze darted past the horizon and downward, downward, as if trying to see through the water itself. And then his face hardened, very much the countenance of a man who had undergone this once before——a resurrected nightmare.
"It's not a storm," he then repeated, raising the tone louder and liberally lacing it with urgency and steel.
The wind cut before him like a knife.
Abruptly, he turned and roared, "TO YOUR STATIONS! GET THE SAILS! NOW—BEFORE WE'RE PULLED IN!"
He thundered this command, and thunder it appeared to be, for in that breathless second, there was no movement.
That was when Obasi appeared from the lower hatch, almost slipping on the wet planks. His eyes clashed with Azalik's; just one look was enough.
"Aye Captain!" he shouted and slammed his fist to his chest before pivoting. "Rama! Ajak! Khalani! Grab the ropes and stabilize the mainmast! Jaiah, once you are down there secure everything that ain't nailed!"
The order was followed by his striding towards the rigging. "Makena! Barakhal! Reinforce the starboard rail! Move like your damn life depends on it!"
Chaos and thunder awoke the ship.
Boots thundered across the deck as crew members went into action. Ropes were pitched overboard and sails were hoisted and secured against the mast as the winds howled in protest. The rain had yet to fall, but the air was pregnant with the scent of electricity and death. Wood beneath them creaked violently as if something ancient had stirred beneath the keel.
Charlotte was frozen in place, her eyes wide as they followed the madness. The panic. The urgency.
She turned to Saevionh. "What does he mean it's not a storm?" Breathless, confused, yet tinged with the edge of fear.
Saevionh couldn't answer. His mouth opened, but no words were forthcoming.
He looked again at Azalik.
The captain's face was pale under the bronzed skin, his mouth a grim line, hands clenched into fists by his sides, staring into the sea, like a man awaiting something he already knew would come.
Something unseen.
Something felt alone.
Azalik would not look back at them; he would not speak again. Something in his chest stirred beneath the rising panic, the orders issued through gritted teeth, and the howling wind: something imbued with memories from long ago. A sound. A scream. The truth he had never dared utter; it wasn't the weather-Mind you this time. This was different. This was the sea remembering something-monstrous, ancient...something still alive.
The wind howled and whipped con Bruta Fuerza, wrenching waves from the blue-black sea upon the ship's hull. The storm roared as thick clouds of blackness enveloped the moonlight; but nothing could compare to the sound that ripped through the air-unearthly, deep, something that could never be called thunder by a sailor. It was, gut-wrenching, a roar from the keeper of the bottomless-greet of the abyss. It was the sea remembering something ancient-a creature of monstrous dimension.
For a second, Azalik froze, blood running cold, before the curse tumbled with a sweep from his lips-from pirate lore, this very curse from the bowels of the ocean. "By the Fathomless Abyss!" he spat, his voice crackling, "It's the Leviathan of the Scyrren Drift!"
The crew was frozen, all eyes gazing out at the open sea as a wave broke and blotted out the horizon. A flash of lightning lit the water, and for one brief, ghastly moment, the ship became illuminated—the Leviathan rose from the depths.
Azalik's heart pounded in his chest, the overwhelming presence of the creature was breaking over the surface of the water. It sent frightful tremors up the spines of the men standing upon deck. Its serpentine form twisted below the surface, scales glistening, like that of polished obsidian, eyes holding an unnatural hue of green viciously reflecting the fury of the raging storm.
The sailors sprang into action. Above all, Azalik's voice cut through the chaos, barking orders: "Cannons! Ready the cannons! Brace yourselves!"
Obasi flew into action first, gathering the men to the cannons. The heavy artillery was already trained, poised, ready for the monster hiding below the waves. "Rama, Ajak, Khalani! You three, aim for the eyes—don't let it get too close!"
The Leviathan exploded in roar, sending jolts through the ship as it lifted its vast head from the water, a monstrosity that rose like a mountain of terror and scales. Its jaws opened to reveal row upon row of jagged teeth that could tear through a ship as cleanly as one would a piece of paper.
With a heavy slam into the hull, the ship creaked under the pressure. Charlotte held on to the side rail, knuckles a stark white, watching in sheer horror as the creature approached her, its tail whipping through the water, crashing waves over the deck. The sound of its hiss echoed through her bones, scrapping, something reminiscent of iron on stone.
"We can't hold it off for long!" Saevionh bellowed grimly, steadying his stance, his eyes darting to Azalik. "We could really shoot it now, Captain!" Azalik needed no further motivation. With a sharp command, he shouted, "Fire!"
The roar of the cannons thundered, causing violent blasts to reverberate across the tumultuous sea. The cannonballs whistled through the air, hitting the Leviathan with a sickening thud. The beast regarded the blow as an annoying itch that needed scratching as the heavy hits barely succeeded in causing a slight shudder to its armoured hide.
"Again!" Azalik screamed, his eyes snapping with determination. "Aim for the head—NOW!"
The crew fired once again, their cannons barking like wolves, but the Leviathan wouldn't stop. It charged forward again, tail smashing against the ship and rolling her hard to one side. Charlotte hit the deck and slid across the wet wood.
"Charlotte!" Saevionh yelled, reaching to save her from going overboard. He managed to grasp her, but the storm was fierce.
The Leviathan's head swung down with a thunderous snap of jaws just a hair's breadth from the edge of the ship, and a wall of water splashed across the crew, drenching them to the skin.
Azalik was standing on the bow, staring at the creature. His heart raced, but his mind was steady. There was no time for fear. Only to do.
"Obasi!" Azalik shouted, fighting against the wind. "Bring the harpoons! Let's draw it in—trap it!"
Obasi, the unfailing boatswain, dashed away toward the weapons locker. He hurled back with the large harpoons suited for deep-sea monsters. He passed them to the crew, who readied the harpoons with steady hands.
Meanwhile, the Leviathan lunged once again, a tidal wave from its bulk rocking the ship. The deck pitched dangerously as the crew fought to keep their feet.
"Hold fast!" Azalik shouted, barely heard above the storm. "We're not backing down!"
Ajak, Eshlo, and Jaiah—three of the more agile crew members—rushed forward, gripping the harpoons and aiming for the Leviathan. They threw the harpoons with lightning speed at the creature's monstrous body. With a sickening sound, they sank into its scales, but the creature let out nothing but a deafening roar. On the contrary, it twisted its body, pricking its skin with the harpoons as if they were annoying little insects, but it didn't slow down.
"We need more force!" Azalik barked. "Obasi, to the cannons! We'll need every shot!"
Obasi returned to the cannons and fired without hesitation, moving as the Leviathan's tail swung again, knocking one of the smaller boats off its staves for a mooring. The waves stood up and swallowed the small craft whole.
Azalik's mind splintered in thought. The beast was too strong, too old. But one thing it had that the Leviathan did not have—a will to live.
With that, the Leviathan lunged once again while a huge wave stood up from the ocean and hit the ship with the power of a wall. The crew braced themselves as many were thrown off by the sheer weight of the water. The Leviathan's mouth opened, its teeth gleaming like daggers.
Without a moment's thought, Azalik lunged forward, blade drawn, and struck the ropes holding the main sail. "Cut loose the sails!" he shouted. "We need more speed! We have to outmaneuver it!"
The crew fumbled, cutting the ropes, thus letting the sail fill with wind and the ship turn sharply into a desperate course. The Leviathan followed through, its giant form tearing through the water like an unstoppable force, but its distance was beginning to measure.
The ship pitched violently, but the crew was steadfast, eyes trained upon the creature behind them. Fury filled the Leviathan as it witnessed its prey evading its grasp. With that cursed soul of fury, it slung its tail around, but now, the ship was much faster, flying low and free under the strong wind.
"Get ready!" Azalik called. "We're coming around for another pass!"
The crew prepared themselves for the next volley. With each blast the Leviathan howled, its monstrous bulk twisting undergirded; however, the creature was still there, unforgiving and relentless, with a will as old as the ocean.
As the ship cast again past the Leviathan, Azalik narrowed his eyes. This was it. He gave the order with a roar: "Fire once more! All guns—FULL FIRE!"
The cannons had thundered.
The deafening echo rolled across the ocean like thunder forged in steel. Black smoke curled high, thick and choking, mingling with the howling wind and torrential rain. Sparks danced across the sodden deck, illuminating the twisted, tense faces of the crew as they worked in unison—load, fire, scream.
Metal met scale. Fire met water. Chaos met something far older.
And for the briefest of heartbeats, it almost felt like it worked.
The last cannonball struck the Leviathan slightly above its left eye, and the results were immediate. The beast let out a throaty, rib-cracking roar and went berserk. Its massive shape flailed in the water like a waking nightmare. Tentacles the size of masts whipped the sea, generating waves big enough to sway the ship like nothing but a toy.
Then it stopped. The sea fell still. The great shadow beneath the waves paused and shivered once, and then-it sank. Gone, silence conversed down like a hammer.
Not the silence of peace but that which follows something horrible, where even nature holds its breath. The crew stood rooted to the spot, soaked to the bone, lungs burning for air and smoke, hands trembling with tension they hadn't realized they had been holding.
The only thing that dared to move was the rain—steady and unrelenting—but much quieter than before. The wind had changed. In no way calm, but steady in an eerie way, a sort of premonition yet unsaid.
Azalik stepped forward, dragging boot soles through water filling up at his feet. His body was tired beyond measure, steam faintly evaporating from his wet skin because of the biting cold. The salt burned his lips. The gunpowder stung his nose. He put both arms on the rail and looked out at the black empty sea.
The dark waters were still. Too still.
No fin. No shadow. No ripple.
No signs of the monster.
But something ... within him screamed in protest.
Obasi lay on the other rail, gasping, blood trickling down from his temple. "Did we...?" he barely completed. He didn't have to because even as he spoke, Jaiah fell to her knees, stained fingers clutching the rosary. Her lips had long sunk into silence beneath the moaning of the ancient wood of the ship, too tired even to scream.
Crewmen were stirring again, some staggering, some collapsing on the deck, others weeping, or holding the wounded. And still the storm hadn't passed. Lightning flickered far away, silent and cold. Thunder was a soft grunt, like some great cat licking its wounds.
Then—A loud roar appeared.
ROAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
The sea exploded.
Not with water—but with fury.
The howl, which had descended from the tempest, had grown beyond all else, before and after. A sound not of mere existence, but rather a curse. A proclamation. A scream from the abyss of history.
Men screamed, covering their ears, some sank to the deck. Others were sent reeling backwards like feathered birds thrown from their perch, ears bleeding from the wave of sound crashing against them like a wall. Blood streamed from noses, ears, and eyes. The air trembled. White lightning cracked across the sky like a furious lash from heaven above.
The Leviathan was not dead.
It had stopped.
And now it was enraged.
"WHAT NOW?!" Kali shouted as she stumbled toward Azalik, soaked and bruised with fright written all over her face. "WHAT IN MUGGLING FISH NOW?!"
An officer dropped a crate."Captain! We're—We're almost outta ammo! The cannon barrels are red-hot—we can't reload half of 'em! They'll crack!"
The realization spread like wildfire—they were defenseless.
Panic bloomed hideously and instant. Pirates, war-hardened veterans, stared at one another with the hollow eyes of men who had met something beyond reason. Beyond their world.
The rain intensified sharply, almost like needles falling from a broken sky. It pierced the skin and soaked through leather, battered against the wood, and hissed in angry protest where it met the warmth of flesh. The very air, too, had grown oppressive, as if every breath was burdened with the weight of a thousand storms past. Clouds boiled overhead like dark cauldrons of wrath, and the sea below churned in time, rising with every gust of wind, as though answering some ancient and unspeakable call.
And in the midst of this tempest stood Saevionh, unmoving, a solitary figure carved from steel and indecision, near the bow. His jaw was clasped tight; his teeth ground under the stress borne of silence. His eyes, sharp and haunted, were fixed toward the horizon where black water soared higher than any wave had the right to climb outside of nature. Something there stirred, something not of this world. Something horrible. His boots shifted slightly upon the wet deck, his body tense with the tremor of a man confronted with a decision he had long buried—one too great for kings, too damning for mortals.
Then, slowly, as if the weight of time itself rested on his limbs, Saevionh lifted one foot. The body leaned forward. A breath escaped him, ragged and final—his last offering to the beckoning curse of doom. And then, there was a hand.
It was Vladimir.
He appeared like a ghost beside him, sudden and gentle, conjured by memory and grief. No word left his lips; he did not need them. With trembling strength, his pale fingers gripped the sleeve of Saevionh's coat, his gaze locked on the prince's with a desperate finality. Vladimir's eyes, wide and glimmering, filled with fear, but then anchored by something deeper, pleaded soundlessly. He simply shook his head once. Slow. Steady. Certain—certain in a way that could only come from one who had seen the end of the world and is begging someone else not to cross that line.
Saevionh faltered. His foot lowered. His expression changed—his eyes began to dart back and forth, like the storm inside of him suddenly descended into stillness. And then... both of them turned. Their gazes were parted yet united in some unspoken understanding: through him were locked on the same figure, the one who had not moved, now accused by gods and monsters alike.
Azalik stood at the edge of the deck, ringed by thunder and lightning, a statue carved from sea salt and fury. Wind's aggressive fingers lashed at him eagerly, ripping his coat back and tangling the damp black strands of his hair, yet he remained unbending. Neither shuddered nor flinched. Those eyes-sharp-shadowed-eyes burned not on the thing dancing in the waves but deeper, much deeper below, somewhere more ancient than the Leviathan itself. Rain streamed down his face in torrents, mixing with the blood, the sweat, and the silence. Behind him, the groans of the ship sounded like the anguished groans of a tortured soul suspended between two worlds, its wood creaking too much under strain from too many secrets.
His presence, once the sole property of a commanding captain, now became a fissure in the storm. The sea slowed. The wind falters. It was as if the ocean leaned closer to listen.
Kali was moving slightly toward him, unsure now; her usual defiance made thin by the sheer weight of this moment. "Azalik?" she called, her voice breaking under the pressure of the awe that it brought along with fear. "What are you doing, O-Oi, Azalik… what are you up to this time?"
Even so, Azalik had nothing to say. Only he breathed, slow, and deep, bringing inside each inhale something archaic-something not meant for this world. His lips were a deep line, his eyes flickering-no to her, no to the crew, but to the sea, as waiting for a permission from whatever god lurked under it.
Then, finally, he broke the silence.
"I never wanted to tell this," he said, his voice low-yet it rumbled like thunder. It curled under the sails, echoed off in the masts, and rooted itself into every crewmember's chest. "Not to anybody. Not to anyone on this ship."
Now there is no more mutiny in their eyes. No rebellion. Just confusion. Dread. Wonder.
And then-he moved.
Azalik's hand crept up, with an aching insistence, to lay fingers upon the leather eyepatch he had worn for years-an artifact of mystery no one dared to question. That had been part of his mythos, a symbol of his defiance, of battles fought and survived. But none had imagined what it concealed. The moment his fingertips curled beneath its edge, the world around him shifted. Not the ship. Not the storm. But something more essential. The scent of the salt air changed. The wind turned cool. The rain that had pelted the crew like knives now felt more like a shiver crawling up the spine of the world.
"Azalik…" Kali whispered, voice thin as thread, as if any louder word might break the fragile moment.
Azalik kept his eyes on the horizon. "But if I don't," he said, slowly, grimly, "we all die here."
And then, with one sharp pull, he ripped the patch free.
What emerged from beneath was not ruin, nor scar, nor void-but light.
It was a shine like pale moonlight trapped beneath the ocean. His left eye opened-an inch by agonizing inch-revealing a symbol etched into the iris: one not drawn by man, but seared into existence by some higher force. It pulsed with rhythm, like the tide itself-alive, aware, breathing with power. A tidal glyph spun delicately across his gaze, shifting with each blink, catching and reflecting the storm's lightning with divine defiance. This was not human. It could never have been. It was the mark of something far more terrible-and far more beautiful.
Now, with both eyes open-his natural blue, the other a beacon of the deep-Azalik looked not like a man; but like a vessel. A harbinger. A chosen.
The deck beneath him felt as if it were shuddering. The masts groaned. Above the air, the sails cracked like whips and then the sea answered. It was like a great wave did not rise-but the sea seemed to lean toward the ship urging as if something massive, something old had turned its head and noticed him.
Then, slowly, as water cascaded from his shoulders like a priest from a sacred font, Azalik lifted his chin. His voice rose-not to his crew; not to the beast that was hunting them, but to something deeper, older, waiting in the abyss. His chest swelled with the weight of destiny, and when he spoke, it was not a name. It was summoning.
A declaration.
A prayer etched in wrath.
"AEGARION!"