CHAPTER 24: THROUGH THE GAUNTLET
The water was cold and thick with debris.
I swam through wreckage—splintered wood, torn canvas, bodies I tried not to look at too closely. The shore of Isla de Muerta was chaos incarnate, naval marines clashing with cursed pirates under moonlight that revealed every horror.
My precognition kept me alive.
Debris left. I dodged a spinning timber that could have cracked my skull.
Current pulling. I adjusted course, avoiding an undertow that would have dragged me under.
Something beneath. I kicked frantically, and something skeletal brushed past my leg without catching hold.
The shore came slowly. Too slowly. Every second felt like hours, and with each stroke, I imagined the ritual advancing—Will's blood on Aztec gold, the curse straining toward release.
Finally, my feet touched sand.
I crawled onto the beach, gasping, every muscle screaming. The smoke inhalation from the Interceptor's burning had left my lungs raw. Cuts I hadn't noticed stung with salt. Blood ran from my forehead into my left eye—when had that happened?
I wiped it away impatiently. No time for minor wounds.
"YOU THERE!"
A cursed pirate spotted me from twenty feet away. Moonlight stripped the flesh from his bones, revealing the skeletal horror beneath. He raised his cutlass and charged.
My precognition screamed. I rolled sideways, felt the blade whisper past my ear, came up running.
I couldn't fight them. Not really. But I didn't have to fight—I just had to survive long enough to reach the cave.
Three pirates now. Two more joining from the cliffside. Five skeletal nightmares between me and the cave entrance, weapons raised, absolutely confident in their immortality.
Sword swing from the left. I ducked.
Pistol shot from behind. I zigged right.
Reaching grab. I dropped flat, felt fingers close on air where my shoulder had been.
I was dancing through death. Every step guided by precognition, every breath a prayer. The cursed pirates couldn't catch what they couldn't predict, and I was predicting everything.
But I was also exhausting myself.
My warning sense was a muscle, and I'd been flexing it constantly for an hour. The edges of my vision were going gray. My reactions slowing, millisecond by millisecond.
Not yet. Not yet. MOVE.
A sword caught my arm—just a graze, but it drew blood and fire. A fist connected with my ribs—glancing blow, but it knocked the air from my lungs. I was slowing down, and they were closing in.
The cave mouth was there. Right there. Twenty feet away.
I sprinted.
Bones and blades behind me. The rasp of skeletal breathing. Feet pounding stone. Pain in my arm, my ribs, my everything.
I dove through the cave entrance.
Tumbled. Hit rock. Lay gasping in darkness that wasn't quite dark.
Golden light ahead. The treasure chamber.
And my Curse Sight exploded to life.
The curse was everywhere.
From my position on the cave floor, I could see it all—chains of tarnished gold stretching from every cursed pirate, converging on a single point deeper in the cave. The debt-counters I'd observed before now pulsed with frantic energy, numbers shifting, the entire supernatural architecture straining toward resolution.
The ritual. It's reaching critical mass.
I forced myself upright. Staggered forward. The cave passages were familiar now—I'd been here before, captive, observing. I knew the way.
Voices echoed from ahead. Barbossa's theatrical growl. Jack's sardonic response. Will's desperate plea. Elizabeth's fierce defiance.
I moved faster. Pain faded beneath adrenaline.
The treasure chamber opened before me—mountains of gold, Aztec artifacts, the great stone chest at the center. And there, illuminated by torchlight and supernatural glow, the key players in a story I already knew.
Barbossa stood over Will, knife raised. Jack circled nearby, something in his hand—a coin, I realized. He'd taken a piece of the gold. Made himself briefly cursed, briefly immortal, buying time.
Will was bleeding. Not fatally, not yet, but blood dripped onto the coin in his palm. One coin left. One payment remaining.
Elizabeth struggled against two skeletal guards. Norrington's marines lay scattered—unconscious or dead, I couldn't tell.
And the curse-chains...
Through my Sight, I watched them pulse with desperate hunger. The curse was so close to breaking. Just one more drop of blood, one more coin in the chest, and centuries of debt would be repaid.
But not yet. Jack needs his moment. The story needs its ending.
I stumbled against a pile of gold. The noise drew attention.
"Micke." Jack's voice carried surprise and relief. "You look terrible."
"Feel worse." I wiped blood from my eye again—the forehead cut refused to stop bleeding. "What do you need?"
"Watch the curse. Tell me when—"
"Now." The word left my mouth without conscious thought. "The curse breaks now."
Everything happened at once.
Jack fired his pistol. Barbossa staggered—hit but not killed, not yet, because he was still cursed.
Will pressed his bloody palm onto the final coin. Dropped it into the chest.
And through my Curse Sight, I watched the chains shatter.
Golden light exploded outward. Every cursed pirate in the cave—in the island, in the world—felt mortality return like a thunderbolt. Barbossa looked down at the spreading bloodstain on his shirt, genuine surprise on his newly-human face.
"I feel... cold," he whispered.
He fell.
The curse of the Black Pearl was broken.
Jack Sparrow lowered his pistol, staring at his oldest enemy's body. Elizabeth rushed to Will, cutting his bonds. Somewhere in the chaos, Norrington's marines stirred back to consciousness.
And I stood in the treasure chamber, surrounded by mountains of cursed gold, watching the remnants of supernatural chains fade into nothing.
We'd won.
Somehow, impossibly, we'd won.
I should have felt triumph. Instead, I felt only exhaustion—bone-deep, soul-deep, the kind that comes from pushing too hard for too long.
Blood dripped from my forehead. My arm burned where the sword had grazed. My ribs ached where the fist had connected.
But I was alive.
Jack was alive.
And the golden thread that connected us still pulsed gently in my fading Sight—a mystery for another day.
"We need to move," I said, forcing my voice steady. "The cursed crew outside—they'll be mortal now too. Vulnerable. Confused. We can capture them, end this properly."
Jack turned to look at me. Something shifted in his expression—respect, maybe. Recognition.
"You heard the man," he said to the others. "Let's finish this."
We moved toward the cave exit, stepping over Barbossa's body, leaving behind a chamber of treasure that had caused so much suffering.
Behind us, the Aztec gold sat silent in its chest.
Waiting for the next fool to take a piece.
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