❝
YONDER NORTHERN beaches of Afkaans lay snuffed in deep gray, a thick mist festooned upon the earth like mourning cloth. Smoke curled from the chimneys of the stilted houses, rising into the overcast sky where the sun had long forgotten to shine. The sea that once was a friend to their people now whispered only sorrow, gently shimmering against the jagged rocks and washed-up driftwood as if it too was mourning.
Azalik sat, nursing himself on the shoreline with a thin, salt-stained shawl wrapped around his shoulders, as the tide came swirling in. His left eye was swaddled in a thick bandage held in place with a hasty knot tied by shaking hands the night before. Underneath it, a truth pulsed, quietly, hot, glowing, divine—a truth he could never disclose.
Muffled cries and heavy footsteps reverberated from behind—the house of his family. From being once rowdy, the halls were now a cacophony of dirges and wailings. The tribal folk had assembled to mourn his father—the chieftain—and Rajah, the elder warrior, one of the two men regarded as gods among men, now received back into the watery hand of the sea; or so they thought.
But Azalik had other ideas.
The ship didn't sink by fire or storm, though that is what he had told them. Not due to a tragic fight between leaders regarding the boys' welfare and the gold, as he had whispered to ease the elders' hearts from panic. No. The ship was dragged under—by something older than their gods, older than their bloodline stories. An abomination of shadows and tides. A leviathan that moved as hunger itself did beneath the dark waves.
They had seen it—the boys, the men, the few who survived—and had all agreed in silent fear, eyes wide with unspoken dread: this truth must not be known. Not now, not ever.
A crunch of pebbles broke the silence behind him: Azalik stirred not.
He didn't need to.
"Azalik?" a voice quivered out, small, soft, uncertain.
His head turned sideways.
Kali stood there, a few feet away, wrapped in an oversized thick scarf. Her mint-blue hair hung wet against her cheeks. She was looking at him, her big doe eyes glistening with poorly concealed tears. A ten-year-old girl, far too precocious for her age.
"Everyone is crying," she said, not making any effort to come closer. "Your home is so full. I could not get in. So, I came here."
For a moment, Azalik was silent while the waves put forth their voice.
Then, quiet as before, he said, "This is quieter."
Kali seemed to accept the invitation, stepping closer and sitting by him without asking. Her legs dangled over the sea-washed rocks.
Her eyes transferred to the bandage obfuscating his left eye.
"What happened?" she asked again after a long silence.
He hesitated and then answered her question.
"The debris hit me," he explained. "When I was trying to help the others off the ship. I didn't see it coming."
She nodded slowly, biting her lip.
"They say the ship burned," she mumbled. "That it caught fire because your father and Rajah were fighting. About… about you. About the other boys. And the gold."
Azalik's jaw stiffened, but he said nothing.
"Is it true?" Kali began, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
He looked at her, this tiny girl with a warrior's blood and eyes that searched for answers far beyond her age. She deserved the truth. But he could not afford to give it. Nonspeaking, he nodded at her slowly.
"Yes," he said. "That's what happened."
She believed him.
Or perhaps she did not. However, she did not push.
The two stared into the ocean, children now etched older by grief. The sea rolled calm before them—too calm, like a beast lying beneath its cool sheet of mist. Azalik gripped the rock, fingers tightening as memories of the previous night rushed back—screams, waves breaking wide as jaws, father's last all-consuming cry swallowed by darkness.
Kali leaned against him, sharing solace in silence.
Another sound from afar broke the silence between Azalik and Kali: a low whistle from some distant path. He twisted his head gently, narrowing his eyes at the voice that called his name—a fisherman's son, waving with urgency from a slope high above the shore.
"You're being summoned," the boy yelled through the mist. "By Elder Bashrah. She's at her dispensing store."
Azalik had come, all slow and gliding, upon the wet stone, slick and dark underfoot. Kali lifted her face, brushing aside her hair. "Elder Bashrah? Why?" Azalik shook his head.
"Don't know," he muttered. "I'll be back." Kali said nothing more, but stared as he walked away, her youthful gaze lingering too long on the bandage around his eye. It appeared to slither along the narrow winding ways back through the village, waves hush behind him.
On the edge of the inner village lay the apothecary, a gnarled hut whose roots stretched across a colossal tree, with a roof heavy with moss and age. Smoke drifted languorously from its chimney in thick fragrant trails--herbs, salt, and something metallic underneath.
He knocked once. "Come in, boy," came the voice, hoarse, irritable, sharp as ever. Inside, warm pungent air whirled through shelves sagging under jars and scrolls, dried fish skins, and bleached bone. At its thickest core stood Elder Bashrah, stirring a thick, green concoction, her long hair tied in silver cords over a brazier. The map-like wrinkles, etched upon the time and sorrow and too many secrets, lined her face. The wooden cane leant against it, and yet, standing tall, she looked as proud as any warrior.
Azalik moved forward. But before he could reach her, thwack-the cane suddenly whirled up with astonishing speed, blunt bowls tapping squarely against his forehead. He froze, automatically reaching for the bandage. She narrowed her eyes.
"Don't move." He didn't. With a grunt, she reached out and, with far more gentleness than expected, untied the bandage from around his head. It flopped in her hand like a dead cloth. His eye-winking faintly with a hidden glow-had now been borne to her. She inhaled. And then exhaled. Not in wonder, but quite in disappointment.
"So," she said, dry as driftwood. "This is one place where you've gone and become quite the skilled liar."
He did not respond. He stood tight-lipped, with lips clenched and fists balled. "To the whole tribe," she muttered, turning her back to him, stirring her brew with unrestrained vigor. "A tale about fire. About your father and Rajah fighting like children. And a damn piece of debris? Is that your story?" She threw him a sidelong glance, eyebrow raised in incredulity.
"You're serious?" Azalik's fists grew painfully tight. "Elder Tazaar told me the truth, she said. He saw it. All of it. It didn't burn. Boy, it opened. And what came out of it–whatever you let out–was no ordinary beast." He looked away.
"You used it," she whispered. "Didn't you? You called it." Azalik's throat dried up, words suddenly failing him. Elder Bashrah's voice grew hard now, but softened by some ancient suffering deep within. "You think I don't know what that eye means? You think a crafty crone like me hasn't marked the signs before? This is no blessing, boy, not to those who wield it. Certainly not to others around them." He blinked and said nothing. He didn't deny it.
"Do you know what happens," she went on, "when the gifted think their gifts are weapons? People die, Azalik. Not just monsters. Not just myths. People. Your father. Rajah. Others." Her words, low and measured, pressed like stones on his chest.
"And one day... Kali. What then?" That name hung heavier upon him than anything she had said. He looked down at his hands. "Once you unfurl it, there's no going back," she whispered. "You cannot show what you are. And you can never control what you cannot understand." Finally, she turned away from the bubbling pot and limped toward a chest in the corner. With a groan, she opened it, extracting from it a small box. She withdrew something dark and leather-bound from inside. The eyepatch-stitched from smoked hide, reinforced with tiny etched runes no normal eye could see.
"Wear it," she said, "not just to cover the eye, but to remind you that some truths are too heavy, and some powers too loud." The eyepatch was extended to him. "Never use it again," she said, her voice low, final. "Whatever deals were made with that sea god...leave them at the bottom where they belong." He took the eyepatch.
For the first time since the vessel had gone down, Azalik nodded-not as a warrior, not even as a captain-but as a son who had made a mistake too great to name, who had never, ever had the opportunity to be disowned by his father.
Azalik stared at the eyepatch in his calloused hand, the edges frayed and worn like some forgotten family heirloom. He traced his fingers along the coarse leather, his breath steady but heavy with something unspoken. Placing it over his left eye, he tied the string tight behind his head. A sudden hush fell around him-as if the world on that side had gone dead. For the first time after the wreck, he looked at himself without sighting what he had become.
"I saw him," he murmured after a long stretch of silence, his voice nearly drowned beneath the soft hissing of the cauldron in Elder Bashrah's apothecary. "Just before the Leviathan crashed into us. Just before Jolan nearly drowned. There he was."
Elder Bashrah did not say anything, back to him as she stirred the thick, bubbling mixture in her iron pot, the odor of salt root and fennel heavy in the warm air.
Forward fell Azalik; dragged by words emerging from somewhere much deeper: "He stood-on the water. Tall. Still. His eyes like molten silver-watching. Just watching."
He paused, searching the old woman's weather-beaten face for a reaction. "It was Aegarion."
Bashrah finally stilled her hand. The spoon clinked against the rim once and then fell silent. For a great while, she was quiet. Then, with a slow exhale, she leaned into her cane and turned to him, shadowed but clear.
"Aegarion," she said, like the breath of a long-forgotten storm, named from her lips. "He is not a god-not like the Twelve Sovereigns who rule the balance of Velmordana from their thrones above sky and soil. He does not collect tribute or prayers. He answers no one."
Azalik cocked his head. "Then what is he?"
"He is what we call an Ascended Deity," she replied slowly, stepping around him with the caution of someone who had seen too many truths. "A spirit who once had flesh-who bled, who feared, who dreamed." Her voice grew softer and softer still, in the hush of memory. "He was once like you, human. But grief has a way of carving holes in a soul. And when that hole gets big enough... it fills with power."
Azalik's breath caught. "There are others?"
She nodded. "Scattered across this world-firehearted, stormborn, with mountains burying them or sleeping deep among the branches of ancient trees. Not gods. Not quite. But not men, either. Few men worship them. Fewer still survive them."
He stepped closer. "And you're saying... someone in my bloodline was touched by one?"
"Not just someone," Bashrah replied, narrowing her eyes. "Isloria, your great-great-great-grandfather."
That crashed over him like a wave. He knew the name; it had been mentioned before-in wandering stories and half-truths exchanged over campfires–but never like this.
"He was the first in our tribe to be blessed by Aegarion," she went on. "He was a hunter, a sailor... and a fool in the end. Those days, the people thought blessings came only to kings, nobles, and priests. Isloria proved otherwise. The ocean does not bend to titles. It listens to hearts cracked open by desperate desire."
She sat on a low stool, her voice heavy with the burden of ancestral regret. "There was a flood coming. The Great Roar. A wave tall as the sky, wide as the horizon. Isloria stood at the shore and cried out-not in prayer, but in fury. In grief. He demanded the ocean listen. And Aegarion answered."
The throat of Azalik tightened. "So, he used it? The blessing?"
"Yes," she said, her voice almost a whisper now. "He used it to hold back the tide. To save his people. For one moment, he became the wall between death and life." The glint in her eyes became visible in the firelight. "But power like that... it twists. It slips."
Her gaze locked with his. "He lost control. The water obeyed no more. It rebelled. It devoured. It tore through the cliffs, the forests, the villages. The wave he stopped became a thousand smaller floods. And in trying to be a savior... he became the cause."
Azalik ducked his head under the weight of the silence that truth created. "What happened to him?"
"They say he walked into the sea, alone," she said. "To return what he had stolen. To ask Aegarion to take it back–or to end him. No one ever saw him again."
The crackles of fire intertwined with growing tension inside the apothecary. Outside, the faint roar of the ocean whispered against the cliffs–like a reminder.
Bashrah's voice was hard at once. "So then, tell me... What will you do with this blessing, boy? Will you become the storm your blood remembers? Or will you bury it-before it buries you?"
Azalik stood motionless, the eyepatch tightening around his temple. Words failed him.
In that small wooden house, surrounded by herbs and bitter fumes, the past unfolded before him like a tide. And it was rising.
By the time Azalik stepped out of Elder Bashrah's apothecary house, the ocean had grown silent. The wind had become, instead of shrill and sharp, whispering through the palms, bringing with it the aroma of salt and memory. The sky was a gentle blend of fading dusk and bruised twilight combined, throwing long shadows upon the sands of the northern Afkaans shore.
His footsteps made sure contact with the sand, drawn in weight that each pull dragged the truth. The eyepatch now held onto Azalik's left eye–not only to obscure the need beneath but to bury something unsaid that throbbed behind it. How long he had been gone, how much time had passed between Bashrah's blazing truths and now, Azalik did not know. All his feet led him back to where it had all begun.
And then she appeared.
A small figure stood sitting on the rocky edge of the newly lapping shore, her legs swinging with steady contemplation as the water moved lazily in greenness below. She had her back facing him but the instant she knew he had returned, she swung around. Her ponytail of sea-mint bounces as she stands up, and the familiar red bandana flares behind her like a flag of stubborn delight.
"Azalik!" she cried out, a sharp and warm voice like morning sun. She plainly dashed across the sand, barefoot, arms spread wide and mouth pennant enough to carry the weight of two broken worlds.held breathlessly, grinning and red-cheeked. "While you were away," she said, beaming. "I had an idea while you were gone," grinning.
Azalik raised a brow while hiding the pain of his heart behind the rehearsed calmness of an elder cousin. "Yeah?" he softly asked.
"I was thinking..." she paused for dramatic effect, placing her hands on her hips like a sailor announcing mutiny. "What if... just what if... Will I become a captain one day? Just like Grandpa Isloria!" With the weight of innocence only a ten-year-old could carry, nodded belief. Her voice dried up so that Azalik couldn't manage to hear anything the rest of the way.
In her words, something inside Azalik faltered. Isloria. That name again. By associating it with all the bitter warnings Elder Bashrah ever gave, he internally heard the name that now innocently flitted off Kali's lips, like a dream. He could only stare at her, stunned into silence. No, she knows the meaning of the name. To her, however, it's still Isloria–legendary, brave, bold, captain. Not the haunted soul who nearly drowned their world with the blessing he could not contain.
But even in that moment, Azalik couldn't bring himself to crush that spark within her. He saw the stars in her eyes. The hope. The untainted wonder. And in a world so deeply scarred by loss, that light was something to be protected–not dimmed.
He smiled, the kind that grew slowly but painfully and with tenderness he didn't know he still possessed.
"You will," he said softly, reaching out and tousling her hair.
Startled, Kali blinked up at him and then burst out laughing.
"One day," he added, kneeling so that his single eye met hers. "You'll sail beyond all the coasts we've ever known. And when you do, you'll be ten times the captain Isloria ever was."
She giggled, already puffing up with pride, imagining ships bearing her name carved into the mast.
Azalik lapsed into silence, watching her for just a little bit longer. Sound of her laughter blurred into the tide, and the night wrapped itself around them. He knew then that anything at all should be done to protect that dream. Even at a cost for truth being buried below the sea where only the Leviathan could find it.
Some stories are too dark for young people to carry. And some hopes-fragile as they may be-deserve breathing space. Back to the present, where the ocean roared. In a flash, the present came sharply focused like a blade cutting through silk.
Salt sprayed the skies. The very winds howled like dried-up ancient spirits roused from slumber, the sea churning below thrice-boiling furious waves of mischance under the trembling hull of a pirate ship. Crewmen yelled orders, struggling against the ropes and sails against the strongest among them. They all felt as ant against the monstrous tides that now seemed ready to consume them whole.
Azalik stood at the edge of the deck unmovable.
The gusts whipped at his coat, trying to tear it off him. Thunder, growling in the heavens, seemed like a warning. The rain fell sideways, stinging skin, blurring vision.
But Azalik . . . was calm.
He gingerly reached for his eyepatch as his fingers trembled-not from fear but from the weight of the past catching up with him after all these years. When his fingers lifted the clasp, a strange silence fell. That instant when the world seemed to take a breath and hold it in anticipation.
The cloth fell. A dazzling cerulean light emanated from his left eye-blinding, beautiful, and unnatural. It was not merely light; it was the power-soul of the ocean itself cracked open through the gaze of a man.
The sigil of Aegarion burned once more into view, spiraling in ancient glyphs beneath his pupil, flickering like a star submerged in water.
He whispered, voice low, reverent, as if praying. "Aegarion... I call upon your tide once more."
The sea answered.
There rang a great thunderclap from the brunt of the ship as the waters underneath them swirled and convulsed in a combination of obey and rage. The monstrous waves, which had risen so high, like jaws getting ready to snap at them, all stopped. And, as if guided by unseen hands, parted one's jaws and opened a narrow path made of calm waters, dimly shining in hues of bioluminescent blue.
Torrents of seawater rose into the air-not to drown them, but to dance. Spirals of water arced above the ship in elegant, serpentine trails, forming shapes that shimmered like flowing silk under moonlight. Within them, faint glimmers of leviathans and ancient sea creatures flickered in silhouette, as if the ocean's forgotten memories had risen to the surface.
Azalik raised his hand-and the whole ship lifted.
Not from any mast. Not from any anchor. The ocean held it as if it were cupped within the palm of a deity. Waves, thunderous and destructive once before, cradled the vessel. It held the vessel steady in mid-motion as if time itself had bent in his favor. Kali was completely silent, standing next to the helm.
Her eyes wide, lips parted, stilled. The rain fell slowly around her, each drop sparkling in the shining light of Azalik's eye. She had come to see him as someone she had never known—a childhood friend, a pirate captain of stubborn pride and twisted grins, someone else. Something long past. Something divine. Kali couldn't speak. Couldn't even take a proper breath. The chest rumbled with light and shallow gasps as eyes opened wide in disbelief and the heart pounded as if also drawn by the tides over which he now held sway. She merely stood unmoving, watching, witnessing truth unfurl into flesh.
The truth that had always been behind his eyepatch, where all bold stories he'd spun told to little girls beside the shore had come from, and behind every reckless smile with deeper pain behind it. Azalik stood at the world's edge, illuminated by a glow one would never think possible. Pulsing from his left eye was that impossible brilliance, which had so imbedded in his body a fragment of the sea itself.
Then he turned and looked over his shoulder. Their eyes met across the distance wrought by waves crashing and power rising—and in that immediate, blinding moment, she saw everything that was there to see. All of the guilt he carried. All of the secrets he never uttered. All of the impossible choices that had led them here to this moment. His hand raised, tremblingly opening his mouth, breath choking in his throat, as he whispered breathing life into his name, fragile and small as it was lost to screaming wind. "....Azalik?" But he didn't react. He turned forward once more, raising his arm with that slow, graceful style that was both commanding and mournful. Then, the ocean closed—obedient, divine; as if silk stitched across the sky.
The whipping torrents of fury fell into place, not a threat, but an extension of his will. The storm had not passed but rather bent to his will, for Azalik had not survived it; he had commanded it. And the ocean, in all its rage and glory, bowed to him.
The battle still raged across the Leviathan, a fury thrashing under his tremulous form, monstrous and rearing high against the storm-dark sky. But Azalik stood unmoved. He stood before the incandescent sky with his raised arms like a conductor orchestrating the fury of the sea. And the creature groaned one last time from its deep as it squirmed in a violent thrashing before falling still, its massive form dissolving into the churning abyss. For a moment, there was silence—a stillness echoing with the weight of victory. But not for long.
The shock stiffened Azalik's body. His breath hitched. The glow in his left eye flared violently—and then, like magic, his right eye began to shine, even brighter and more blinding, like a sun rising beneath his skin. The water quaked about him. The sea no longer obeyed but reacted: he had commanded it and it turned to him. The ocean surged, waves grew higher and higher, crashing against the tempest's height until a monstrous wall of water began to stall behind him—a tsunami made flesh and hunger.
With horror now in her eyes, she gasped, "Azalik!" She sprinted towards him across the trembling deck, the salt and rain scalding her skin. She tugged at his arm, hoisting desperately. "Stop! You're losing control!" But he didn't reply—not even with a tilt of his head. His eyes were unearthly distant and glowing too bright, his face devoid of expression as if caught in some otherworldly remembrance. Charlotte found her soon after and was dragging him backward. Only dissembling a fraction of the shout, she whispered, "Azalik, please—come back!"
Yet still nothing. In a frenzy, Saevionh turned on the upper deck—about to yell for Vladimir—before realizing he wasn't there. The words stuck in his throat. "Vlad—?" But before he could finish, a gust of wind spiraled around them.
And then—
From the heavens, through the whipping clouds and rain, Vladimir descended. As if gravity had surrendered him, his figure floated down, composed and sharp-eyed, hair and coat flaring like wings caught in divine wind. He landed just behind Azalik with impossible grace, the storm seeming to still for the briefest of moments. Without hesitation, he reached forward, placed two fingers gently on Azalik's forehead, and closed his eyes. His lips moved, whispering words too quiet to hear—too ancient, too sacred.
The light disappeared in Azalik's eyes: Flash of light disappeared in Azalik's eyes; once, again, then extinguished. Collapsing, his body fell to surrender, limp, into Kali's arms. The tsunami halted, suspended mid-rise. Great claw poised to strike before it shattered—not into violence, but harmlessly into rain: sheets, curtains of water tumbling back, harmlessly falling into the sea. Waves rushed outward in a surge, rocking the ship violently, but no longer threatening to destroy.
It was only raining softly. Cleansing. A whisper and a touch that stopped a storm that was about to bring death to them all. And throughout it all, Vladimir remained silent, in the rain still soaking through his hair, an unreadable expression in his eyes.
"What in the seahorses just happened?"