After fully mapping the Drowned City Ira retraced his steps and exiting the way he came.
The cliffs faded behind him like a half-remembered nightmare, the Drowned City shrinking to a dark smear against the horizon. Ira's arms ached from the climb, his fingers still stiff from clutching wet stone and rusted metal. The map—folded, glowing faintly under his coat—was heavy in a way that had nothing to do with its weight.
He hadn't spoken to anyone since leaving the vault. No one could understand what he had seen, what he had heard. Even now, as the skiff cut across the gray-green water, the whispers still lingered, faint and manic at the edge of his mind. Sometimes a vision would flare unbidden—a city tilting into the sea, a wave splitting open the horizon, a road leading into impossibilities. He shook his head, muttering, "Just breathe. Just… breathe."
When he reached Lamsport, the town felt unnaturally still. Merchants hawked wares with mechanical cheer, gulls squabbled over scraps, and the scent of salt and smoke hung in the streets. Everything was familiar, but Ira noticed the subtle differences—the angle of the sun, the smell of the harbor, the way shadows fell. The world felt… off.
He paused at the edge of the quay, resting the map on his knees. "Three weeks," he whispered. "Three weeks until… this calm is ripped from beneath our grasps. Better get ready."
He spent the next days preparing: repairing his gear, checking his supplies, and testing the map's strange properties.
At first, the map behaved like parchment—ink lines winding across its surface in neat arcs and intersections. But the longer he stared, the less fixed it became. Roads bent and shifted. Hills rose and sank. Cities appeared in one corner only to blur into rivers and forests in the next. What unnerved him most was how the map seemed to respond—subtly—to him. When he thought of Lamsport, the harbor lights shimmered into view. When his mind wandered toward the Drowned City, the paper stained itself with black water spreading in blotches, until he had to fold it shut.
At night, the visions returned.
They never came all at once. Sometimes it began with a whisper, faint as moth wings brushing against his ear. Other times, it was a rush of manic voices overlapping, too many to separate, all speaking his name. He told himself it was memory, the echo of the vault pressing into his skull—but the whispers always seemed to know more than they should.
One night, the map showed him a forest of glass, its trees groaning in a windless sky. Another night, a shoreline of pale bones stretched beyond sight, a tide washing over them with a sound like teeth grinding. And once—though he tried not to remember—he saw a faceless crowd watching him from across a vast plain, thousands of eyes that weren't eyes fixed on him alone.
Sleep was fleeting, broken by these half-glimpsed landscapes and distorted faces. He would wake, drenched in sweat, the whispers still fading on the edge of his hearing. His first instinct was to burn the map, rid himself of it—but even as that thought flared, he knew he couldn't. It was tethered to him. The trials hadn't just given it to him; they had bound it.
In the daytime, he tested it cautiously, unrolling the map in empty taverns or on the deck of the skiff. Sometimes it whispered promises: roads made easy, doors unlocked, enemies who would falter before him. Other times it mocked, laughing in shrill tones only he could hear, reminding him of how close he had come to dying in the vault.
By the third night, Ira noticed a change in himself. He no longer checked the stars for direction. He no longer trusted the compass he had carried for years. Every road he walked, every turn he took, was guided—if only a little—by the manic lines on the map. And though he hated himself for it, he couldn't deny the pull. The world had started to tilt, and the map was at its center.
One morning, a messenger arrived, breathless and urgent. He carried a folded note, sealed with an unfamiliar crest. Ira broke the seal and read quickly:
"Meet at the pier at first light. Time is shorter than you know."
He frowned, slipping the note into his coat. "Shorter than I know, huh? That's encouraging."
The next morning, he arrived at the pier before dawn. The air was crisp, the tide low, the harbor still half-asleep. He adjusted the strap of his pack and unfolded the map, scanning the paths he would take. Every line shimmered faintly, the whispers teasing him with hints of what was coming.
For the first time in weeks, Ira felt something beyond exhaustion or fear: anticipation. The trials had left their mark—his body sore, his mind frayed—but they had also left him sharpened, ready. He wasn't the same man who had set foot on the skiff to reach the Drowned City. He had seen what few could, endured what most would flee from, and now the world waited for him to move.
And somewhere in the distance, the horizon seemed to tilt, hinting at the storm that was already gathering.