Chapter 30 Aviora
THIRTY
AVIORA
Thalira speaks of ages before orcs walked these shores.
Before humans sailed these waters. Before the Wrecktide earned its name or Dreadhaven rose from the cliffs.
She speaks of a thing that existed when the world was young—a hunger born from the emptiness between stars, drawn to this coast by forces no mortal has ever understood.
“It fed on want.” Her voice is almost hypnotic, carrying us through millennia with the cadence of waves against stone.
“Not flesh, not blood—want. The desire for things beyond reach. The ache for what could have been. Every sailor who looked at the horizon and yearned to know what lay beyond, every merchant who dreamed of wealth they’d never possess, every lover who mourned someone they’d lost—the hunger tasted them all.
Drew them to these waters. Drank deep of their longing. ”
Zoric’s fingers dig into my hip. I feel the tension radiating through him—the warrior’s instinct to fight, struggling against an enemy that can’t be cut or beaten.
“The shipwrecks.” I understand before she finishes. “The Wrecktide wasn’t natural.”
“Nothing about this coast is natural.” Thalira’s finger traces patterns on the table—sigils I don’t recognize, symbols that seem to writhe.
“The hunger made it. Shaped the reefs to break ships. Called the storms that drove sailors onto rocks. Created the perfect trap for the perfect prey. For centuries, it fed freely. Grew stronger. Until it became so powerful that even the land began to warp around its appetite.”
“The guardians—”
“Were the solution.” She meets my gaze with something that might be approval.
“Centuries ago, when the coastal peoples finally understood what they faced, they found a way to bind it. Not destroy—the hunger is older than destruction, older than the concept of ending. But contain. Imprison. Lock it in the deep and feed it just enough to keep it sleeping.”
“The Silver Fortune,” Zoric says. “The tribute ships.”
“Every thirty years.” Thalira nods. “A ship loaded with gold—the metal that carries want better than any other substance, sails over the deepest point of the Wrecktide and sunk deliberately. An offering. A pacifier. The hunger fed on the concentrated desire in that gold and slept another generation.”
“But Oreth—”
“Stole from the hunger. And for years, the ancient thing stirred in its prison, growing angrier, growing more restless.” Thalira’s expression hardens. “Your destruction of Oreth should have helped. Should have freed the stolen gold, let the hunger feed, let it sleep again. Instead—”
“Instead, we fed it hundreds of people.” I finish her sentence, my voice hollow. “We gave it more than gold. We gave it lives. Souls. And now—”
“Now it’s awake.” Thalira’s confirmation falls like a hammer. “Truly awake, for the first time in centuries. The guardians you saw were its prison keepers—bound spirits tasked with containing it, keeping it dormant. Your sailors were the key that unlocked the door. And now the hunger walks free.”
The quiet that follows is absolute. I can hear my own heartbeat, too fast, too loud. Can hear Zoric’s breathing beside me, carefully controlled. Can hear, if I strain, the distant crash of waves against cliffs—waves that no longer sound like water. That sound like something else. Something hungry.
“What does it want?” Brek’s voice breaks the stillness—young, scared, but brave enough to ask what no one else will.
Thalira’s smile is terrible.
“Everything. It wants everything, young one. Every ship that sails these waters. Every village along this coast. Every heart that beats with longing within reach of its influence.” Her storm-cloud eyes sweep the hall.
“The Wrecktide was its cage. Now the cage is open. And unless someone closes it again—”
“We’re all dead.” Margit’s weathered voice carries the flat acceptance of someone who’s lived too long to be surprised by disaster.
“Worse than dead.” Thalira corrects. “The hunger doesn’t kill.
It consumes. Takes your wanting and makes it part of itself.
You’d spend eternity as a fragment of its appetite, longing for things you can never have, feeding its emptiness with your own.
” She pauses. “Death would be mercy. The hunger doesn’t deal in mercy. ”
I find myself on the cliff’s edge.
I don’t remember leaving the Great Hall.
Don’t remember climbing the wall walk or crossing the crumbling battlements to this spot where the stone drops away into darkness.
One moment, I was listening to Thalira describe horrors, the next I’m here—standing at the precipice, watching the Wrecktide churn with light that shouldn’t exist.
The water is wrong now. Even from this height, I can see it.
The phosphorescence that used to hint at supernatural presence now blazes openly, pulsing in waves that spread outward from the deep channel where the Silver Fortune lies.
Where Gyla’s fleet died. Where hundreds of souls became fuel for something that should have stayed sleeping.
Ships are sinking.
I count three—maybe four—beyond the normal reef line.
Merchant vessels, from their silhouettes.
Fishing boats, from their size. All of them listing, taking on water, their crews visible as tiny figures scrambling for lifeboats that won’t save them.
The hunger is already spreading, reaching beyond its old hunting grounds, claiming waters that were safe yesterday.
How far will it go?
The question spirals through my mind without an answer. The coastal villages. The trading ports. The fishing communities that depend on these waters for survival. All of them at risk because we couldn’t find another way. Because we chose to solve our problem by creating a bigger one.
Footsteps behind me. Heavy, measured, the particular rhythm I’ve learned to recognize even in sleep.
Zoric doesn’t speak. He crosses the remaining distance between us, wraps his arms around me from behind, pulls me back against his chest. His chin rests on the top of my head.
His warmth surrounds me, solid and real, a counterpoint to the cold fear that’s been building since Thalira started talking.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
“I needed air.”
“You needed to think.” His arms tighten fractionally. “I know the difference.”
Below us, another ship lists. Its lanterns go out as the deck tilts, one by one, until only darkness remains. How many people were aboard? How many more deaths are we responsible for?
“The villages.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Distant. “The fishing boats. They’re all going to die because of what we did.”
“They’re going to die if we don’t fix it.” Zoric’s tone carries the hard pragmatism that’s kept him alive through decades of violence. “Standing here cataloging guilt won’t change anything. Finding a solution might.”
“Thalira said—”
“I know what Thalira said.” He turns me in his arms, tips my chin up until our eyes meet. In the phosphorescent glow from the water below. But I know better now. I know what lies beneath the armor.
“She said someone has to become the new guardian.” My voice catches on the words. “Someone attuned to the hunger. Someone who’s carried its gold. We escaped Oreth, but maybe not this.”
“I won’t let you do it.” The words emerge rough, ragged, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. “I didn’t find you just to lose you. I didn’t let myself want this—want you—just to have it taken away.”
“Zoric—”
“No.” His hand closes under my jaw, firm but not painful. “We fix what we broke. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve been doing since you washed up on my shore. We’ll find another way.”
“And if there isn’t one?”
“Then we make one.”