The wind had died. Not the calm kind, but the kind that unsettled crewmen. The deck of the Crimson Typhoon creaked faintly as the last lights of the Flower Kingdom dimmed in the eastern haze. Captain Riggs stood hunched over his map table in the captain's quarters, sleeves rolled up, tobacco pipe steaming smoke and a steaming teacup beside him. The walls were covered in dozens of weather-worn sea charts pinned up with coral-bone darts and broken fishhooks. Many of them were covered in established trade routes and ocean current streams, as well as shallow zones.
Routes were denoted with blue, green and red color yarn string. Green string routes were safe and established routes. Blue string routes were the captains' own routes. And red string routes sailed through different pirate lords' regions. The captain muttered something under his breath, eyes scanning a spread of wave-worn vellum.
I stepped into the bridge but remained silent, letting Riggs think. Felicity lingered with me, her presence more intense, her girlish scent hung around me. Oria stood near the door, watching the space like it might bite her. Riggs didn't look up. He was staring at a cluster of islands that weren't on any official map—merely sketched from secondhand rumors and sailor's delirium. "I've heard the name 'Quatzequatel' only three times in thirty years," he finally said. "Once from a dead man whose tongue I re-animated by a Necromancers concoction to hear its secrets. The second was from a naga woman trader who demanded I never speak it aloud again. And finally, from an admiral's daughter, who swore her father vanished there... chasing the same relic you now carry."
I stepped closer. "You think it's real?"
"I think," Riggs said slowly, tracing a finger over a curled coastline where the ink shimmered faintly green, "that it's not a island in the normal sense. More like a skin the world shed... and sometimes, the pieces don't sink." He tapped a spot southwest of the Crimson Reef Chain.
"Here. There's a reef chain there sailors call 'The Sibilant Drift.' Most avoid it. Some say there's an old serpent deity whose breath still lingers there. But a few—mostly bloodline marked, like you two—feel a pull." Oria stirred. "That's where we must go. I can feel it like a hook in my jaw." I nodded. "And the inheritance?"
"It's there," she said, her voice low. "Dormant. Sleeping. Like something in an egg waiting for its shell to crack." Riggs leaned back and drained his tea, then set the cup down with a clink. "We'll need three things before we enter that kind of sea," he said. "One—chart a course through the shifting reefs. Two—stock breath root or find a way to breathe underwater for at least a day.
And three…" He paused. "We'll need a bone to barter. Something old. Something willing."
Felicity tilted her head. "Define 'bone.'" Riggs smiled without mirth. "Could be a relic. Could be a pact. Could be a curse. The Quatzequatel Sea doesn't let strangers pass unless they leave something of themselves behind."
"I'll go," I said, stepping forward. Captain Riggs raised a brow. "Alone?" he asked. "My spirit man," I clarified, tapping a finger to my sternum. "No ship. No risk to the crew. I'll search faster than any sail can carry us."
Riggs grunted thoughtfully, then leaned over his cluttered map table, pulling aside a faded parchment edged with salt crust. It looked hand-drawn, full of strange little glyphs and cautionary notes. His finger landed on a spiraled reef archipelago marked only with the words: Silt Grave Ribbons.
"If you're looking for Breath root," he said, "you'll want to start here. These reefs are deeper than they look—sinkholes filled with decayed leviathan flesh and organ coral. Breath root clings to what's dead but still dreaming. It sprouts along the rib hollows of sea beasts who refused to rot properly."
"Charming," I muttered.
"It's pale green, almost silver underwater," Riggs continued, ignoring my tone. "Its roots shimmer like glass filaments. But it doesn't bloom like land flora. No petals. No perfume. Just little lung-pods that twitch like they're still breathing."
Felicity made a low amused noise behind me. "Sounds like something I'd snack on." I ignored her. Riggs looked me square in the eye. "Harvest it gently. It doesn't like pain. Too much trauma and it'll dissolve into gas or bite back."
I nodded once. "Understood."
I returned to my quarters and settled in, cross-legged, the scent of grilled crab still clinging to the wood panels. The black pearl pulsed faintly in its pouch beside me—Felicity's presence always a whisper away. I shut my eyes. Dropped my breath. And focused my intent into the key activation sigil for the spirit man projection. My Intent and my animus slid free of skin and bone. The world snapped sideways—and I was out. My spirit man flared red and blue across the midnight sea.
My vision was tinted, the edges fluid, shapes sharper in aura than outline. I passed over dark waves, reef shadows, and the glimmer of sunken bones. Flocks of sky-gliders wheeled far beneath me, and somewhere in the deep, something titanic turned in its sleep.
I soared faster, time seemingly slowing down. Eventually, I came upon a ring of broken reef that resembled a shattered jawbone. The sea here steamed faintly despite the moonlight chill. Down below, I saw it. A whale carcass, split like a temple ruin, its ribs overgrown with faintly glowing flora—pale and twitching. Lung-pod plants shimmered in clusters, opening and closing in slow rhythms like they were still breathing for the long-dead beast.
Breath root. I descended slowly, willing my spirit closer, hovering just above the nearest cluster. They felt me. Not as a threat—but as a presence. And still, they resisted. My intent had to be clear. I didn't want to steal them—I needed them.
Focusing, I pushed a thread of Intent toward the nearest root with precision. "Want it" I reminded myself. "Want it like it matters." And slowly, impossibly, the plant's lung-pods relaxed. I reached out—and one lifted from the reef without resistance. A perfect, silver-veined Breath root now floated in my grasp.
I floated in stillness above the ribbed reef grave. The first Breath root drifted in my spirit grasp, pulsing faintly like it had a heartbeat of its own. I reached for another—this one nestled between a curve of barnacle-encrusted bone and a split vertebra, twitching like a breath caught in a dying chest. Three more came easily, their tendrils unspooling into my animus threads like silk unraveling from a cocoon. I was careful, reverent. Intent mattered. The Breath root responded to clarity of need, not greed.
I had five. One more, I thought. Just one more to be safe—
Then the sea twitched. Not a current. Not a passing eel. A presence. Something immense shifted far below the whale's sunken corpse. The bones groaned. Not metaphorically—the ribcage flexed, and the Breath root shuddered. I stilled, suspended in my spirit man form, watching as silt curled up from the trenches below like grave-dust. Shapes moved in the murk. Slow. Purposeful. And then—eyes. At first, I thought they were glowing pearls, embedded deep in the reef floor. But they blinked. Wide, lidless, and ancient. A dozen. Then two dozen. Eyes in rows like lanterns strung along the ocean floor!
"UNDEAD!" I thought to myself. Whatever they had once been—sea lords, deep prophets, sunken kings—they were now undead. Guardians of the Silt Grave Ribbons. One began to rise. Not swim. Rise—like a statue lifted by thought alone. Its limbs were coral-meshed chains, its skull elongated like a priest's funeral helm. It opened its mouth—and out spilled sand, not sound. The Breath root in my grasp trembled violently. I didn't wait around to find out what came next. With a lurch of will, I snapped back toward the surface, dragging the bundle of Breath root with me. The graveyard below churned, and from its depths, the chorus of the dead moaned like a tide of mourning bells.
I burned a trail of crimson and cerulean through the ocean sky. Behind me, silence returned too quickly. Not peace. Patience. The kind that waits until you return. Back aboard the Crimson Typhoon, my physical body gasped awake. I sat up in the bunk, cold sweat steaming off my chest, the smell of burnt animus clinging to my skin. Felicity stood beside the bed, arms crossed, head tilted. "You found the Breath root," she said. I nodded, unwrapping my fingers to show the silver-threaded bundles pulsing faintly with spectral life.
She reached out with a clawed finger to touch one, then stopped short. "And something saw you." I looked up. "Yeah," I said. "I don't know what they were, but let's hope they can't spirit travel..."
The watch bell rang soft in the wind. Riggs had posted two deckhands near the sails, but the ship creaked with a different rhythm tonight. Heavy. Like the weight of something unseen had climbed aboard. Then—a thud. Sallow, the night-watch, hissed from the crow's nest. "Shadow off port bow! Moving like it's climbing!" I was already moving. By the time I hit the deck, Felicity was airborne—her body half covered thick black centipede juggernaut armor, with silver blooded tendrils coiling into war-arms that shimmered like razors. Something breached the rail. Flesh half-wrapped in reef barnacle and soul-light, jawbone stitched with kelp braids and a harpoon through its torso. It screamed, not with lungs but with salt memories.
"That's no ordinary haunt," Felicity growled. "It followed your qi trail. It's bound to the Breath root ribbons."
More of them emerged, crawling like nightmares from seafoam and bone, dragging salt-logged relics and reef weapons. I didn't hesitate.
With a surge of intent I tapped my vestigium qi! And threw out a chain-splitting purple lightning palm, crackling from one phantom to the next, burning sea-wraiths into steam and storm-light!
The deck burned purple.
The sea zombies were screaming covered in purple flame and blades clanged. Riggs barked orders from the helm, steering the ship away from the bay. "Hold them off!" Felicity exploded into a blur, her claws lengthened into bone blades. She tore through one of the larger zombies. And from the ruin of that one, something solid clattered to the deck—
A long femur, spiral-etched with reef glyphs.
I squinted "The Bone Relic." It pulsed with sea memory. Ancient and necessary. We beat them back. One by one. Their lights faded. Their rage receded. But I knew the ocean below hadn't forgotten.
Dawn broke. I sat at the bow, the Bone Relic and Breath root sealed in copper- jars, tucked within the spirit bracelet. Felicity leaned beside me. Riggs joined us, his coat still damp from seawater. He looked at the relic, then at me. "By the Black Sail... You actually found it."
"They weren't just growing out in the sun," I muttered. "They grow in reef graves. Real old ones."
He crouched low, inspecting the root. Its threads curled up gently toward him, responding to his chi. "Breath root this Pure'll burn through stagnation like a phoenix's cough. But only if brewed fresh—boiled in salt, dried in moonlight. You get anything else?"
I hesitated. "Something saw me. Something old." Riggs stilled. "Dead old, or dangerous old?" "Both. There were spirits guarding the Silt Grave. The captain leaned back slowly, nodding once. "The Ribbons are one of the forbidden reef tracts, lad. Pirates used to bury more than bodies there. Whole rituals. I never thought they were guarded still."
"They are," I said. "And they weren't happy to see me."
Later that night, I sat in my quarters, the Breath root bundles laid out on parchment. I hadn't realized I was shivering until Felicity appeared—half-formed from the red glow of my anima, like she'd bled into the room through the cracks in the walls. "You stink of wakefulness," she said. I didn't reply. "You weren't supposed to go that deep, Ash."
I turned to face her. "You knew?"
"You passed over a reef full of bound kings and drowned prophets. That kind of power doesn't sleep peacefully." I stood, fists clenched. "One of them saw me." She nodded. "Then it may come looking."