The storms never left Gathmere.
Every morning the town woke to the sound of waves pounding against the docks and the groaning of ships tied down by ropes that always seemed too thin. The sky above was never truly blue. Some days it was gray, some days it was black, and on rare mornings it burned the color of rust, like the sea itself had climbed into the clouds.
Gathmere was the kind of town that always seemed to be holding its breath. The sea pressed against its harbor with restless waves, and the storms came without warning, tearing sails and rattling shutters in the dead of night. The people had grown used to it, but even they could tell something was different now. Traders passing through spoke of strange things in the sky, stars that had cracked, burning out like dying lanterns. Sailors swore the tides had turned against them, dragging their ships the wrong way, as if the sea itself had chosen a new master.
The town itself wore its struggles plainly. The old lighthouse on the cliff, once a proud guardian for ships, was crumbling stone by stone. Its fire burned weakly, barely cutting through the heavy fog that rolled in most mornings. Down at the docks, wooden planks groaned under the weight of cargo and fish barrels. Nets hung in messy bundles, dripping with saltwater. The air smelled of brine, smoke, and old wood. And in the market square, life carried on stubbornly, traders shouting over each other, children darting between stalls, and the occasional street brawl that ended with laughter instead of blood.
But in Gathmere, people had learned to live with storms the way they lived with taxes and thieves, angry about it, but never surprised.
Kaelen had made the storms his cover.
He was a thief, though not the kind that ran off with purses in broad daylight. He had clever hands and a better head, and he used both to draw maps. He would slip into the harbormaster's office or the captain's quarters of a new ship, borrow a chart when no one was looking, and then copy it by hand onto scraps of old parchment. By the time the owner noticed, Kaelen was already selling his sketches in the market for a few copper coins. To him, maps were not just lines on paper. They were stories, secrets, chances to run farther than anyone could follow. He sketched it first, marking little details others missed from hidden coves, crooked paths, even taverns where sailors drank too much and spoke too freely.
People bought his copies in secret. Some wanted faster routes, others wanted to avoid them. Either way, Kaelen's sketches kept him fed and kept him moving. Still, he was restless. Nights in the alley gave him too much time to think. He'd lie on his back, staring at the fog-blurred stars above, and wonder if the whispers were true. Were the stars really breaking? Were the tides truly shifting? If the world was changing, what place did a boy like him have in it?
The town of Gathmere seemed to breathe these questions into every crack and corner. Its broken lighthouse, its uneasy harbor, its crowded square, all of it felt like a warning. Kaelen could feel it pressing in on him, like the air before a storm. Something was stirring, something bigger than the port town, bigger than him.
And though he didn't know it yet, Kaelen was already caught in its pull.