Dawn broke over Valewatch harbor in shades of grey and gold, the sun struggling to penetrate the morning mist that clung to the water like something alive. Like the ocean itself was exhaling.

  The Marlinth sat low in the water at pier seven, heavily laden with supplies for a crossing that would take two to three weeks if weather and Wells corruption cooperated. Three to four if they didn't. Longer if things went truly wrong, though Captain Shiva had been grimly silent about what "truly wrong" might look like in practice.

  Tyrian stood on deck, watching the last crates being loaded by sailors who moved with the efficient urgency of people who knew every minute in port was a minute their ship could be seized, searched, or sabotaged by enemies who wanted them dead. Preserved food wrapped in waxed canvas. Fresh water in sealed barrels, each one marked with runes Varden had inscribed to prevent corruption during the crossing. Coils of rope thick enough to hold a ship together when the ocean tried to tear it apart. Spare canvas for sails that would inevitably shred in unnatural storms. Medical supplies for injuries that were certain to happen. Weapons for threats both human and otherwise.

  Everything needed to keep a ship functional when the nearest safe port might be weeks away and the ocean itself couldn't be trusted to follow the physical laws that normally governed how water behaved.

  The pre-dawn air was cold. Sharp enough to make his lungs ache. Sharp enough that he could see his breath misting in front of his face, could see the breath of every crew member and passenger creating small clouds that dissipated into the larger fog.

  Behind him, Avaria's coastline rose dark against the lightening sky. Hills and cliffs and the distant suggestion of mountains further inland where Draakenwald waited—ancient, scarred, forever changed by Seal I's rupture. The last view of home he'd have for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe forever, if the crossing killed them the way it had killed the crews of Shiva's previous two ships.

  Not a comforting thought.

  But then, nothing about this journey was meant to be comforting.

  "Nervous?" Camerise appeared beside him, moving silently despite the deck's constant creaking and the general chaos of pre-departure preparations. She wore practical sailing clothes now instead of her usual Suryani robes—heavy canvas trousers in dark grey, a thick wool shirt layered under a weatherproof jacket, her golden hair bound in a tight braid that would survive wind and spray and the kind of weather that turned loose hair into a liability. All four of her hands were gloved against the cold. Ready for hard work and harsh weather.

  She looked like a sailor. Like she'd been born to the sea instead of desert kingdoms where water was precious and oceans were just stories in books.

  "Terrified," Tyrian admitted, because lying to Camerise had never worked and he saw no reason to start now. "But that seems like the appropriate response to sailing into Waters that have already claimed two of Shiva's ships. Three if you count the one she lost before she even knew Wells corruption was a problem."

  "Appropriate and useless," Camerise said, but her tone was gentle. Understanding. She wasn't dismissing his fear, just acknowledging it wouldn't help. "Fear won't keep us alive. Vigilance will. Adaptation will. Working together will. Trusting each other will."

  "You're very calm about potential drowning."

  "I've seen us survive in my visions," Camerise said quietly, and there was something in her voice that suggested she'd seen other things too. Darker things. Futures where they didn't all make it. But she was choosing to focus on the paths where survival was possible. "Not all of us. Not intact. Not unchanged. But we reach Embiad. We confront Seal III. We matter in what comes next. So I know—on some level that bypasses normal certainty, that exists in the space where Dreamfall meets reality—that enough of us survive the crossing to make a difference."

  "Visions can be wrong," Tyrian said, though he wanted desperately to believe her confidence was justified.

  "They can," Camerise admitted. "They show possibilities, not certainties. Paths that might be taken, not destinations that must be reached. The future is negotiable in ways the past isn't. But I trust my visions more than I trust fear. More than I trust probability. More than I trust the rational voice that says we're all going to die attempting something no one else has survived."

  She paused, looking out at the grey water. "And even if I'm wrong—even if the visions are showing me false hope—I'd rather die believing we had a chance than die convinced we were doomed from the start."

  Tyrian wanted to share her confidence. Wanted to believe the Dreamfall visions guaranteed their survival, or at least made it probable enough to bet their lives on. But he'd seen too many things go catastrophically wrong despite everyone's best efforts and noblest intentions. Seen Seal I rupture despite their desperate attempts to understand and stabilize it. Seen Seal II nearly fail despite Tiressia's military occupation and supposedly expert intervention. Seen people die—good people, skilled people, people who'd done everything right—because they were in the wrong place when forces beyond human control decided to demonstrate just how small and fragile and ultimately insignificant mortality really was in the face of cosmic indifference.

  The Wells didn't care about human hope. The ocean didn't care about prophecy. And whatever was waking beneath Embiad's mountains certainly didn't care about seven fugitives sailing toward it with noble intentions and insufficient preparation.

  They cared anyway. Sailed anyway. Because what else could they do?

  "Final checks!" Captain Shiva's voice cut across the deck, sharp and authoritative and allowing absolutely no room for hesitation or second-guessing. She stood at the ship's wheel, one hand resting on the worn wood like it was an extension of her own body, scanning everything with the kind of meticulous attention that came from knowing—from hard-won experience—that a single overlooked detail could kill everyone aboard. "Kaelis, rigging inspection. I want every knot verified. Varden, ward integrity check. Brayden, weapons inventory and ready positions. Everyone else, double-check your stations and report clear before we cast off. We don't leave this dock until I'm satisfied we're ready for what's ahead."

  The Fang scattered to their assigned tasks with the kind of professional efficiency they'd developed over months of crisis after crisis.

  Tyrian had been given responsibility for monitoring Wells disturbances—using his Echo-sense to detect dangerous fluctuations in the water ahead, giving Shiva advance warning so she could adjust course before they sailed directly into zones where reality was actively breaking down. It was a role that made him essential to the ship's survival while also ensuring he'd be the first person to know when things were going catastrophically wrong. The first to perceive the danger. The first to feel reality starting to crack.

  He wasn't sure if that was a privilege or a curse.

  Probably both.

  The Marlinth's crew moved with practiced efficiency around them—sailors who'd worked together for years, who knew every rope and sail and weak plank on this particular ship, who trusted Shiva's judgment absolutely even when her orders seemed insane. They'd been skeptical about taking the White Fang aboard. Still were, based on the sidelong glances and muttered conversations that stopped abruptly whenever any of the Fang came within earshot. But Shiva had given orders, and they followed orders, even when those orders included harboring wanted fugitives being actively hunted by at least two major political powers.

  Tyrian watched them work and tried to memorize faces, tried to learn names, tried to see them as people instead of just "the crew." Because some of them were going to die. Shiva had said as much, though not in those exact words. Maritime crossings through Wells-corrupted waters had casualty rates that would make any sane person refuse to board. The fact that these sailors were here anyway—despite knowing the risks, despite having lost friends and colleagues on previous voyages—said something profound about either their loyalty to Shiva or their desperation for the kind of pay that came with suicidal missions.

  There was Greaves—the first mate, a weathered man in his fifties with hands like leather and eyes that had seen too much ocean. He barked orders with the authority of someone who'd survived situations that would have killed lesser sailors.

  There was Tamsin—young woman, maybe twenty-five, who handled the rigging with the kind of fearless confidence that came from either experience or stupidity. Probably both. She kept glancing at Kaelis with an expression that suggested either admiration or rivalry or possibly both.

  There was old Harrick—the ship's cook, ancient enough that his hands shook when he wasn't actively working, but still capable of producing edible food in the cramped galley even when the ship was being thrown around by unnatural weather.

  There were others. A dozen more. Each one a person with history and motivations and families somewhere who'd be devastated if they didn't come home.

  Each one betting their life that Shiva knew what she was doing. That the White Fang's reputation was deserved. That this crossing would succeed where so many others had failed.

  "Cast off!" Shiva's voice rang across the deck like a bell.

  Ropes were untied with practiced efficiency. Gangplanks pulled aboard and secured. The Marlinth drifted away from pier seven, caught by the current that flowed through Valewatch harbor, the tide that would carry them past the breakwater and into open water where there were no harbors, no rescue, no safety except what they could create through skill and luck and determination.

  No ceremony. No fanfare. No crowds waving goodbye from the docks. Just a ship leaving port like any other vessel departing on any other morning, though this particular ship carried seven people who were about to attempt something that had killed dozens of sailors in the past six months alone.

  Tyrian watched Valewatch recede. Watched the buildings shrink from structures to shapes to suggestions. Watched the lights dim as distance transformed them from lanterns to pinpricks to memories to nothing. Watched the coastline itself fade into the morning mist until Avaria was just a dark line against grey sky, then just suggestion, then gone entirely.

  Behind them: Avaria. Everything he'd known for twenty years. The comfortable certainty of home, even when home had betrayed him. Even when home's institutions had chosen politics over truth, comfort over courage, denial over action.

  Ahead: the unknown. The Estwarin Sea. Embiad beyond it, across miles of corrupted water. Seal III waking beneath foreign mountains. The serpent crying out for help in a voice only he could properly hear. Destiny or disaster or both waiting at the end of a journey that might kill them all.

  And everywhere—woven through water and air and the space between heartbeats—the Wells network humming its slow song of impending catastrophe. Audible to his Echo-sense even here, even this far from any known Seal, even across distance that should have rendered such perceptions impossible.

  The network was destabilizing faster than anyone realized. The cascade was accelerating. And they were sailing directly toward one of the rupture points.

  "No going back now," Calven said, joining him at the rail. The captain looked tired. More than tired—worn down to something harder and sharper than the man who'd formed the White Fang years ago. The proto-Varkuun surges were taking their toll, burning through his stamina faster than rest could replenish it, changing him in ways that terrified him even as they gave him the strength needed to protect people he cared about. But his eyes were still clear, his stance still steady. Still the White Fang's anchor. Still the shield they built their defense around. Still Calven, despite everything trying to transform him into something else.

  "Was there ever?" Tyrian asked. "Really? Once we refused to ignore Seal I's rupture, once we chose to act instead of looking away, was going back ever actually an option?"

  "Probably not," Calven admitted, and something that might have been a smile flickered across his face. Bitter. Self-aware. "We committed the moment we refused to ignore Seal I. Everything since has just been following that choice to its logical conclusion. One decision creating the necessity for the next. One crisis leading inevitably to another. Until here we are—wanted by empires, hunted across continents, sailing toward Waters that have killed everyone who tried crossing them, betting our lives that we can succeed where others failed."

  "Which is?"

  "Sailing toward certain danger in hopes of preventing greater catastrophe." Calven's smile widened slightly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "So basically what we've been doing all along. Just with more water. And sea monsters. And weather that violates the laws of physics. And the very real possibility we'll all drown or be transformed into something that can't survive in normal reality."

  Despite everything—despite the fear and exhaustion and very reasonable terror—Tyrian almost laughed. Because Calven was right. This was just what they did now. Run toward danger. Face impossible odds. Refuse to quit even when quitting was the objectively rational choice.

  The Marlinth cleared the harbor breakwater, passing from protected water into the open sea. Caught the wind properly for the first time. Sails filled with a sound like thunder, canvas snapping taut, and suddenly they were moving—not just drifting with current, but truly sailing, cutting through waves with purpose and speed and the kind of momentum that suggested the ship itself was eager to be away from land.

  Avaria disappeared behind them completely. Swallowed by mist and distance and the curvature of the horizon.

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  Ahead, the ocean stretched endlessly under a sky that was already showing signs of strangeness—clouds moving in patterns that didn't quite match the wind direction, colors shifting in ways that suggested more than just sunrise and atmospheric refraction. Blues that were too blue. Greys that had purple undertones. Light behaving in ways light wasn't supposed to behave this close to the sun.

  The crossing had begun.

  And somewhere ahead—days away, across miles of increasingly corrupted water—Seal III was waking.

  The first day was almost normal.

  Almost.

  The Marlinth sailed through water that looked like water—blue-grey with whitecaps where wind met waves, cold enough that spray stung when it hit exposed skin, deep enough that looking over the rail showed nothing but darkness beneath the surface. The kind of ocean that appeared in paintings and poems. The kind sailors had been crossing for thousands of years before Wells corruption became a concern.

  Except for the details.

  The way light refracted through the spray at slightly wrong angles, creating rainbow patterns that had colors human eyes weren't quite equipped to process. The way certain waves moved with too much symmetry, like they were following mathematical patterns instead of chaotic natural forces. The way the horizon seemed too sharp in places, too defined, like reality itself was being drawn with a ruler instead of emerging organically from the meeting of water and sky.

  Small things. Easy to miss if you weren't looking. Easy to dismiss as imagination or fatigue or the natural strangeness of being truly at sea for the first time.

  But Tyrian was looking. And his Echo-sense registered each anomaly as evidence that they were already sailing through Waters touched by Wells corruption, even this close to Avaria, even in regions that should have been safe.

  The corruption was everywhere now. Not concentrated. Not immediately dangerous. Just... present. Woven through the ocean the way salt was woven through seawater. Unavoidable. Pervasive. Growing stronger with every mile they traveled away from land.

  The Marlinth's crew worked their watches with the kind of practiced efficiency that came from years of working together. Four-hour shifts. Constant rotation. Always someone at the wheel, someone watching the horizon, someone checking rigging and sails and the hundred other details that kept a ship functional. They moved around the Fang like the Fang was part of the ship's structure—present but not quite real, important but not quite trusted.

  Tyrian spent most of the morning at the bow, one hand on the rail for balance, reaching for his Echo-sense despite knowing it would exhaust him. Trying to perceive Wells disturbances before they became immediate threats. Trying to give Shiva advance warning so she could adjust course and keep them alive.

  It was like trying to hear a specific conversation in a room full of people talking. Except the room was miles wide and the conversation was being conducted in a language he only half understood and sometimes the speakers weren't even using words, just broadcasting raw emotional resonance that his human brain had to translate into something comprehensible.

  The Wells network hummed beneath the ocean's surface—not threatening, not attacking, just present. A constant background radiation of magical energy that most people couldn't perceive at all. That even sensitives like Tyrian could only detect with conscious effort and significant mental strain.

  But occasionally—every hour or two—there were spikes in that background hum. Fluctuations where the harmonic balance shifted in ways that made his nerves scream warnings. Moments where reality's grip on itself loosened just enough to be dangerous.

  "Left," he'd call back to Shiva at the wheel. "Ten degrees. Something's building there. Not immediate, but within the hour."

  And Shiva would adjust course without question, without asking for details or explanation, trusting his perception absolutely because the alternative was sailing blind into zones that might dissolve the ship's hull or transform the crew into something that couldn't survive in normal reality or simply stop obeying the physical laws that made concepts like "ship" and "floating" meaningful.

  By midday, they were far enough from shore that land was just a dark line on the horizon behind them—Avaria reduced to suggestion, to memory, to the vague awareness that solid ground existed somewhere in that direction even though it was no longer visible. By evening, even that was gone. Nothing but ocean in every direction. Three hundred sixty degrees of water meeting sky in a boundary that seemed too perfect, too geometric, like reality itself was simplifying into abstract shapes now that there were no landmarks to anchor perception.

  "First time truly at sea?" Varden asked during the evening watch change, joining Tyrian at the rail. The runebinder had spent the entire day below deck inscribing protective wards along the ship's hull—painstaking work that required absolute precision and left him looking drained, grey-faced, older than his sixty-some years. Subtle runic patterns that would help resist Wells corruption, maintain structural integrity even when exposed to energies that wanted to rewrite what "wood" and "hull" and "ship" meant at fundamental levels.

  "Second," Tyrian said. "But the first time doesn't count. That was a calm day with my father when I was twelve. Short trip down the coast. Perfect weather. Nothing supernatural. This is..." He gestured at the endless grey water, the too-sharp horizon, the sky that was painting itself in sunset colors that were almost but not quite right. "Very different."

  "The wards are holding?" It wasn't really a question. More a need for reassurance that the work he'd been doing all day actually mattered.

  "For now," Varden said, and his voice carried the kind of exhaustion that came from magical exertion rather than physical labor. "But I had to adjust the resonance patterns three times already. The Wells harmonics here are subtly different from land-based patterns. Denser somehow. More fluid. Like reality itself has different properties when there's this much water mediating between surface and depths, this much liquid buffering between air and earth."

  "Is that a problem?" Tyrian asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

  "Everything is a problem when you're sailing through metaphysically unstable waters," Varden said with his characteristic dry pragmatism. "But it's a manageable problem. For now. The wards are adapting. Learning the local harmonic signatures. Give them another day and they should stabilize into patterns that work specifically for these conditions. Ask me again in three days when we're deeper into the active corruption zones and I'll have a better sense of whether we're actually prepared for what's ahead or just fooling ourselves with preparation theater."

  "Comforting."

  "I'm not here to comfort you," Varden said flatly. "I'm here to keep the ship from dissolving into component atoms when we hit particularly bad distortion fields. If I wanted to be comforting, I'd have stayed home and taken up pastoral counseling instead of runic engineering."

  Fair point.

  Bram appeared from below deck looking vaguely green and deeply unhappy with life's recent trajectory. "I hate the ocean," he announced to no one in particular. "I hate boats. I hate that water moves constantly and unpredictably. I hate that there's no stable ground anywhere. I hate that we're surrounded by endless liquid death in every direction. Why does everything have to move all the time? What did solid, unmoving earth ever do to deserve this disrespect?"

  "Seasickness?" Tyrian asked sympathetically.

  "Profound existential disagreement with maritime travel," Bram corrected with the wounded dignity of someone whose body was actively betraying him. "My entire biological system was clearly designed for stable ground and predictable horizons. This..." He gestured vaguely but emphatically at the deck, which was indeed rocking more noticeably now that they were in open water, now that there was nothing to block the full force of ocean swells. "This is unnatural. This is wrong. This is an affront to everything human evolution spent millennia optimizing for."

  "You'll adapt," Varden said with the confidence of someone who'd never experienced motion sickness in his life and therefore couldn't really comprehend why anyone else would struggle with it.

  "Or I'll spend the entire crossing vomiting and praying for death," Bram countered. "Either way, I'm going to be extremely unpleasant company for the next two to three weeks. I apologize in advance for my inevitable deterioration into a miserable, complaining shell of my former self."

  Despite the circumstances—despite the very real dangers ahead, despite being hunted by empires and sailing toward probable doom—Tyrian smiled. Because some things remained constant even when the world was ending and they were fleeing across corrupted oceans toward foreign continents. Bram would complain eloquently about his suffering. Varden would be pragmatic to the point of seeming cruel. And somehow both of them would be exactly where they needed to be when actual crisis struck, performing essential functions despite their respective limitations.

  The White Fang. Dysfunctional. Traumatized. Wanted by multiple nations for crimes against international stability. Running on desperation and stubbornness and the kind of loyalty that couldn't be bought or commanded, only earned through shared adversity.

  And somehow still functional. Somehow still effective. Somehow still alive when they should have died a dozen times already.

  "Dinner's being served below," Kaelis announced, materializing beside them with the kind of sudden appearance that suggested she'd dropped from the rigging above. Which she probably had, given that asking Kaelis to use stairs when she could instead leap from dangerous heights was like asking fish not to swim. "Ship's cook made something involving dried fish and hardtack. It's about as appetizing as it sounds and smells vaguely like regret, but we should eat while we can. Shiva says the first major Wells distortion zone is about two days ahead if we maintain current pace. We'll want our strength for whatever that entails."

  They descended below deck into the cramped mess where the crew was gathering. Long wooden tables worn smooth by years of use. Benches that had been carved from single pieces of timber decades ago. Oil lamps swinging with the ship's motion, casting moving shadows that made everything feel slightly unreal, slightly dreamlike, like they were all characters in a story being told by firelight.

  The meal was indeed profoundly unappetizing—dried fish that had been rehydrated in questionable broth until it achieved a texture somewhere between leather and disappointment. Hardtack that required serious chewing and had the flavor profile of aggressive blandness mixed with the faint suggestion that it had been stored too close to something that shouldn't be stored near food. Some kind of preserved vegetable that might have been edible months ago but had since evolved into something that tested the definition of "vegetable" and "edible" in uncomfortable ways.

  But it was calories. And calories mattered when you were working hard in cold weather with no guarantee when the next meal would come or whether it would be any better than this one.

  Shiva ate with her crew, which Tyrian noticed and filed away as important. Not standing apart. Not maintaining captain's distance. Not eating better food in private quarters while her people suffered through ship's rations. Just one of them, sharing the same mediocre meal, facing the same dangers, subject to the same hardships.

  It was the kind of leadership that built loyalty. The kind that made people follow you into situations no sane person would enter voluntarily. The kind that meant when crisis hit—and crisis would absolutely hit—her crew would fight to keep her alive not because they were paid to, but because they genuinely wanted to.

  After dinner, watches were set with the kind of efficiency that came from established routine. The Fang scattered to their assigned positions—Kaelis scrambling back into the rigging where she could watch wind patterns and adjust sails instantaneously. Varden descending below to continue ward work. Calven and Brayden patrolling the deck in coordinated patterns that ensured every section of the ship was being monitored constantly. Camerise climbing to the crow's nest where she could observe Dreamfall currents and watch for psychological threats that might affect the crew. Bram organizing medical supplies in the cramped infirmary, making sure everything was secured and easily accessible for the inevitable moment when someone got hurt.

  Tyrian remained at the bow, maintaining his Echo-sense vigil, watching the water ahead for signs of danger that normal eyes couldn't perceive.

  The sun set in colors that were subtly wrong. Too much purple bleeding into the orange. Too much green contaminating the red. Shades that shouldn't exist together but somehow did when Wells corruption influenced how light behaved passing through atmosphere.

  Beautiful. Disturbing. Wrong.

  Stars emerged as darkness fell completely—bright and clear and stunning in ways they never were near cities where light pollution drowned them out. But even the stars seemed slightly off. Slightly too bright. Slightly wrong in their positions, like the constellations had shifted when no one was looking.

  And underneath it all, constant and inexorable as tide, the Wells network hummed its slow song of impending catastrophe.

  The strangeness started small.

  Fish jumping at midnight, their scales catching moonlight in colors fish scales shouldn't be. Crystalline. Iridescent. Like they'd been dipped in liquid glass that had somehow become part of their biology rather than just coating their surface.

  One of the crew netted a sample. Brought it to Shiva and Varden for examination.

  The fish was dead—they'd killed it bringing it aboard—but its scales still glowed faintly. And when Varden carefully scraped one off and examined it under a magnifying lens, he went very still.

  "This isn't mutation," he said quietly. "This is transformation. The crystalline structure isn't growing on the scales. It's replacing them. At the molecular level. The Wells corruption is literally rewriting the fish's physical composition while it's still alive."

  "Will it spread to us?" one of the crew asked nervously.

  "Not directly," Varden said. "Wells corruption doesn't work like disease. It's not contagious in the conventional sense. But exposure to high concentrations over extended periods can cause changes. We'll need to be careful about what we touch, what we eat, what we breathe if we hit zones where the corruption is thick enough to become airborne."

  "How careful?" Shiva asked.

  "Very," Varden said. "We're sailing through waters where the fundamental laws governing physical reality are becoming negotiable. Everything we do from this point forward carries risk."

  Not exactly reassuring, but honest.

  They threw the fish overboard and doubled the watch.

  An hour later, Tyrian felt the first real Wells pulse—not a background hum, but an active disturbance. Like a ripple propagating through the water, carrying energy that made his Echo-sense scream warnings.

  "Shiva!" he called back. "Northwest. Strong disturbance. Growing."

  Shiva adjusted course immediately, angling away from whatever was building in that direction.

  But adjusting course meant sailing closer to a different distortion—not as strong, but present, visible to Tyrian's Echo-sense as a knot of twisted harmonics that pulsed with slow, organic rhythm.

  They were entering the Wells-corrupted zones properly now. The regions where Shiva had lost her previous ships. Where reality's rules became suggestions rather than laws.

  Where anything could happen.

  "Everyone on deck," Shiva ordered. "Full watch. I want eyes on every horizon. I want Varden monitoring ward integrity. I want Tyrian calling distortions the moment he senses them. We're about to find out if we're as good as we think we are."

  The Fang assembled. The crew took positions. The Marlinth sailed deeper into Waters that had claimed too many ships already.

  And then—visible in the moonlight, impossible to miss—the ocean began to glow.

  Not phosphorescence. Not bioluminescence. Wells energy. Pure and uncontained. Bleeding through the boundary between depths and surface, turning the water into something that looked almost like liquid light.

  Beautiful.

  Terrifying.

  Wrong.

  "Maintain course," Shiva said, voice steady despite what they were sailing through. "We knew this was coming. We prepared for this. Stay calm. Stay focused. And for the love of every god that might still be listening—don't touch the glowing water."

  The Marlinth sailed through light that shouldn't exist, under stars that were becoming harder to see as Wells distortion affected even the atmosphere, toward a horizon that had stopped looking quite real.

  And somewhere ahead—days away, across miles of corrupted ocean—Embiad waited.

  With Seal III waking.

  With the serpent calling.

  With destiny or disaster or both.

  The crossing had truly begun.

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  Day one at sea: survived.

  But we're already seeing signs of Wells corruption. Fish transforming at the molecular level. Water glowing with escaped energy. The fundamental rules of reality becoming negotiable.

  Shiva knows these waters better than anyone alive. That's why she's lost two ships here.

  The crew is nervous. The Fang is vigilant. And Tyrian is spending every waking moment using Echo-sense to detect dangers before they become fatal.

  Two to three weeks of this. Assuming weather cooperates. Assuming Wells corruption doesn't get worse. Assuming nothing from the deep decides they look like easy prey.

  They're committed now. No ports between here and Embiad. No safe harbors. No rescue if things go wrong.

  Just the Marlinth, her crew, and the White Fang sailing toward a continent where mountains breathe and Seals crack and something ancient is waking beneath stone that remembers when the world was young.

  Next: "Stormglass" - first major supernatural storm.

  Monday/Wednesday/Friday!