The team traveled for three days across the open ocean, their boats cutting slow paths between the scattered reefs. The sun burned by day, the stars wheeled by night, but the water itself remained strangely empty. No pods of dolphins danced alongside them. No shoals of fish churned the waves. Only silence, broken by the creak of oars and the whisper of wind.
By the third morning, tempers frayed. Islanders muttered that they were wasting their time. The Thalriss grew restless, scanning the waves with hard, suspicious eyes. Even Rowan began to doubt, until Midg stirred inside him.
The minnow's pulse flickered fast in his chest, urgent as a drumbeat. At the same time, Mira gasped — Todd shimmered against her ribs like a silver flame, darting wildly.
"They've found something," Mira breathed.
Rowan rose at once. "Down."
The Thalriss warriors slipped into the water without hesitation. Rowan followed, Midg's essence filling his lungs with cool clarity. Mira dove after him, Todd guiding her with a dolphin's grace. Luna descended last, her light a faint glow against the dark.
Beneath the waves, the ocean came alive with horror.
Shapes moved in the gloom — twisted creatures swimming in jagged patterns. Squids with too many arms, their tentacles riddled with black veins. Sharks with clouded eyes and jaws that opened too wide, teeth layered like broken glass. Even orcas, once graceful kings of the sea, swam in jerking spasms, their skin mottled with rot.
But it wasn't only beasts. Humanoid figures drifted in their midst — corrupted thalriss, their gills blackened, their eyes pale and empty. Chains dangled from their hands, dragging prisoners behind them: sea turtles netted together, wounded dolphins, even other thalriss bound in crude cages of coral and bone.
Rowan's gut turned. This isn't hunting. This is harvesting.
The Thalriss chief's son had vanished here. The others too. Rowan didn't need Mira's wide eyes to know — they had stumbled onto the answer.
The group hovered in uneasy silence, watching the corrupted column pass below them.
"Attack," one of the Thalriss hissed through the water. His scaled fingers curled around his spear. "Free them now, before they're taken deeper."
"No," Lyra said sharply. She hadn't dived, but her voice came through the strange link her Soulkin gave her, brushing Rowan's thoughts like a whisper. If you strike now, you'll save a handful. But they don't capture without purpose. They must have a place. A nest. A prison.
Rowan grimaced. She was right. They had seen too many vanish to believe this was chance. "If we follow them, we'll find the others," he said aloud, bubbles trailing from his lips.
The Thalriss spat in the water, but even he couldn't deny the logic. At last, grudgingly, he lowered his spear.
So they followed.
Hours passed. The corrupted drove their prisoners relentlessly, currents churning around their flailing limbs. At last, the trail led to a place that froze Rowan's blood.
A skeleton loomed out of the murk. Vast and pale, it sprawled across the seafloor like the bones of a god. A whale — a blue whale, by the size of it — long dead, its ribs arcing high as towers. The skull lay half-buried, jaws agape, a cavern of teeth large enough to swallow a ship. Coral and barnacles clung to the bones, but this was no natural grave. The skeleton had been shaped.
Chains wound through its ribs, strung with cages of bone and rusted iron. Nets draped the spine, hung with writhing shapes. Entire sections of rib had been lashed together with kelp, forming crude platforms where guards perched. Part of the skeleton breached the waves above, ribs like jagged spires rising into the air, while the rest stretched deep into the gloom.
It was a prison. A fortress of death.
Rowan's breath caught. Hundreds — no, thousands — of captives filled the cages. Islanders, Thalriss, mountain-folk dragged from distant shores. Dolphins and turtles packed tight, merfolk chained by their tails. Some still fought weakly against their bonds. Others floated limp, eyes dim with despair.
And in the center, bound inside the whale's cavernous chest, was the Thalriss prince.
Rowan's heart hammered. They had found him. But they had also found the true scale of the threat.
He surfaced with Mira and Luna, gasping air as the others followed. The boats bobbed nearby, Darin and Lyra staring anxiously.
Rowan's face was pale. "We've found them. The prince. The missing hunters. Hundreds more."
Darin's eyes widened. "Then what are we waiting for? We hit them now."
Rowan shook his head. "Not with what we've got. We'd free a few, maybe. Then the rest die before we can cut their chains."
The Islanders muttered angrily. The Thalriss bristled.
Rowan turned to Mira. "You need to go back."
Her eyes snapped wide. "What? No!"
"You have to," Rowan said firmly. "Take one of the merfolk. Tell the elders what we've found. We'll need every boat they have. Nets. Blades. Divers. This—" He glanced back at the looming skeleton, ribs stark against the horizon. "This isn't just about your prince. It's about all of them." "we need away of getting them away from here and our current transportation just wouldn't be enough"
Mira's jaw clenched. She hated leaving, he could see it in her eyes. But Todd flickered against her chest, pulsing in frantic agreement.
At last she nodded, though her voice shook. "Don't do anything stupid until I'm back."
Rowan managed a grim smile. "I'll try." "don't get lost though will you"
As Mira and a merfolk ally swam away with speed. "At least just the two of them it won't take very long " Rowan thought to himself, Rowan turned to the others. The skeleton loomed over the waves, its hollow eye sockets staring like a sentinel of death.
"Now we know where they've gone," he said. "All of them."
The wind carried his words across the water, and though no one spoke, the truth pressed heavy on them all.
Lets watch them for now, and if they try to move we attack. If they stay then we wait.