The sea was not merely starving; it was impatient. It possessed a throat of salt and a belly that had never known fullness, and tonight, it viewed the splintering wood of the ship as nothing more than a garnish.
The wind didn't just blow; it clawed. It stripped the sails with the methodical cruelty of a predator skinning its prey. Beneath the spray, the hull groaned—a deep, wooden weeping that vibrated through the marrow of the sailors' bones. It was the sound of a spine reaching its limit.
"Reef the mainsail!" the captain's voice was a frantic spark, instantly extinguished by the crushing weight of the dark.
Men scrambled, their humanity reduced to wet, sliding instinct. Somewhere, a prayer was being screamed into the gale, but the gods are notoriously deaf in salt water. To the ocean, a prayer is just more air to swallow.
Then, the wave rose.
It did not crash; it ascended. It was a monolith of liquid iron, a moving mountain that didn't just block the horizon—it erased the very idea of a sky. For one heartbeat, the world fell into a terrifying, pressurized silence, the kind of hush that precedes an execution.
At the center of the deck, the woman stood as a pillar of stillness. She did not look at the wave. She looked at the small, frantic pulse in the hollow of her child's neck. To her, the storm was merely noise; the baby's breath was the only truth left in a collapsing universe.
She pressed her forehead to his. She didn't whisper a name, but a vibration—a low, melodic hum that tasted of old memories and dying embers.
Magic.
It did not simply appear. She reached into the marrow of her own life and dragged the heat out of it. The air curdled as a sphere of moonlight began to coalesce around the infant. It was shimmering and fragile, possessing the iridescent tension of a soap bubble, yet anchored by the heavy, immutable weight of a mother's final Will.
As the light brightened, her skin turned the color of ash. She was not just casting a spell; she was unmaking herself to create a sanctuary.
The sea struck. It wasn't a collision; it was an erasure. The mast snapped with the sound of a dry bone, and the ship was sucked into the throat of the deep as if it had never been written into history.
Cold swallowed her whole.
The ocean tried to take her tongue, her sight, her heat. But she surfaced—gasping, choking on the brine—holding the glowing sphere aloft like a guttering candle in a cathedral of shadows. Around her, the debris of her life drifted like corpses.
She swam.
Every stroke was a robbery, the water stealing the fire from her muscles. Salt filled her lungs until her breath felt like broken glass. She was guided by nothing but the primal magnetism of the shore and a single white shape circling in the gloom. A seagull. A scrap of hope.
Her strength failed three yards from the tide line. The glow around the child flickered violently, dimming in sympathy with her fading pulse.
Not yet.
She poured the literal remainder of her soul into the sphere. The light thickened, hardening into something crystalline and absolute. The sphere pulsed once, a heartbeat of pure gold, then stabilized.
Her knees hit the sand. She did not walk; she dragged herself out of the surf like a creature emerging from the primordial soup. With hands that no longer felt like her own, she placed the glowing orb onto the dry beach.
For a moment, she simply knelt there—a broken vessel. She brushed the surface of the light, her fingers leaving smudges of grey ash where they touched the glow.
"Live," she whispered. It wasn't a request. It was a command to the universe.
The sea answered.
A final wave, silent and possessive, surged forward. It did not crash; it wrapped around her waist like a lover's arm and pulled. She did not resist. She had nothing left to hold onto the world with. The storm carried her back into the dark, a debt finally paid in full.
The child did not cry. He lay within his sphere of stolen moonlight, breathing the recycled warmth of a mother who was no longer there.
Footsteps approached.
The rhythmic thud-clack of a cane against wet stone broke the silence of the fog. An old man emerged, his cloak heavy with the damp, his face a map of disappointments. His sharp eyes locked onto the unnatural glow.
"…Tch."
He exhaled a cloud of silver breath. "Of all the shores in this cursed world," he muttered to the spray, "you had to wash up on mine. I'm retired from miracles."
He knelt, his joints popping like dry twigs. He studied the sphere. The magic was crude, desperate, and held together by nothing but sheer, raw love—the most volatile fuel in existence.
With a precise, weary motion, he tapped the surface with the silver head of his staff.
The light shattered. It didn't break; it dissolved, the warmth rushing out to meet the cold morning air. The baby stirred, opening eyes that were clear, unfocused, and terrifyingly silent.
The old man blinked. "No crying," he murmured. "That's a bad omen or a very good start."
He looked down the beach. He saw the wreckage, the insignias of Valos craftsmanship on the splintered wood, and the distant, dark shape of a woman being reclaimed by the tide. He knew that dress. He knew the cost of that light.
He lifted the child. Despite the freezing mist, the boy felt like a coal from a hearth.
"A nameless one," the old man said, his voice softening despite himself. "A gift from a ghost."
The child stared back, unblinking, as if searching the old man's soul for a reason to stay.
"Raymond," the old man decided. "It's a heavy name. You'll need the weight to keep from floating away."
He turned his back on the ocean.
Behind him, far beyond the crashing surf and the veil of the storm, something ancient shifted in the trenches of the sea. A Great Eye, perhaps, or a hunger that had been denied its dessert.
Something in the depths had noticed. And the sea, though patient, never truly forgets a debt.