The seas had been quiet for three days — too quiet. After the events at Viremont and the exposure of the Crown's influence in the world's thrones, Raizen's crew sailed under false stars and darker questions. Each victory came with a heavier cost, and now... the crew itself began to feel the weight.
It started with a message.
Delivered by a bird too clean, too sharp-eyed, to be wild, the parchment bore a silver seal — the same symbol found etched into the ruins of the White Island: the broken eye of the World Government's Internal Correction Division. Not the Marines. Not Cipher Pol. Something deeper. Older.
Raizen unrolled the scroll alone in his quarters. The message was simple:
"The Crown offers clemency. You and your crew will be pardoned. Fortune, land, and titles await. One condition: surrender your captain."
It was a trap. Of course, it was a trap.
But what made Raizen hesitate was not the offer — it was the delivery. The message had come to his crew as well. Split in sealed letters, addressed individually.
Every member.
They convened in the ship's war room the next day. Silence was the first voice.
Zuri leaned against the table, eyes scanning the crew. "This is a test."
Kaidan crossed his arms. "Or a warning."
Tova, their newest recruit — a former noble tactician — was less certain. "It's smart. Divide from within. No chains are stronger than those we choose."
Raizen didn't speak. He watched. Measured.
That evening, the first to go was Dellin, the quartermaster. He left no note. Just his pendant — the one Raizen gave him when he joined — placed on the helm.
Then Marra, the helmswoman, didn't show for morning watch.
And by the third day, half the crew avoided Raizen's gaze.
On the fourth night, they were ambushed.
A ghost ship — black-sailed and silent — emerged from a hidden current. Its crew were mercenaries in government coin, led by a masked captain wielding a sword of living light.
But they didn't attack.
They boarded without bloodshed, flanked by former crewmates who now wore the Crown's crest.
One stepped forward.
Ryn, Raizen's oldest friend, a gunner who once saved his life in the trenches of a forgotten island.
"I told them you wouldn't bend," Ryn said, voice low. "But others did. They said you'd never change. That you'd drag us all to ruin chasing ghosts."
Raizen looked him in the eye. "I never asked for loyalty. Only truth."
"Then here's mine," Ryn said, cocking his pistol. "You're fighting a war that can't be won. Maybe they're monsters — but at least they're organized. You're chaos wrapped in a cause."
The silence was shattered by a shot — but it wasn't Ryn's.
It was Zuri.
The bullet hit the deck between Ryn's feet. "One more step," she warned, "and I stop missing."
A standoff. Fire on the edge of friendship.
But then — a crack of thunder, a roar from the sea. Their navigator Korra, long thought too shaken to fight, emerged with the ship's ancient cannon online.
She fired.
The blast tore the mercenary ship's mast in half.
The Crown's offer was rescinded — in fire and fury.
The traitors fled or were captured. Some wept. Some spat. Ryn escaped into the sea, disappearing into the mists. His words lingered like ghosts in the crew's hearts.
When the smoke cleared, Raizen stood alone at the helm.
Those who remained stood behind him — not because they had to, but because they chose to.
Later that night, Kaidan asked him, "Would you ever forgive the ones who left?"
Raizen stared into the sea.
"I don't have time to hate them," he said. "But I'll never trust them again."
He walked to the ship's prow, wind in his coat, eyes toward the horizon.
The crew had paid the price of loyalty.
And Raizen now understood — some debts are bought in blood, but loyalty costs the soul.
END OF THE CHAPTER11