The corridors of the raider vessel stank of blood and oil. The last of the enemy lay dead, and the Arcadia's men gathered in the chamber where their captain had claimed victory.
They did not speak loudly. None dared.
The corpse of the raider champion still smoked on the deck, chest split open by arcs that had seared flesh and steel alike. Harlock had already left, cloak trailing, saber quiet at his side. But his presence lingered, a shadow carved into the steel walls.
It was old Thomar, the gunnery-master, who broke the silence. His voice was low, almost reverent.
"I've seen many fights. Too many. But I swear by the Throne, the Captain weren't fighting like a man. He was playing."
The younger crewmen nodded, their faces pale. One spat nervously, muttering, "The raider swung like a giant. Should've split him in half. But the Captain moved… like he knew. Like he saw it before it happened."
Another leaned closer, whispering as though the steel itself might listen: "Maybe he did. Maybe the Arcadia showed him."
That thought silenced them all.
Rumors had always swirled through the ship. The mist that healed their wounds, the way the guns found their marks even when blind, the whispers of voices in the bulkheads at night. The Arcadia was no mere vessel. Everyone knew it.
But now their captain had changed as well.
"He's not just a man anymore," Thomar said, his one good eye staring at the smoldering corpse. "He's the Arcadia's hand. The ship fights through him. The ghost that steers the prow."
The younger ones shifted uneasily. Some crossed themselves, others touched relic charms.
"Then what does that make us?" one asked quietly. "If the ship's alive, and the Captain's its ghost… what are we?"
"Crew," Thomar growled. "Always crew. And more than that — Arcadians. My father was born in the lower holds, and his father before him. My sons will be born here too, same as yours. We ain't just crew. We're a people."
A hush followed. They all knew it was true.
Already, generations had lived and died aboard the Arcadia. Even before the Fall of their world, when she was still but a proud warship of House Harlock, children had been born in the lower decks, and ancestors laid to rest in the shrines welded into her spine. Whole bloodlines could trace their heritage not to any soil, but to bulkheads and passageways of this ship.
The transformation had only deepened that bond. What had once been a proud noble warship was now something greater — a city of steel and spirit, a cradle for new generations of void-born Arcadians.
The crew knew it in their bones: the Arcadia was their cradle, their home, and their tomb. And now, with Harlock at her helm, she was their destiny.
When Harlock returned to the ship, no one asked about the fight. No one dared mention the crimson glow that had slipped beneath his patch, or how the saber's arcs seemed to answer it.
Instead, they saluted him in silence. Their captain walked among them like a shadow of the prow itself.
And the whispers spread.
The raiders who survived the mist would carry tales into the void. The Arcadia's skull prow was feared already. But now the stories grew teeth:
Of a captain who could not be struck.
Of a saber that devoured armor and flesh alike.
Of an eye that glowed crimson in the dark.
The Phantom of the Arcadia.
And with every whisper, the legend of the Arcadian people grew too — a people born in mist and shadow, heirs to a ship that would defy even fate.