Frustration, sharp and hot as the air outside, began to burn in Kael's chest. He was tired of whispers and dead ends. He turned from the doorway and walked directly up to the workbench where the one-armed mechanic was meticulously cleaning a resonant capacitor.
"I need to find a way to get to Aethelburg," Kael said, his voice coming out louder and more forceful than he intended.
Bren stopped her work and slowly looked up, her one good eye fixing him with a stare that was equal parts pity and annoyance. She let out a short, harsh laugh that sounded like grinding gears. "Aethelburg," she scoffed, wiping her greasy hand on an already filthy rag. "Aethelburg's a fairy tale, boy. A story old miners tell their kids to scare 'em away from the deep currents. There's nothing out there but fire and pressure."
She gestured with her prosthetic arm, the metal fingers clicking softly. "You understand pressure? At the depths the legends talk about, the sea would crush this whole workshop into a pebble. The heat would melt any normal crystal hull before it got halfway there. It's a fool's errand. You're chasing a ghost."
Ria, who had been inspecting her own gear at a nearby table, overheard the exchange. She walked over, her dark goggles pushed up onto her forehead, revealing sharp, intelligent eyes that missed nothing. "He's not asking for a fairy tale, Bren," she said, her voice cutting through Bren's dismissive tone. "He's asking for a path. Assume for a second he's not a fool. Assume he has a reason. Who would know the way?"
Kael looked at Ria, a question in his own eyes. They had reached Silt. Her part of the bargain was done. Why was she still helping him?
As if reading his mind, Ria answered his unspoken question. "The favor you owe me is an investment," she said, her voice low, for his ears only. "You're no good to me dead at the bottom of the sea. Your quest is impossible, which means if you somehow succeed, the reward—or the knowledge you find—will be immense. I want to be there to collect my percentage." She paused, her gaze turning distant for a moment. "Besides," she added, a flicker of something other than pragmatism in her eyes, "I used to be part of an exploration guild. High-tech gear, Chorus funding, the works. We were charted to map the deep resonance of the wastes. It was a disaster. A miscalculation. Lost everyone but me." She looked away, her cynical mask firmly back in place. "I learned two things that day. One: the world is bigger and more dangerous than any map. And two: sometimes, the impossible quests are the only ones worth a damn."
Bren watched their quiet exchange, her expression shifting from annoyance to a grudging respect. She sighed, a sound like steam escaping a pressurized valve. "You're both insane," she grumbled. But she was thinking. "There was… one."
Kael and Ria both turned to her, hanging on her next words.
"Years ago," Bren continued, her voice dropping lower. "There was a captain. A brilliant resonant engineer, but the sea had made him mad. Name was Valerius. He was obsessed with the old world, with the 'songs of the deep earth,' he called it. Said the sea wasn't just chaos; it had its own harmony, its own paths, if you knew how to listen."
The words echoed Silas's philosophy, and a thrill went through Kael.
"He was a laughingstock," Bren went on. "Poured every crystal he had into building a ship. Not a skiff, a submersible. The Diver, he called it. Said he built it from a strange, dark metal he dredged from a deep trench, something that could withstand the heat. Designed a new kind of resonant engine, one that was supposed to harmonize with the sea's currents instead of fighting them. Everyone said he'd gone mad from the heat."
"What happened to him?" Kael asked, his voice tight with anticipation.
"What do you think happened?" Bren retorted, her cynical tone returning. "He gathered a small crew of believers and set out on some grand expedition to find a legendary Heart-Mine he claimed was near Aethelburg. He sailed out over the Black Shelf and vanished. Him, his crew, his mythical ship… all presumed lost. Consumed by the sea. That was years ago."
"He's long dead," she said, with an air of finality.
But Ria, ever the Wayfinder, ever the information broker, wouldn't let it go. Her mind was already working, looking for the next breadcrumb on the trail. "A man like that, an obsessive… he wouldn't just build a ship. He would have had a workshop. He would have had charts, logs, research," she pressed. "Where did he dock? Who were his suppliers? What happened to his workshop after he disappeared?"
Bren leaned back, her prosthetic arm whirring softly as it flexed. She seemed reluctant to dredge up this old, dead-end story. "His workshop is in the Graveyard," she said finally, her voice low. "The old west dock, the most unstable part of Silt. It's where we leave broken ships and forgotten equipment to be slowly reclaimed by the sea. The crust is thin out there. No one goes there anymore. They say it's haunted by the ghosts of drowned sailors. Structurally unsound, is what it really is."
Kael and Ria exchanged a look. Their shared glance held a new understanding. This was the path. A dead man's workshop. A ghost ship. It was the most desperate, fragile lead imaginable, but it was the only one they had.
Their hope of crossing the sea now rested on the ghost of a disgraced captain, the ravings of a madman, and the wreck of his mythical ship.
"We're going to the Graveyard," Ria said, her voice leaving no room for argument. It was no longer Kael's quest and her investment. For now, at least, it was their quest. They had to find Valerius's workshop. They had to find his research, his logs, or, if they were incredibly lucky, what was left of the Diver itself.