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Chapter Text

Prologue

The air tasted of salt—and of promise.
Aboard the Icewind, every cycle in the open sea was a blessing. Hemi felt the briny breeze on his face and smiled, a smile genuine and effortless. At his side, Captain Rakei let out a booming laugh, honest and thunderous, like a wave crashing against a reef.

“Look at that, boy!” Rakei said, pointing with a strip of smoked fish toward a pod of Wake-Hunters dancing in the ship’s frothing trail. “The sea smiles on us today. Good catch, good wind, good company.”

Rakei clapped him on the back so hard it nearly toppled him, then offered half his ration. Hemi accepted it, grateful. In his twenty cycles of life, he had never known a home until he climbed aboard this Cailao. Rakei was not just his captain—he was the father he had never had. And the crew weren’t shipmates; they were brothers. He loved them with a loyalty forged in shared storms and silences beneath the moons. They were his clan. His everything.

As Astor’s light began its descent, painting the sky in bloody orange, Hemi knew the moment had come.

“Captain, I’ll check the cargo lashings,” he said, his voice steady, betraying nothing of the storm inside him.

“Good man,” Rakei replied with another clap. “Work before rest. That’s why you’ll be a great hunter one day.”

Hemi descended into the hold, the smell of salted fish and algae-wood filling his lungs. He sat in the dark among crates and barrels and closed his eyes. He needed no candles, no runes. His faith was simpler. More terrible.

He gathered every memory, every laugh, every moment of camaraderie—the way Rakei had taught him to read the stars; the time a young deckhand had pulled him from the edge of the sea; the warmth of leviathan-ale shared beside the engine. He collected it all, every thread of affection he still felt for these people, and turned it into an offering.

It was the sacrifice Tel’katzon demanded for his miracle. A sacrifice equal to the void he was about to create.

He whispered the only prayer of his faith: Let the world unravel. Let something new be born.

And then he pulled the threads.

It was not creation. It was annulment.
He felt a tear inside his soul, a cold, absolute wrench that stole his breath. Not forgetting. Excision. The emotional architecture that defined him was ripped away and cast into non-existence.

When he opened his eyes, the hold smelled the same, looked the same. But inside, he was hollow.

He returned to the deck. Saw Rakei laughing with his crew. They were nothing more than biological components, organized matter whose order was an insult to glorious entropy. His purpose was no longer to share life with them. It was to erase them.

The miracle began.

One of the starboard wing ropes, thick as a man’s arm, did not snap—it simply unraveled, its fibers dissolving into a cloud of gray dust whisked away by the wind. The lookout cried out in confusion.

Then a metal rivet on the railing began to bloom with rust. Not natural rust, but a cancerous growth that devoured the steel in seconds, leaving behind lacework so brittle it crumbled under the next wave’s touch.

Panic spread. Chaos. Entropy.

The algae-wood beneath their feet softened, losing its solidity. It turned spongy, pulpy, as though its very cells had suddenly chosen surrender. Sailors stumbled, sinking ankle-deep into a deck that was becoming sludge.

“By Noctua! What is this?” Rakei roared, his face twisted in disbelief.

It was not an attack. There was no enemy to fight. Their world, their home, their ship—was simply coming undone.

Hemi clung to a cargo barrel as the Icewind lurched, its structure collapsing. The hull did not break with a crack. It dissolved. Water did not rush in violently—it seeped into the wood that was no longer wood, and the ship sank not through breach, but through the loss of its own existence.

The freezing sea swallowed him. When he surfaced, clinging to the barrel, the Icewind was gone. Only splinters floated, along with a handful of survivors crying into the darkness. He saw four clinging to a broken mast, their faces lit with terror and incomprehension.

“A leviathan!” one shouted. “It struck us from below! Split us in two!”

The lie was born of fear, a logical tale for an event that defied logic. Hemi heard the lie and embraced it. It would be the official story. No one would suspect the truth.

He looked at the faces of the biological units with whom he had once shared space—now mere castaways whose fate meant nothing to him. There was no grief. No triumph. Nothing.

Captain Rakei was gone. A void had been made. Entropy had been served.

Floating in the cold water, beneath the indifferent gaze of the moons, the Unraveler watched the chaos he had birthed and felt the absolute calm of the void within. The old world was unraveling.

And it was beautiful.

Chapter Text

The ground beneath Lian’s feet… was breathing.
And that was the first of many heresies that the Silence of Kaivalon would throw in his face.

It was a slow, almost imperceptible breath —a faint oscillation that rose through the soles of his leviathan boots and settled in the pit of his stomach, cold as nausea.
In the Bastion, the earth had been his certainty: stone was the sleeping body of Térrenak, the god of rock.
He had grown up reciting that what was firm was divine, and what was solid was safe.
But here, that truth was a moving blasphemy.

The ground was a crust of crystalized salt, reflecting the gray sky in a million dull glints.
A floating island, part of a drifting nation: the Aeringis Fleet.
No foundations. No roots. Only salt, adrift on an ocean that seemed infinite.

Lian clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms.
Fifteen cycles of instruction in genealogy, ritual, and politics had not prepared him for this:
the physical disorientation, the vertigo of walking on a world that refused to stay still.
Even the air felt different —thicker, salt-heavy, charged with solitude— a metallic haze that left the taste of rust on his tongue.

Around him, the city groaned and sang with the voice of the sea.
Bridges of rope, woven from leviathan fiber thick as pillars, arched toward neighboring islands that swayed in a solemn, tidal rhythm.
Every creak was a lament. Every shell-bell hanging from the salt towers marked not hours, but the pulse of the tides.
And beneath it all, the endless thunder of the ocean striking the crystal cliffs —a reminder that beyond the edge, there was no ground. Only the abyss.

The Sylphs moved with an impossible grace, their blue skin flowing with the sea’s sway as if born with a secret rhythm in their blood.
Lian, in contrast, was a block —heavy, rigid, unable to find the rhythm.
Every step reminded him of his own artifice, the stiffness of a man acting a part.
They knew. He could feel their eyes on him: the adopted son of Koralia, the bastard of the Bastion, a foreigner caught between worlds.

“Glory to House Lyra’thil,” his adoptive father had said before sending him away.
“Survive,” had screamed his birth mother’s eyes, the exiled one.
Both had burdened him with borrowed promises.
Now their weight dragged him down harder than any sea.

An acolyte blocked his path —a tall, angular Sylph with skin like dark glass and eyes like wells without bottom.
Rongo.

“Lian of Koralia,” the voice was not a question but a verdict.
“The Conclave of Tide Interpreters awaits you. Your year of purification begins now.
You will forget the pride of your Coral Houses. You will forget the arrogance of the depths.
There is only one will —that of the current.”

He turned without waiting for an answer.
Lian followed, awkward and breathless, his heart hammering against his ribs.
They crossed a bridge suspended above foam, and halfway through, the shadow of something colossal passed over them.
Lian looked up.

A Celestial Mantaray —large as a floating city— glided above.
Its iridescent skin shimmered like a galaxy of liquid light, and every ripple of its fins moved the air as if it breathed with the entire world.
Lian held his breath. It was beautiful. And terrible.

“Ceremonial mount,” spat Rongo, not even glancing up.
“Vanity. Do not let it distract you. Your struggle is with the sea.”

They entered a tall, damp tower.
The corridor smelled of stale salt, and the walls sweated water as if they, too, breathed.
Rongo opened a door made of algae-wood.
A cell. A bed carved from salt. A window without glass, open to the endless ocean.

“This will be your dwelling,” the acolyte declared.
“Each dawn, you will drink the sacred brine.
Each vigil, you will study the texts.
Each night, you will meditate upon Noctua’s reflection.
You will be emptied.
If you survive the emptiness, the Temple will decide if you are worthy of a gift.”

The bone bolt slammed shut, its echo rolling through the tower.
Lian was alone.

Aloneness.
In Koralia, beneath the domes of living coral, solitude had been impossible —there was always the murmur of bubbles, the chorus of voices, the pulse of the reefs vibrating under the skin of the walls.
There, life surrounded him in every breath.
Here, in this cell of dead salt, solitude was an ocean swallowing him whole.

He approached the window.
The saline wind struck him like an invisible wall.
The horizon curved like the inside of a colossal bowl.
In the distance, other salt islands hung suspended by bridges of sinew, floating like insects on gray water.
The sun of Astor was sinking, devoured by the sea, painting the sky in streaks of blood.
Not a sunset —a drowning.

“You will be emptied,” Rongo had said.
Lian was beginning to understand.
They were not asking for faith. They were stripping him bare.
All that remained was sea, salt, and silence.

A young acolyte entered, wordless, set down a tray, and left.
On it: a gray broth of algae, a boiled fish staring with one cloudy eye, and a bone-colored wafer.

Lian stared at it in disgust.
He remembered the banquets of Koralia: the fruit that glowed beneath the waves, the meats of the Boiling Scar drenched in coral wine.
This was not food. This was submission made flesh.

Pride rose in his throat.
He considered rejecting it, dying with the dignity of a noble.
But then he remembered: his mother’s tense face, his father’s tired eyes.
His life was not his own. He was a cog in a mechanism older than himself.
And a broken tool serves no purpose.

He sat on the floor.
Broke the wafer with a dry crack.
Pushed a piece of fish into his mouth.
Salt. Brine. Resignation.
He swallowed it whole, forcing down the nausea.

That was his first taste of the Silence.
And as the sea darkened beyond the window, Lian swore it would not be his last.
They could strip him of everything he knew —but the hollow they left behind, he would fill himself.
Not with borrowed faith.
With will. His own.

Chapter Text

The only sound, apart from the rhythmic hiss of distant geysers, was that of her own chains.
A dry, metallic snap with every step—an echo that mocked her through the polished granite corridors of the Geiser-7 Foundry Citadel.

Roca clenched her jaw, feeling the cold scrape of the shackle around her wrist. It was a foreign weight, a humiliation she still couldn’t understand.

Only three cycles ago, she’d been decorated. Sergeant Roca, First Spear of the frontier garrison.
Hero of the Siege of the Crystal Nest, where her platoon had held against a Swarm assault for an entire night.
She had watched “pureblood” imperials bleed out beneath a thousand cuts from those beasts—and she had endured. She had fought. She had won.
Her reward, it seemed, was this: to be treated as a criminal, escorted by soldiers of the Legion of the Inner Flame, their eyes burning with the contempt reserved for traitors—and for her kind.

Coastal Watch.
Cracked Stone.
You could bleed for the Empire, die for it, and still your mixed blood would stain you. No act of valor washed that away.
But this—this was different. She hadn’t been charged with cowardice or insubordination. In fact, she hadn’t been charged at all.
They had simply pulled her from her unit, isolated her like a fracture threatening to spread.
Now they were taking her to a trial without accusation.

The guards halted before a door of obsidian, flanked by twin braziers of burning petracora—white flames without smoke, like open wounds in the stone.
The door opened inward, soundless.

The chamber beyond wasn’t a tribunal. Too small. Too quiet.
At its center stood a slab of stone serving as a table.
On the far side, three figures waited.

The one in the center wore black and silver robes: an Inquisitor of Astor, his face carved from stillness, hands clasped like manacles.
To his right, a General of the Legion—an aged goliath whose skin was a map of fissures, armor polished to a warped mirror sheen.
To his left, an Artificer of the Kael Guild, a thin man with glass-magnified eyes.
Religion, war, and science.
The three pillars of the Empire, assembled before her.

Fear—old, disciplined, and unwelcome—began to crawl down her spine.
This was no military hearing.
It was something deeper.

The guards shoved her forward and forced her to her knees on the cold floor.
The Inquisitor studied her with predatory calm, like an obsidian lynx poised to strike.

“Sergeant Roca,” he said, his voice soft but cutting.
“You’ve been brought here to answer a single question.
Do not speak of medals or fallen men. Speak only of one instant—the final moment of the siege.”

The silence of the chamber tightened, metal in a vice.

“Describe how the last creature leapt at you.
How its wings shattered against your skin.
Describe the light.”

The question hung in the frozen air.
Roca tried to fit it into a report—data, losses, coordinates—but “the light” didn’t belong in any form.

She fixed her gaze on the space between the Inquisitor and the General—a neutral point. Discipline, learned long ago.

“Sir Inquisitor,” she said, voice steady, the tone of a soldier giving her account.
“The eastern perimeter had been breached. My orders were to hold position until dawn.
The last creature struck as the light was breaking. I placed myself between it and Private Kenji.
I took the impact. The creature was neutralized.”

Pause. Then, the only logical addition:

“There was a flash, sir. From the petracora lamps on the wall. Or maybe the sunrise catching its wings.
It was… disorienting.”

The Artificer leaned forward, lenses glinting.
The Inquisitor’s voice dropped to a whisper like a blade:

“Do not lie in this chamber. Lies do not hold here.”

Roca’s blood boiled beneath her skin.
To call her a liar—worse than any insult. She opened her mouth to protest, but the General spoke first, his voice like stone slabs colliding.

“Enough. She’s answering as she was trained.
Sergeant—forget the format. I’m giving you a direct order.
Describe what you perceived. No analysis. Just the truth.”

An order. That, she understood.

Roca swallowed hard and rewound the memory—noise stripped away, blood muted—back to the moment.

“The impact, my General. No pain. Only the sound of a thousand crystals breaking.
And the light…”

She hesitated.

“It wasn’t a reflection. It wasn’t white. It was warm.”

The Artificer’s head snapped up, eyes widening.

“Warm?” repeated the General.

Roca gave a faint nod.

“Yes, my General. Like the sun after a storm.
And it smelled… of wet earth.”

Silence heavier than granite filled the room.
The three men exchanged a glance—not surprise, but confirmation.

For the first time, the Inquisitor reclined.
Something like cold fascination flickered across his face.

“Primary Resonance,” he murmured, savoring the words.
“A natural affinity with the Stone’s Pulse.
Unfocused. Raw. Untamed.”

A chill ran through her. That was the language of shamans and heretics of the Mantle, not imperial officers.

The Artificer spoke, feverish:

“A manifestation without a focus should have incinerated her.
Her body dispersed the energy. The theoretical potential—”

 “Enough,” the Inquisitor cut in, eyes back on Roca.
“In Astor’s order, an anomaly is the seed of chaos.
And chaos is heresy. By law, you should be purified.”

Roca’s heart clenched.
Die—for surviving?

The General inclined his head slightly.

“And yet,” he said, “her record is flawless. Executing her would be waste.
A stain on the Third Spear. Her unit does not deserve that burden.”

The Inquisitor smiled without warmth.

“The Solar Regent, in His wisdom, offers an alternative.
Service of the highest order.
Her condition will be contained—and used.”

Roca lifted her chin.

“What project?”

 “State secret,” replied the Inquisitor, standing.
“You may accept and serve—or refuse and face trial for heresy.”

Three gazes pressed down on her like mountains.
Roca thought of Kenji. Of her unit.
Of the banner that must never be stained.
She chose as she always had: duty.

“I understand my options, my General. I accept.”

A shadow of respect passed over the goliath’s cracked face.
The Artificer couldn’t hide his smile.
The Inquisitor, master of the moment, delivered the verdict.

“Excellent. You have chosen order.
General. Artificer. The matter is contained.
I will take charge of her personally.”

The others departed, leaving the air colder in their wake.

 “Stand, Roca,” ordered the Inquisitor.

She obeyed.

“You are no longer Sergeant of the Third Spear.
Your medals, your comrades—they end here.
You are now a resource.”

He turned to the guards.

“Take her to the Crucible. Remove the chains.”

The Inquisitor’s smile was the cruelest fracture in the wall of stone.

“She is not a prisoner,” he said.
“She is property of the Empire.”

Chapter Text

The Errant’s steam engine coughed and spat white smoke, a harsh exhalation that mingled with the ocean’s salted mist. Beneath Ganc’s boots, the deck pulsed with every heartbeat of the vessel. It was not dead wood nor forged iron—it was living flesh interwoven with reinforced frameworks, rivets of coral and bone, planks grown from sea-algae trees.
The Errant was a kaleidoscope of grafts, a creature patched together from living technologies and impossible salvages.
Ugly, yes—but indomitable.
Much like him.

The captain caressed the helm as one would soothe the back of a wounded beast. Every creak and hiss was familiar, intimate. Here, among the smells of oil, salt, and the sweat of his crew, he could still breathe. The Calao was his home, and within it lingered the last illusion of freedom.

Freedom—fading fast.

Before him, emerging from the mist like the ribs of a stranded leviathan, the Aeringis Fleet took form. Towers of salt, slender and arrogant, rose against the gray sky. The distant tolling of shell-bells reached his ears like a poisoned echo. To Ganc, it did not sound like liturgy, but like the rattling of keys in a jailer’s hand.

“Ha,” he muttered, half-growling, as if telling himself a bad joke.
“The perfume of dogma.”

The Errant advanced slowly, its buoyant sacs adjusting to the cargo’s weight and the heaving waves. And then, the shadow fell upon them.

Ganc did not move. He only lifted his weary eyes toward the immense form gliding across the heavens—
a Celestial Mantaray, so vast that its shadow was an eclipse. Its iridescent skin shimmered with oceans of color, every undulation a living rainbow.
On its right fin, he recognized the crescent-shaped scar—the ceremonial saddle of the High Interpreter.

A sight of awe for most.
For him, a twisted knife in the chest.

“Vanity…” he murmured, recalling how Kaien had once spoken the same word with a boy’s insolent grin.
“A creature born for the sky, turned into a fanatic’s chariot.”

He guided the Errant toward an outer pier, where the acolytes waited. At their head stood a pale-skinned youth, more suited to damp halls than open air, clutching a bone tablet.

“The shipment of alchemic sulfur for the Temple of Rite,” the boy recited, his tone so flat it might have been memorized.
“You are late.”

Ganc leapt to the platform, an ironic smile playing on his lips.
“The current had other plans,” he said, spreading his arms like an actor upon a stage.
“And the current is always right, isn’t it?”

The acolyte shot him a frozen glare. He checked the seals, made his ritual notation, and handed the captain a small, heavy pouch—Carved Pearls.

“The agreed payment. Generous, in memory of the Favor your son granted us. May his sacrifice continue to nourish the faithful.”

Ganc tightened his grip around the pouch. The cold pearls pierced his fingers like needles.
He said nothing.
Sacrifice?
To them, Kaien was not a son, nor a bright hunter, nor the stubborn boy who still laughed in his memory. He was currency. A convenient martyr.

He climbed back aboard without looking behind.

“Raise anchor. Fire the engine. I want this stench off my ship before Noctua wakes.”

The crew obeyed in silence—ropes tightening, living metal groaning, the deep breath of the buoyancy sacs shifting.
The sound of the sea was music compared to dogma.

Until a scream tore it apart.

Not of command or rage, but a shriek of pure panic, echoing from one of the towers.
Ganc looked up—and saw it.
A small body tumbling down, clumsy, spinning like a stone badly thrown. The water swallowed it violently, in a burst of foam.

Above, silhouettes of acolytes leaned over the edge. They did not move.
And one of them, Ganc swore he heard, spoke with chilling calm:

> “The current reclaims what is weak.”

Fury blazed through his chest like fire.

“Starboard anchor—hold it! Rescue line, now!” he roared, ripping off his jacket.
Without hesitation, he dove into the sea.

The shock of the cold struck him to the bone, but his strokes were those of a Sea Runner.
He dove between blades of crystalline salt rising beneath the surface.
He reached the boy, thrashing aimlessly, dragging both of them downward in blind panic.
Ganc struck him once in the diaphragm; the child exhaled, loosened his grip—enough for Ganc to loop the rope under his arms.
Two pulls: the signal.

The crew hauled them up together—two fish rescued in the same net.
On the deck, the boy shivered, coughing water and terror. His garments were noble, ruined by salt.
Pale skin, too clean for this sea.
A child of the land.

Ganc rose, drenched, and met his eyes.

Footsteps echoed on the pier. Rongo—the same acolyte—approached, flanked by two priests, fury twisting his face.

“Heretic!” he spat. “You’ve interfered with the sea’s judgment. The boy was to be tested. You have broken the sentence!”

Ganc stood tall, water dripping from his shoulders.

“I saw no judgment,” he said evenly. “I saw a child drowning. And under my command, no one drowns. Our law is simpler than yours.”

“Hand him over!” Rongo screamed. “The current will judge him!”

Ganc’s eyes turned to steel. He looked at his crew.
“Raise anchor.”

Mala hesitated. “With the boy aboard?”

“Now.”

The Errant shuddered as it broke free, the sacs exhaling, the engine roaring to life.
The priests’ screams faded behind them, swallowed by the sea’s roar.

Ganc knelt beside the boy, who still trembled beneath the heavy cloak he had thrown over him.

“Forget your family and your coin,” he said, his voice theatrical, masking pain.
“Answer me, boy. Who are you—and why do you fall from windows?”

---

The world returned to Lian in a whirl of cold, pain, and salt.
He coughed until he vomited seawater onto a rough deck that smelled sharply of algae and living metal.
A heavy cloak wrapped him, damp yet warm. It smelled of leather—and of a sadness not his own.

He looked up.
The man who had saved him stood there: weathered skin, graying beard, eyes gray as storms.
A nomad.
A Sea Runner.
A heretic.
Beside him, a green-skinned woman with abyssal eyes watched him warily.

He had escaped the prison of salt only to fall into the hands of those the Conclave called blasphemers.

The captain repeated, his voice low and unyielding:
“Forget your family. Who are you?”

Lian swallowed, still shivering.
Lying was instinct—the instinct of a noble of Koralia.
But that gaze pierced through him.
He chose a half-truth.

“I’m Lian. Aspirant to the Temple’s Rite.”

The man arched an eyebrow.
“Just Lian? No House behind you?”

“Just Lian.”

“Well then, Just Lian,” Ganc said dryly. “That answers the first. Now tell me why you fall from windows.”

Shame burned hotter than the salt in his throat.
He couldn’t admit the truth—that living land had made him seasick.

“It was an accident. I slipped.”

The captain studied him a heartbeat longer, then turned to the woman.

“Mala. Take him to the hold. Dry clothes and broth. Don’t let him die on my ship.”

She clicked her tongue in frustration.
“Captain, you’ve just declared war on the Conclave. Koralia will turn its back on us. You’ve doomed us.”

“Perhaps,” Ganc replied with a crooked, theatrical smile.
“But there are lines even a Runner doesn’t cross.”

Mala met his gaze, and for a moment, in that shared tension, the Errant itself seemed to breathe louder.

---

The Calao drifted away from the Fleet.
The towers’ silhouettes were now broken teeth on the horizon.

Mala broke the silence.
“You’ve lost your mind, Ganc.”

He laughed, dry and bitter, never leaving the helm.
“Perhaps. But we won’t run. We’ll teach them not all currents flow beneath the water.”

The Errant veered sharply, adjusting its sacs and unfolding part of its framework.
The engine roared. The wind caught them.
The ship did not flee—it rose, defiant against the gray expanse,
ready to return—not in surrender, but in insolence.