Chapter 11
Nerina
The Forgotten Trench
Morning air wrapped around me as I stood at the front of the ship, the salty wind brisk against my skin, stinging where it met the lingering cuts and bruises from battle.
Cold coiled around my fingers, seeping through the damp fabric of my sleeves, sending a shiver down my spine.
I was still adjusting to the weight of clothing—layers of fabric that clung to my skin, restricting in ways I wasn’t used to.
In the water, I had been unburdened, free to move with the currents, the ocean itself an extension of me. Here, on this ship, fabric felt like chains.
As I looked out over the sea, I realized—I didn’t miss it.
The sea had always dictated my place without ever asking what I wanted. Now, standing on the deck of this ship, the distance between myself and the waves felt wider than ever. And that distance didn’t feel like a loss. It changed how everything else felt.
Everything felt heavier, as though the weight of the sea had doubled, sinking into my bones. The trench didn’t just consume ships and souls—it devoured the light itself, leaving the world suspended in endless twilight. The sense of trespass clung to me, sudden and unshakable.
The sky, still stained with the last traces of night, stretched endlessly above, yet the world felt smaller—the horizon pressing in.
Time warped in the trench, as if the sun were held just out of reach, dawn stretched thin into a dim, lingering half-light.
The sun was little more than a pale smear behind the mist, its glow swallowed whole.
Even the light knew better than to linger here.
The silence pressed close, thick and unnatural—not the calm of still water, but the hush of something waiting. Watching.
Brine and decay filled my lungs as I stared into the abyss ahead. The trench split the ocean open like a wound, its jagged peaks rising like blackened teeth. It wasn’t just a place. It was a gaping maw, and we were sailing straight toward it.
The crew whispered legends about this place—ships swallowed whole, voices calling men into the deep—but what unsettled me most wasn’t fear.
Garen, one of the older crewmen, sidled up beside me as I stared out at the horizon. A jagged line ran from his cheekbone to his jaw, his scowl carved there by wind and salt.
“Ye’ ever seen anythin’ like this?” he asked, not turning his head. “No,” I admitted. “Not even close.”
He grunted, a sound halfway between a laugh and a curse. “Didn’t think so. Seas like this—they don’t let you pass for free. Always take somethin’ from a man. Or worse—send him home with somethin’ he’ll wish he left behind.”
I glanced sideways at him. “So, you believe the stories, then?”
He finally looked at me, eyes dark as tar, just as unreadable. “Aye. I believe what I’ve seen.”
“But… you came back?”
He huffed through his nose—something that might’ve been a laugh. “Not all o’ me, lass.” A pause, then quieter. “And not all o’ them, neither.”
The words hung heavy in the salty air. After a long moment, his expression eased—barely.
“Still,” he said, a ghost of a grin tugging at his mouth, “somethin’ tells me you ain’t the runnin’ sort.”
I snorted. “I’m not the dying sort, either.”
He chuckled low in his chest. “Heh. We’ll see ’bout that.”
And just like that, the silence between us shifted—less guarded, more watchful. Not quite trusting.
The crew’s unease was more than superstition. It was rooted in something real, something unspoken. That conversation with Garen only confirmed what I had already begun to suspect: something had happened here.
Something terrible. Not the kind that haunted dreams, but the kind that rewrote men from the inside out.
Their silence wasn’t just fear. It was remembrance.
The way the crew flinched at the trench’s name, how even the most hardened among them avoided looking too long into its depths—it wasn’t fear of the unknown.
It was fear of memory.
Something inside me pulled toward it—a silent call that resonated through my bones.
Even in all its horror—even surrounded by decay, dread, and silence—I was fascinated.
Just as the quartz had shimmered in my palm, humming with strange warmth, the trench echoed with that same hidden energy.
It vibrated beneath the surface—not in sound, but in sensation.
A tether.
Between it. And me.
The trench terrified me, but it also beckoned. There was beauty in its desolation, in the way it defied the natural order, in the secrets it refused to surrender. It felt ancient. Untouched. A relic of a forgotten time.
And I, for reasons I didn’t understand yet, wanted to know it. To unravel it. To understand why it felt like it had always been waiting for me.
I flexed my fingers, the ghost of my magic still thrumming beneath my skin—a pulse of something conscious and wild.
The surge had drained me more than I cared to admit.
My limbs felt weighted, every movement sluggish, like swimming against an invisible current.
My magic, usually a steady hum beneath my skin, flickered unevenly—distant and restless.
The exhaustion ran deeper than muscle. It gnawed at something quieter, closer to my sense of self.
Was I strong enough for this?
Could I uncover the truth of who I was without losing myself in the process?
My power had flared beyond my control—raw, unyielding. But why? It didn’t feel like drawing from myself. Not the way magic usually does.
This had been different.
It hadn’t risen from me. It had passed through me—cold and burning all at once—as though something vast had briefly taken notice and decided I would suffice. My body had followed, but my magic hadn’t led.
I wasn’t just drained. I felt hollowed—like something had scraped too close to my core and left a thin, aching emptiness behind.
I could still feel their stares, their nervousness pressing against my back like a phantom weight.
They had accepted my presence out of necessity, but trust was something else entirely.
Some had softened—their nods less guarded, their words laced with something approaching respect.
Others kept their distance, watching, waiting, unsure if I was a danger or an ally.
A few murmured in hushed tones, their voices barely audible over the creak of the ship.
I had fought beside them. But did they trust me?
After seeing what I had done.
How could they?
How could I?
No one said it outright, but I could feel it. I wasn’t truly welcome here. The crew wouldn’t need to worry—not for long. Once we made it to port, I’d be out of their hair.
That was the plan, anyway. If I survived the trench.
Even Alaric, for all his dry wit and calculated patience, hadn’t decided what to do with me.
Lately, he’d been watching me differently—not just with suspicion, but with something more measured.
More careful. His words were still edged, his humor still cutting, but there was a subtle shift in how he spoke to me, testing boundaries he wasn’t sure existed.
And that uncertainty was almost worse than outright hostility.
He tested me constantly—watching, waiting. Part of me wondered if he was searching for a reason to cast me overboard.
The thought of sinking back into its depths—of slipping into the currents that once cradled me—felt less like a homecoming and more like a sentence.
He’d been an enigma from the moment I stepped aboard. There was a deliberation to him, a guarded intensity that made it impossible to tell whether he was amused or dissecting me like a problem to be solved.
And despite myself, I wanted to understand him. To unravel his secrets. Or to know why he seemed so determined to keep them hidden.
He treated his crew with an ironclad balance of respect and control. With me, his approach was different. Testing. Pushing. Studying.
What was Alaric looking for?
He kept journals filled with notes and maps, pages marked with careful, deliberate handwriting. He spent long days poring over them, a glass of dark, thick liquid never far from reach. He was searching for something too—though for what, I couldn’t say.
He wasn’t just holding onto the quartz. He was waiting.
Like it was only a piece of something greater.
Every glance, every lingering pause before he spoke, every unreadable expression—calculated. Measured. Weighing my presence against something unseen.
My guard stayed up. He was a puzzle I hadn’t yet solved. And that intrigued me more than I cared to admit.
I had spent years asking myself the same questions, tracing faded maps, chasing half-truths. Every answer only led to more questions, more gaps in the story of who I was. The further I searched, the more uncertain I became.
Was I discovering myself?
Or just running in circles—chasing ghosts that had never belonged to me?
I thought I wanted freedom.
Now, I wasn’t sure if I was running toward something. Or away from it.
I hadn’t answered him. Because I didn’t know.
I hadn’t slept much since boarding the ship.
Each night was restless, filled with the groan of the hull, the whispers of uneasy sailors, the relentless churn of my thoughts.
Alaric, strangely, was never around during the day.
I assumed he slept then—probably because I’d commandeered his quarters, and frankly, there was no universe in which I was sharing a bed with a pirate.
Whether out of politeness or self-preservation, he seemed content to haunt the ship’s darker hours while I tried to sleep in a bed that still smelled faintly of sea salt and something darkly sweet beneath.
A scent I now recognized as him.
Sleep, when it came, was shallow—fragmented dreams of dark water and distant voices calling my name. Memories of Thalassia pressed against the edges of my mind: my mother’s watchful eyes, distant yet suffocating; the Tidekeepers’ whispers when they thought I couldn’t hear.
I remembered the salt-laden air of the temple chambers. The way they gathered to observe. The rhythmic chants that never quite belonged to me.
I had spent my childhood shadowed by expectation, surrounded by secrets I was never meant to uncover.
They had hidden things from me.
I know that now.
But what? And why?
I exhaled slowly, my breath warm against the morning air. The chill slithered through me, curling around my ribs, hollowing my bones. The exhaustion tugging at my limbs felt heavier here, compounded by restless nights spent tangled in the ship’s shifting world.
Footsteps approached—quiet, deliberate. I didn’t have to look to know it was him. “You feel it, don’t you?”
Alaric’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I turned to find him watching me. His gaze was unreadable—but different now. Not just suspicion.
Curiosity.
I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “The quartz?”
He nodded.
“The crew’s been whispering about it since we found it,” he said. “They say it’s cursed.”
“Do you believe them?”
He let out a humorless chuckle. “I’ve seen curses—seen how they twist men into unrecognizable things. How they rot from the inside out until there’s nothing left but shadow and hunger.” He nodded toward the quartz. “That? That isn’t a curse.”
“That is salvation.”
The word landed wrong. Salvation wasn’t what it felt like when the power tore through me. It hadn’t saved—it had burned. Taken. Hollowed. What Alaric saw in the quartz wasn’t what I’d felt inside myself.
I turned back to the water. The looming darkness ahead stretched toward the horizon, the trench’s presence both above and below the waves creating an unnatural divide. The sun hung like a dim coin behind the mist—just enough light to mark the hour.
Salvation.
That’s what he saw in the quartz. Salvation—from what?
The way he said it made my skin prickle. He wasn’t talking about hope. Or healing. He was talking about escape.
Whatever haunted him had already convinced him the price was worth paying.
What kind of man looks at a cursed object and sees hope? What exactly was Alaric hoping to be saved from?
He hadn’t said. Hadn’t offered details.
A weight settled in my chest—not fear, exactly, the heavy edge of something deeper.
Something inevitable. The waves groaned against the ship’s hull, a low, eerie lament that echoed unnaturally in the thick morning air.
The sound stretched and twisted, as though something beneath the surface was stirring.
Shifting.
Just out of sight.
A cold prickle traced my spine. The sensation of unseen eyes pressed against my skin.
The trench did not welcome us. It tolerated us.
And the longer we stayed, the deeper the unease settled, crawling beneath my skin like a chill that refused to fade. The air thickened with a silence too deep. Too unnatural.
Somewhere below, the water shifted—not a wave or current. A vibration. A flicker of movement at the edge of my vision that didn’t belong. I blinked, heart hitching. When I looked again, the water was still.
Probably just my eyes playing tricks on me. Or the trench.