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We cleared the tree line, scaling down a steep, rocky hill that led to black sands.

Cerilla’s head lolled against Edgar’s chest. She must have lost consciousness at some stage during our escape. Yet he still clung to her as if saving her was everything.

My breath hitched as I looked up.

Massive vessels stood like sleeping giants in the bay, towering over the water with impossibly tall masts that speared the oppressive sky. Their hulls were carved from weathered grey timber, every curve impossibly elegant for a ship made from dead trees.

I'd seen sketches in books, charcoal drawings made by Mortals dreaming of a sea that no longer belonged to them.

They had never come close to this, but why would they? The Dead Sea was too cursed to sail.

Every ship had been burned a century ago, after the Sirens were hunted and their blood stolen for magic.

Seeing them now felt as impossible as seeing the dead breathe.

Smaller wooden boats were pulled up on the shores. Helion dragged me towards one, the others following.

“Get in,” he urged. I tried, but my limbs refused to work, a numbness spreading through me. Helion didn't waste another breath. One arm circled my waist, lifting me into the boat as though I weighed nothing. The others sat next to me as Helion pushed the boat over the pebbles.

The cursed water lapped at his boots, yet he kept going, wading in until he was knee deep.

“Stop!” I yelled, gripping the wooden lip of the rowboat.

I braced myself for the pain of his death through the bond.

But nothing came.

“The sea would never take me from its goddess,” Helion explained with a lopsided grin, corded forearms flexing as he pushed the boat. “Because you care about me.”

“I do not,” I shot back, too quickly.

Helion chuckled softly as he swung into the boat, wrapping his fingers around the worn wooden oars. Each stroke carried us farther from the black shore, the rhythmic splash of the paddles swallowed by the endless breath of the sea.

I lowered trembling fingers into the water.

The moment it touched me, power unfurled beneath my flesh, winding through my veins with the quiet certainty of something that had never forgotten me. It caressed my hand before climbing my wrist, soothing the raw edges of my battered body.

Yet it didn’t calm my mind.

My monsters.

“They are hunting you,” Solas had said after that first Skanthi attack, but what if they were simply drawn to me?

Kaezlyn swept a curtain of ash from her face, crimson eyes tracking the fleet. “I'd heard whispers of the ships. I didn't imagine there to be so many.”

“Enough for them to escape the fiery death that awaits them if they stay,” Edgar murmured back.

The waves that had battered the shore only moments before smoothed into black glass, ash drifting across the surface in silent constellations as Helion rowed us towards the nearest ship. It waited above us like a slumbering beast.

Its weathered hull rose from the water in towering walls of grey timber, every plank scarred by salt. Thick ropes disappeared into the darkness overhead, while a cargo net hung over the side, swaying gently with the tide like the web of some enormous spider.

“Climb,” Helion said.

Selkie was already moving. She caught the rope with practiced hands, her slight frame disappearing effortlessly up the side of the vessel.

Edgar adjusted Cerilla higher against his shoulder, one arm wrapped securely around her limp body before reaching for the net with the other. Even burdened by her weight, he climbed without hesitation, every movement careful—as though dropping her was a possibility he refused to entertain.

Kaezlyn followed without hesitation.