That afternoon, the ocean was calm in a way that felt almost unnatural. The waves moved in slow, patient rhythms beneath a gray sky, their surfaces reflecting dull streaks of light that struggled to break through the heavy clouds above.
The horizon stretched endlessly in every direction, a quiet boundary between sea and sky where the world seemed to dissolve into muted silver and steel. The wind was steady but not strong, carrying the cold scent of salt and distance.
Beneath it lingered something else—faint traces of smoke that had clung to the ship for days now, a reminder of Thaddeus's repeated attempts to master a spell that refused to tolerate carelessness.
It had been six days since he awakened in this world.
Six days since he opened his eyes in a cabin that was not his own, surrounded by silence so absolute it felt almost unreal.
Four days had passed since he began practicing the Fire Charm. The first attempts had been clumsy. Small bursts of flame that sputtered and died before they could properly form. Others had been more dangerous—fires that spread too quickly across old timber before he forced them out with frantic control. The merchant ship still bore faint scars from those lessons, darkened patches on the wood where heat had bitten too deeply.
Magic was not forgiving.
It answered intention, but it also magnified mistakes.
He had learned quickly that magic did not reward impatience.
Four days was an impossible time to master the spell but it was enough time to understand its shape.
Enough to use it when necessary.
Now the vessel creaked softly beneath his boots as he walked across the deck, the aged planks shifting with the slow movement of the tide. The sound had become familiar over the past week. At first it had unsettled him—the groaning wood, the quiet snap of ropes in the wind, the restless motion of a ship that no longer carried a living crew. But the noise no longer bothered him. If anything, it was reassuring.
It meant the ship was still strong enough to survive the sea.
Two small wooden lifeboats rested near the edge of the deck where he had hauled them earlier that morning. They had once been secured to the sides of the merchant vessel as emergency craft, narrow and light enough to be lowered quickly in the event of disaster. In their natural state they were little more than elongated tubs of wood, designed to carry a handful of desperate sailors away from a sinking hull.
But that had been before Thaddeus decided to change them.
He stopped beside the first boat and studied it carefully. The wood was old but well maintained, the grain of the planks running in tight, disciplined lines along the hull. Whoever had built these boats had known what they were doing. The structure was balanced, the ribs strong enough to hold weight without bending under pressure.
That mattered.
Magic could enlarge an object, but it could not magically correct structural weakness. If the underlying form was flawed, the spell would simply magnify the flaw until the entire thing tore itself apart.
His wand rose slowly.
For a moment he said nothing. His eyes traced the length of the boat again, memorizing its proportions. The curvature of the hull. The spacing of the ribs. The points where tension gathered when the wood bore weight.
He had already failed several times during earlier experiments using wooden boxes in the ship.
Split wood.
Warped frames.
A practice crate that had expanded so violently it shattered itself apart.
Experience had taught him that magic demanded patience.
Finally he exhaled quietly.
"Engorgio."
The spell left the tip of his wand as a subtle pulse of pressure that settled over the wooden boat like an invisible weight.
For several seconds nothing happened.
Then the boat trembled.
A deep groan rolled through the wooden structure as the spell began to take hold. The planks shifted outward, stretching against the natural limits of their material. The hull widened slowly, the narrow craft growing broader and longer as if unseen hands were pulling its structure apart while carefully preserving every curve.
The sound of wood under strain echoed softly across the quiet ocean.
Thaddeus did not move.
His focus remained locked on the boat as he adjusted the flow of magic feeding the spell. Too much force would snap the joints apart. Too little and the enchantment would collapse before the transformation stabilized.
The hull expanded several more feet.
The sides rose higher above the waterline.
The craft deepened, its interior widening until the small wooden boat resembled something far closer to a transport vessel.
The wood groaned again—but held.
When the expansion finally slowed and stopped, he casted a levitation charm and put the boat beside the merchant ship at nearly three times its original size. Its structure looked strange now, slightly distorted by the unnatural scaling, but the overall balance remained intact.
Thaddeus lowered his wand.
A quiet breath escaped him as he allowed the magic to settle into stability.
Through trial and error he had discovered the limits of what he could maintain. The enlargement charm would hold for roughly four hours before the spell weakened and the object returned to its natural size.
Not permanent but sufficient.
He turned toward the second wooden boat and prepared to repeat the process.
For a moment, his thoughts drifted to the system. On his third day in this world, it had given him a sign-in reward—another spell book. The Standard Book of Spell, Grade Four. At first it seemed random, but its usefulness quickly became clear. The book contained the Enlargement Charm and its counter spell—practical magic he didn't hesitate to practice alongside the Fire Charm during the past few days.
It felt less like a trial and more like quiet assistance, providing tools instead of forcing him into life-threatening tasks just to grow stronger. Like the other system he read in his past life.
Thaddeus raised his wand.
"Engorgio."
This time the magic responded more smoothly. Experience had refined the balance of his control. The second vessel expanded under the spell's influence, wood stretching and joints adjusting as the boat grew to match the size of the first.
Soon two enlarged boats floated beside the merchant vessel, their broader hulls rocking gently with the quiet movement of the sea.
Unnatural creations.
Temporary distortions of reality.
But they would serve their purpose.
Thaddeus stepped to the edge of the deck and looked out over the water.
The ocean remained vast and empty beneath the heavy sky. No sails appeared on the horizon. No birds circled overhead. Even the wind seemed reluctant to disturb the stillness surrounding the ship.
Behind him, the vessel remained silent.
He did not look back toward the upper deck where the bodies now piled up.
Due to the fact that the've been in the upper deck for a few days bodies are starting to rott. Looking at them might help him vomit the food he intake this morning.
His wand rose again. His mind become focus. When he entered that state. He chanted another spell.
"Protego," Two streak of white flash towards the two enlarge wooden boat. A translucent shield envelope the two boats. It shimmered under the sunlight.
Then he shook his another hand and magic answered immediately.
The first group of bodies rose slowly from the deck above, lifting into the air as though gravity itself had loosened its hold. There was no drama in the motion. No sound except the quiet shifting of clothing and the whisper of wind passing around unmoving forms.
Thaddeus guided them through the air and lowered them carefully into the first enlarged time with focus.
As days goes by his magic capacity expanded, although it wasnt stated in his status window. He can now at least levitate 15 bodies at once.
That was the limit he could maintain without risking the spell slipping from control.
The process continued in steady cycles. Groups of bodies rose and drifted across the deck before settling inside the widened hulls below. The work demanded concentration, but it did not feel rushed.
If anything, it felt strangely deliberate.
Methodical.
Each body was placed carefully to maintain balance within the boats. Not out of sentimentality, but practicality. Uneven weight could tip the vessels if the sea grew restless.
Still, as the work continued, a quiet awareness settled over him.
Each person had once been alive.
Each had boarded this ship with a destination in mind.
Now their journey had ended somewhere far beyond the reach of maps.
When the final body was lowered into place, the deck behind him felt different.
Lighter.
Not physically but in presence.
For the first time since his arrival, the ship no longer felt crowded with silent witnesses.
Only wind moved across the empty planks.
Thaddeus remained still.
Then he raised his wand again.
Four days of practice had not given him mastery over the Fire Charm, but it had stripped away its hesitation. What remained was something simpler—cleaner in execution. Not refined, not gentle, but controlled enough to serve its purpose when there was no room for failure.
"Incendio."
Fire answered immediately.
Two streams erupted from the wand and struck both boats at once. The moment flame touched wood, it did not hesitate. It surged forward with instinctive hunger, climbing across the hulls in sweeping waves of orange and gold.
But the wooden boats did not break.
The protection charm held.
A faint shimmer lingered beneath the blaze, barely visible through the heat haze—reinforcing the wood, preserving structure even as everything inside was consumed. The fire was allowed to do its work, but only within the boundaries he had set.
Thaddeus watched it unfold without moving.
Heat pressed against the air around him, but he did not step back.
The flames reflected in his eyes, steady and unblinking.
A thin line of blood slipped from his nose.
He did not notice it at first or perhaps he simply chose not to.
The strain had been building since the moment he began stacking spells—enlargement, levitation, warding, then sustained ignition control layered on top of imperfect recovery. His body was not built to hold this much output for this long.
But the dead could not wait for comfort.
So neither could he.
Inside the burning boats, everything was reduced in silence. Not with chaos, but with inevitability. Fire moved through what remained of one hundred and nine lives without distinction, dissolving form into ash, memory into smoke.
Thaddeus adjusted the flames when they faltered, guided them when they spread unevenly, reinforced them when they weakened. His control was not clean. It was practical—shaped by necessity rather than skill.
Time stretched.
The sea remained unchanged, vast and indifferent beneath the heavy sky. The wind carried heat upward in slow, wavering currents, then scattered it across the horizon as if the world itself refused to hold onto it.
And yet, for Thaddeus, nothing felt distant.
He did not look away.
Because this was not destruction.
Not anymore.
It was completion.
The fire began to soften.
Not because it was stopped—but because there was nothing left to consume. The boats no longer burned so much as collapsed inward, their forms reduced to glowing outlines of what they had been, then fading into brittle blackened remains.
Ash lifted from the wreckage in thin, drifting streams.
Thaddeus lowered his wand.
The fire died.
For a moment, nothing followed.
No sound. No movement. Only the ocean wind passing through the emptiness left behind.
The protection charm finally loosened its hold, fading from the charred wood as if it had only been borrowing time from reality itself. What remained of the boats stood hollowed but intact—less vessels now, and more outlines of memory preserved in carbon and ash.
Thaddeus exhaled slowly.
The pressure in his chest did not vanish, but it shifted—no longer sharp with effort, but quiet with release.
He did not speak.
There was no need to.
One hundred and nine lives had been carried from the ship to the sea, not with ceremony, but with fire and silence. No burial ground. No marked earth. Only ocean, vast and unending, accepting what it was given without question—lives already lost long before the flames, taken by poison and quiet schemes that revealed just how dangerous this world truly was.
He stood there a little longer than necessary.
Not because he was unsure, but because leaving too quickly would feel like turning away before it was finished.
A final moment of stillness passed between him and the fading horizon, now dimming into embers of light where the fire had once been.
Only then did he move.
Slowly, Thaddeus lifted a hand and wiped beneath his nose, clearing the thin streak of blood that had dried warm against his skin. The strain lingered in his body, quiet but persistent, but he forced it back under control.
Then, finally, he turned his gaze forward.
The ship was quiet again.
Empty in the way a vessel was meant to be.
And for the first time since he woke in this world, Thaddeus did not feel like he was standing inside something that belonged to the dead.
Only something that was finally ready to move.
TBC
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