For three days, The Devil's Wake sliced through the waters of the Black Sea. During that time, Azazel trained relentlessly with Juan Barbosa—hand-to-hand combat, focus drills, and late-night readings under a lantern's flicker.
The ship held steady. The crew, lively and sharp.
But on the third day, the skies changed.
At first—dead silence.
Then came the first rumble of thunder.
And after that—a downpour that seemed to want to wash the very ship from the face of the world.
When the ship began to tilt wildly, Azazel awoke with a jolt, nearly thrown from his cot. His suitcase thudded to the floor, its sacred contents thumping in protest.
"What in hell's name is going on?!"
He grabbed his coat and dashed above deck—only to witness a scene from nightmare.
The ship was shrouded in fog—dense, heavy, and gray as burial linen. Frost crawled across the wood. The ropes, the rails, even the sails—all were covered in a glistening layer of ice.
And then he heard them—screams.
Not human screams.
Ghosts.
Sea wraiths rose from the water, their bodies half-formed and glowing faintly with a green-blue hue. Tattered flags hung from their skeletal arms. Their empty eyes glowed like candles in a tomb.
"Load the cannons! Salt rounds!"
One of the sailors shouted over the wind. Azazel saw them working fast—loading special cannonballs filled with raw sea salt.
Each blast tore through the fog, causing wraiths to shatter like glass in moonlight.
Azazel barely processed it all when suddenly—
The captain stepped onto the deck.
He didn't speak.
He merely walked to the edge of the deck and—slammed his heel down.
The sea responded.
A massive pillar of seawater erupted from the depths—taller than the mast—smashing through the remaining phantoms like a god's wrath. They wailed and hissed as they were dragged back into the depths, broken and torn.
Then—silence.
He stood quietly, pipe in mouth.
That's the qualitative change every hunter goes through after the initiation ritual.
It made Azazel wonder what powers will he have? What experiences from his previous lives will alter and shape his powers?
"They chose the wrong place," he muttered.
Azazel stared, stunned. He had never seen anything like that—not magic, not demonology. Pure power of initiated hunter.
Juan leaned against the mast with a lazy grin.
"Go back to sleep," he called over his shoulder. "Landfall's soon. Tomorrow, we're in Varna."
Azazel didn't reply.
He kept his eyes on the captain a moment longer, the echo of crashing water still ringing in his ears.