Chapter 23 Zoric
TWENTY-THREE
ZORIC
The final hours before Gyla’s deadline expires and everything I’ve spent years building burns.
Aviora stands at the boat’s prow, her gaze fixed on the water below.
She hasn’t spoken much since waking from her nightmare—just moved through the morning preparations with mechanical efficiency, checking equipment, reviewing the captain’s log one final time.
Whatever she saw in that dream has left marks I can read but can’t erase.
The patrol boat rocks beneath us as Brek and Margit work the oars, pulling us toward the coordinates she calculated from the dead captain’s notes. The Wrecktide spreads around us, deceptively calm, its surface smooth as black glass beneath an overcast sky.
We’re past the shelf. Past every dive site I’ve ever charted. The water here is darker—not from depth alone but from an absence that sucks in light the way Dreadhaven’s blackstone walls drink shadow.
“Here.” Aviora’s voice carries the flat tone of someone trying very hard not to feel anything. “According to the heading, the Fortune went down somewhere in this area.”
I move to stand beside her. My palm settles against her lower back without conscious thought—habit now, the way touching her has become as natural as breathing. She leans into the contact, but her attention stays fixed on the water.
“How deep?”
“Deeper than we’ve gone. Deeper than anyone should go without proper equipment.” She finally turns to look at me. Dark circles under her eyes. Tension in every line of her face. “We need to be quick.”
Quick. As if speed will save us from whatever waits in the darkness below.
“The dream.” I keep my voice low, pitched for her ears only. “What did you see?”
Her jaw tightens. For a moment, I think she won’t answer—she’s been avoiding the subject since she woke gasping in my arms, her skin cold despite the warmth of my body pressed against hers.
“Gold. A mountain of it, glowing with light that shouldn’t exist underwater.” Her hand drifts to her belt, touching the spot where the cursed coins used to rest. “And shapes in the darkness. Watching. Waiting.” She swallows. “They know we’re coming, Zoric. Whatever’s down there—it felt me looking.”
“Then we don’t give it time to prepare.” I draw her against my side, press my lips to her temple. “We go down, we get what we need, we come back up. No exploring. No lingering.”
“And if it’s too deep? If the pressure—”
“Then we surface and find another way.” My arm tightens around her. “I’m not losing you to a pile of cursed gold. Whatever happens down there, we come back up. Both of us.”
She turns her face into my palm. Her lips brush my skin—barely a kiss, more a promise. “Both of us.”
The water closes over my head like a fist.
Cold. Darker than any dive I’ve made in years of patrolling these waters. The temperature drops with every stroke downward, until my skin feels numb and my muscles burn with the effort of maintaining movement.
Aviora swims beside me, her form a shadow in the murk. She moves with the grace of someone who learned to dive before she learned to trust anyone, her body cutting through the resistance with practiced efficiency. Even now—descending toward a presence that haunts her dreams—she doesn’t hesitate.
Unstoppable.
The thought rises unbidden. Even here, even descending toward horror, she doesn’t falter.
The light fades. Not gradually—suddenly, as if we’ve crossed some invisible boundary. One moment, I can see the dim gray of the surface above us. The next, there’s only darkness broken by the faint phosphorescence that clings to everything in the Wrecktide.
My lungs are starting to ache. Three minutes down. I can hold my breath longer than any human—orc lungs are built for endurance—but even I have limits. We need to find the Fortune soon or surface empty-handed.
Aviora signals: There.
I follow her pointing hand. And I see it.
The Silver Fortune rests on a ledge of black rock, her hull intact in ways that defy thirty years of submersion.
Masts standing straight as the day she sailed.
Rigging swaying in currents that don’t reach us.
No growth on her timbers, no barnacles on her keel.
She looks frozen in the moment of sinking—preserved by a force beyond nature.
And she glows.
The light comes from within. Seeping through gaps in the planking, illuminating portholes with sickly phosphorescence. Not the greenish glow of the Wrecktide’s usual luminescence—this is older. Hungrier. A light that makes my eyes ache and my skin crawl with instinctive revulsion.
Aviora is already swimming toward her.
I catch her arm, pull her back. Her eyes meet mine through the murk—questioning, urgent. I shake my head. Point toward the deck, then toward myself.
I go first.
Her jaw sets in the stubborn expression I’ve come to know well. But she nods.
We approach the Fortune side-by-side, swimming through water that feels thicker than it should.
The cold is worse here—worse than the depths should account for, a chill that goes beyond temperature into metaphysical wrongness.
Every instinct screams at me to turn back, to surface, to get as far from this impossibly preserved ship as my body can take me.
I don’t turn back.
The deck is scattered with debris—crates split open, rope coiled in patterns that suggest violent motion, the personal effects of sailors who never reached port.
And gold. Everywhere, gold. Coins and ingots and jewelry, spilling from broken chests, carpeting the planks in a layer of wealth that could buy kingdoms.
The glow intensifies as we descend toward it. The light pulses with a rhythm that feels almost organic—like breathing, or a heartbeat, or the slow digestion of a vast and patient predator.
The original hunger.
The phrase surfaces from the captain’s journal.
The ancient want that Oreth’s curse merely echoed.
Looking at the Fortune’s treasure now, I understand what those words meant.
This gold didn’t become cursed—it was born cursed.
Created cursed. Gathered and sacrificed to feed a presence that predates human memory.
Aviora lands on the deck beside me. Her feet disturb the coins, sending them sliding across wood that creaks despite being underwater. Her face is pale in the phosphorescent light, her pupils dilated, her breath coming in small bubbles that rise too slowly toward the surface.
She’s staring at the gold.
Her hand reaches out, fingers stretching toward the nearest pile. Slow. Dreamy. The movement of someone sleepwalking toward a cliff’s edge.
I grab her wrist. Pull her back.
She fights me. Actually fights—twisting in my grip, her free hand shoving against my chest with strength that surprises me. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused, seeing a reality other than my face.
No.
I yank her against me. Her body collides with mine, all sharp angles and futile struggling. She’s trying to get to the treasure—to whatever the treasure is showing her, whatever illusion the ancient hunger has crafted from her guilt and grief.
“Aviora.” I shape her name with lips that have no air to spare. “Come back.”
She doesn’t hear me. Her gaze is fixed on a vision behind me—a phantom only she can see. Her struggles intensify, nails scraping against my arms, legs kicking against my hold.
I’m losing her.