The captain's quarters smelled of brine, pipe smoke, and candle-wax. A great table of dark oak dominated the center, carved into a map of the archipelagos, the sea lines etched in silver. Upon it rested small ivory and obsidian pieces shaped into ships, harpoons, and crowns.
Captain Belmarius sat at the head, his presence filling the chamber like a tide. His eyes gleamed with an old predator's patience as he gestured toward the board.
"The Game of Seas," he said. "A pirate's war in miniature. Strategy, freedom, law, betrayal — all compressed onto this field."
Gareth and Kael exchanged a look before sitting across from him.
The first match lasted barely a dozen moves. Kael played bold, reckless, aiming to strike fast. Belmarius dismantled him with ease, a single obsidian frigate sweeping half the board while Kael muttered curses under his breath.
The second match, Gareth. He played cautious, eyes narrowing, trying to predict the old captain's rhythm. His hands moved with calculation, his mind reaching, adapting. For a while it seemed he might hold his own.
But Belmarius smiled faintly — and the game ended in a sudden trap, Gareth's fleet caught in a net he hadn't seen forming.
"You're both children," Belmarius said, leaning back, voice low and steady. "But clever children." His gaze lingered on Gareth. "Your ideals on freedom are strange. Most who play this game crave control. You moved as though the board itself should be free, as if the sea owes no master. Rare."
The room fell silent. Kael shifted, suddenly serious for once.
Belmarius' voice dropped to a rumble. "So tell me, boy. Why do you see the world that way?"
Gareth met his stare, his tone humble but unyielding.
"Because freedom isn't a prize to win or a gift to take. It's breath itself. Strip it away, and you strip the soul bare. Law without freedom is just a cage painted gold. And I…" He hesitated, then allowed the faintest smile. "I will not live in a cage."
For the first time, Kael didn't mock him. He leaned forward, jaw tight, eyes narrowing as though weighing his friend's words.
Belmarius studied them both, and the candlelight flickered across his scarred face like the sea itself listening.
Belmarius' expression hardened."Freedom without law," he said, moving one of the ivory ships back into its carved harbor, "is just fire on open waters. It burns bright, it inspires… and then it devours everything it touches."
He leaned closer to Gareth, voice low and edged. "You think the sea owes you breath? No, boy. The sea is older than gods. It owes no one anything. It gives, it takes, and it drowns fools who mistake its silence for kindness."
Gareth met his eyes, steady. "Then I'll learn to breathe beneath it."
For a long moment, the room felt like it might shatter under the weight of silence.
Then Kael broke it, lips twisting in a humorless grin.
The captain allowed himself a thin chuckle, though his eyes remained unreadable.
By dawn, the ship reached Briguais — the market of the damned.
The island rose like a jagged black tooth from the sea, ringed with torchlight and smoke. Dozens of pirate banners flapped in the wind, stitched with sigils of bones, suns, serpents, and storms. The harbor was chaos incarnate: longboats clashing for space, sailors shouting prices, children running barefoot with stolen fruit while assassins sharpened blades in open stalls.
The air smelled of salt, blood, spice, and powder.
"Welcome," Belmarius said, stepping onto the dock, "to the one place where coin outweighs murder. For a while."
Everywhere Gareth looked, there was motion — pirates gambling with severed ears as currency, merchants selling cursed trinkets that glowed faintly under the moon, and smugglers hauling cages where something inside whispered like men but rattled like beasts.
The crew split into groups. Kael disappeared toward the weapons market, and returned with a halberd that shimmered faintly at its edge. Gareth found himself drawn toward a stall of strange explosives, their casings etched with runes he didn't understand. He bought two — one shaped like a vial of sand, another like a hollow coin.
The pirates laughed when they saw Gareth's haul. "Careful, Parabbeal. Those bite harder than sharks."
By nightfall, the ship's hold brimmed with weapons, powder, and stolen luxuries. The crew celebrated with cheap rum and a chorus of sea shanties that rose like wolves howling at the moon.
But when the anchor lifted and Briguais shrank into the mist, the air grew heavier. Ahead loomed their destination: the prison fortress — a black silhouette on the horizon, its towers spearing the clouds, its walls rumored to be carved from stone dragged from the ocean's depths.
A place where men were said to vanish, never to return.
The fortress loomed like a scar on the horizon, its towers jagged, its walls blackened with salt and time. Chains as thick as masts hung from the cliffs, anchoring it into the very bones of the island.
As Gareth and Kael stepped onto the rocky shore, the first thing they saw were the slaves.
Men and women in torn rags hauled stones under the lash, their ankles bound with iron rings. Some bore tattoos of pirate banners long forgotten — the symbols of crews swallowed by the sea. Their eyes were hollow, movements mechanical, as if the fortress itself had ground out their will.
Kael's jaw clenched. "This isn't a prison. It's a graveyard with shovels."
Belmarius said nothing. His hand rested on the hilt of his cutlass, his face set like storm-worn stone.
The plan unfolded in silence. While the pirates of Briguais had traded coin for powder, Gareth had carried his share of strange explosives — runed vials and hollow coins humming with faint energy. Now, with a flick of his wrist, he set them against the fortress wall.
The explosion came like thunder trapped in a cave. Stone screamed and split, a gaping wound opening in the fortress' side. Dust swallowed the air.
Through the smoke walked Belmarius. Calm, unhurried, as though the fortress itself had opened its gates in surrender. His crew followed, weapons ready, boots crunching over rubble.
But there were no guards. Not a single challenge, not even a whisper. The fortress corridors yawned empty, echoing with the scrape of chains and distant moans.
For hours they searched, torches flickering against iron doors and carvings too old to read. The deeper they went, the colder the air became, until finally, in the lowest cell, they found him.
A man hunched against the wall, chains digging into his wrists. His body was thin, almost skeletal, but his eyes burned with stubborn fire.
"Drew Leinar," Belmarius said, voice low, heavy.
The man raised his head slowly. "Belmarius… you came."
The captain's jaw worked as he drew out a vial — a potion of shifting crimson and silver, its glow forbidden, its scent sharp as blood and lightning. Without hesitation, he pressed it to Drew's lips.
The man convulsed, coughing, his body trembling as color returned to his cheeks and the hollow look in his eyes faded. He gasped as though dragged back from drowning, then sat straighter, breath steadying.
But Belmarius did not smile. His hand seized Drew's collar, pulling him close, voice cracking under the weight of fury and grief.
"Do you know the cure?" he demanded. "The cure for my daughter?"
The chamber fell silent, torches hissing, the weight of his words echoing against stone. Drew met his gaze — and the fire in his eyes dimmed, replaced by something colder.
Drew's voice was ragged, hoarse from years of silence, but each word carried the weight of a noose tightening.
"There is a cure… but the sea does not give without taking. To wake your daughter, Captain, the price is not coin, nor blood. It is freedom itself. You must chain another soul—bind them in her place. One life locked forever, so another may rise. A life for a life."
The torches guttered as his words echoed through the stone.
Belmarius' face twisted, fury and anguish colliding. His fist trembled where it clutched Drew's collar. "Don't you dare speak of chains to me—"
But then…
A shadow stirred.
Behind him, Lys "Redhand" Callen grinned, eyes glinting in the dying firelight. His blade was already drawn, gleaming slick with crimson. His steps were silent, too silent, as he raised the knife—aimed not for Drew, but for the Captain's back.
Gareth's breath froze. His pulse screamed.
He saw the angle, the speed, the inevitable blood. And the word left his mouth before he could stop it.
"Checkmate."
The world shattered.
The torches flickered—then stretched into streaks of black. The prisoners gasped, their chains snapping soundlessly. The fortress stone cracked, not from explosives, but from emptiness itself, like reality was being peeled back.
And then they were gone.
Every pirate. Every prisoner. Every chain. All swallowed into a swirling abyss of lightless mist. Their screams echoed as if dragged into a thousand miles of void.
Lys' grin froze as his knife dissolved into smoke in his hand. His form twisted, shredded into pieces of shadow, ripped away in silence.
Even Drew was wrenched from Belmarius' grasp, his face vanishing into the black with a look of grim acceptance.
The cell was no longer a cell. It was a maw.
A portal yawning wide, endless and hungering.
Gareth alone stood at the edge, the mark on his arm burning so hot it seared through cloth and flesh alike. Umbrael's voice rang sharp in his skull, cold and absolute:
"Probability of survival: 0.07%. Event spiral detected. This fortress was bait. An engineered void trap. Run."
Gareth's stomach dropped. His thoughts tore like sails in a storm. A prison with no guards… of course. How could I be so blind?
He staggered back, heart hammering, as the stones beneath his feet crumbled into the same black abyss. "Umbrael… calculated it. Everyone… everyone was meant to die here."
The wave hit.
Not water this time. Something worse. A tsunami of voidlight tore across the island, swallowing towers, walls, the sea itself. With a final roar, the entire fortress was ripped from existence, dragged screaming into the abyss.
Gareth felt it clutch for him, claws of nothingness raking at his skin.
And then he was gone.
His body ripped from stone and sea alike, his vision collapsing into endless black—until there was nothing.
Only silence.
Silence.
The void stretched endless, black upon black. The Captain stood there, shoulders hunched, his face drawn with a grief Gareth had never seen before. Belmarius' eyes were hollow, rimmed with exhaustion that spoke not of battle but of loss deeper than the sea.
"Why…?" his voice rasped, breaking. "Why would you do this, boy? Why tear it all apart?"
Drew's words still hung like chains around his heart: One life for another. A sacrifice to wake his daughter.
The Captain's jaw trembled. For the first time, the great Pirate King looked small.
Then the void shifted. Umbrael's whisper slid across Gareth's mind, heavy as a bell toll:
"Master this is no prison. This is mine. My dimension. My dominion. My will."
Gareth's shadow stretched, towering, swallowing even the Captain's presence. He stepped forward, and his voice—no longer just his—rolled like thunder through the abyss.
"Did you think this was your trap? That you had captured us?" His eyes gleamed, twin shards of burning dusk. "No. This was my stage."
The void screamed open. The corpses, the prisoners, the crew—every soul who had been swallowed into Umbrael's maw—shuddered as Gareth raised his hand.
"By my name," he roared, his voice splitting the silence, "you who drowned in death shall breathe once more! For I stand at the threshold, between silence and eternity. Not as savior. Not as god. Not as ruler. But as your doom."
The abyss howled.
Bodies convulsed, then rose. Chains dissolved. Eyes flickered open, burning with life stolen from the grave. The void itself trembled as one by one, the dead returned to the living.
Gareth's form warped in the light—armor black as midnight clamped to his body, a mask of shadow sealing over his face.
He stood among them, a figure of dread and awe.
"From this day forth," his voice rang like judgment, "you are mine. You will grow, ascend, shatter the limits of flesh. Be strong. Be free. Be joyful, if you wish. But above all—obey, Now venture into the kingdom of Sion build me a castle, and be powerful."
The abyss broke like glass. With a sweep of his hand, Umbrael hurled the resurrected into the Kingdom of Sion, their screams echoing into the dawn as they vanished into that faraway land.
Only Kael, the Captain, and his crew remained in the void.
A white portal cracked open, luminous and soft. They stumbled through, coughing, collapsing—back into the wreckage of the prison fortress.
And Gareth… stood there as if nothing had happened. The mask was gone. The black armor vanished. He was once more the boy with goggles, trench coat, and swords at his side.
Kael's head hung low, his fists clenched. His breath shook, the weight of near-death smothering him. For the first time, Kael looked broken.
The crew turned on Lys Redhand. His eyes were cast downward, shame burning his cheeks. But before words could strike, the Captain stepped forward.
He placed a scarred hand gently on Lys' head—the same hand that had patted him five years ago, when he was only a child. His gaze was heavy, yet soft.
Then Belmarius turned, and in a rare, unshakable act, bowed.
"To both of you—Kael. Gareth. For Escorting us on this journey. From this day forward, my crew is indebted to you."
Kael flinched, embarrassed, scratching the back of his head. Gareth's mouth tugged in the faintest grimace, awkward and boyish despite the darkness that had just unfolded.
Neither of them spoke.
The adventure moved on, but the weight of that moment would never leave them.
As Gareth vanished from the void, Umbrael's voice lingered like a knife against the soul:
"Your pawns have been placed. The Cult breathes in silence. Their roots will spread unseen."
Far across the sea, in the Kingdom of Sion, the resurrected awoke in shadowed streets, in forgotten ruins, in abandoned sanctuaries. They whispered his name not as savior—but as omen.
No banners. No kingdom. No throne.
Only a growing flame.
And in the halls of power, rumors began. Of strange gatherings in Sion. Of men who could not die. Of eyes that burned with borrowed life.
But no one knew the truth.
No one knew they already belonged to Gareth Valven.