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CHAPTER NINE

DAX

D ax had been cursed with two illnesses in his life. He came out of his mother’s womb bloody, crying, and already carrying a sickness that gnawed at him from the inside. The tremors came soon after—violent seizures that rattled his bones and shook him to his core. Sometimes they were brief, like the flicker of a storm on the horizon. Other times, they wracked his body for what felt like hours.

But Dax had learned to live with it. He hadn’t chosen it, but he fought against it every single day. It wasn’t for nothing that he was chasing the divine sapphire—the gem whispered about in legends, said to hold power enough to rewrite destiny. If there was even the slightest chance it could cure him, he would burn the whole damn world to claim it.

The second illness, though, was a different beast entirely.

This one he hadn’t been born with, nor had he chosen it. It had been inflicted on him at the age of twelve, and he hadn’t been the same since.

This illness didn’t live in his blood or bones. It lived in his mind, his soul, and it was far more insidious than any seizure. Irene Delmare was his damn disease.

If the first sickness dragged him toward agony, Irene hollowed him out from the inside, leaving chaos in her wake. Irene was a poison, seeping, spreading, corrupting everything she touched. She robbed him of sleep, of focus, of sanity itself.

She was the one thing he’d never been able to cure. And Heavens knew he'd tried everything to rid himself of her. He’d gone to unimaginable lengths—he’d even spun this elaborate lie, accusing her of betraying the Vipers—just to push her out of his life. So he could finally think—use his mind freely, without the constant weight of her in it. Without worrying about the fact that she was always competing with him. Without the creeping realization that he thought of her far too much for anyone to call him sane.

But Irene was relentless. A parasite. She always crawled her way back to him, sinking her claws deeper each time.

Dax leaned back against the wall of his bed, his chest heaving in uneven rhythm. Bloodshot eyes stared into the void, unblinking. His thumb scraped at the tender flesh of his other hand, nails digging hard enough to leave faint crescents, the sting spreading with every restless motion. He hadn’t slept. Not for a second.

Rest wouldn’t come. Not with the way Irene had, in less than a single day back in his life, turned it completely upside down.

“Drink! Drink! Drink!” The rowdy cries of pirates echoed through the walls of the guild, the sound grating against Dax’s nerves. He hadn’t joined them last night—hadn’t drunk, gambled, or even spoken to his crew. A disgrace for a pirate captain.

Movement stirred beside him, pulling his attention. Dax’s gaze shifted to the figure sprawled on his bed. Madu. A young woman who worked at one of the Vipers’ taverns.

She hadn’t spent the night with him—not like that. No, Dax hadn’t touched her or anyone else. He’d simply let her stay. She’d only just joined the Vipers and had nowhere else to go, so Dax had allowed her to sleep here. But now, he regretted it.

When he’d returned late last night, he’d found her there, comfortably settled in his bed, fast asleep. He should’ve kicked her out the second he saw her—he hated sharing his space, his things—but he’d been too lost in his thoughts to bother. And that said everything about how far gone he was. Letting a stranger into his personal space? That wasn’t just reckless, it was suicidal.

This was how pirates got themselves killed.

The slums weren’t a child’s game. Blink for too long, and you lost your head. And Dax, in his distracted state, had done worse than blink—he’d dropped his guard entirely.

A hand brushed against his arm, and his body tensed immediately. Madu was waking, still half-asleep, her straight blonde hair on a pillow. Dax pulled his arm away, sharp and immediate, as if her touch had burned him.

Except it hadn’t burned him. It had felt cold.

Cold compared to Irene.

Dax rose from the bed abruptly, his chest tightening. He dragged a hand down his face, frustrated. It was always the same. Everything always came back to Irene.

She had torn him apart with a single glance the moment she walked back into his life. Irene, whose name was a bruise in his chest he kept pressing, over and over.

What the fuck had she done to him?

Dax’s fingers grazed the faint scars and burns on his wrists—marks of his father’s beatings, long since covered by the intricate tattoos that flowed down his muscular forearms. The ink didn’t erase the memories. Neither did the years that separated him from the boy he’d been.

Every touch reminded him of those days—of chains digging into his wrists, of blows that came down like thunder. Dax wasn’t crazy for hating Irene. How could he be?

For eleven years, every strike, every burn, every godforsaken slap he’d received from his father was because of her. His pain was tangled up with her like an unbreakable knot.

He didn’t blame her, not really. Irene had done everything to survive, and damn it, she did it well. Every ship she pillaged, every treasure she stole, every scrap of territory she won for the Vipers in the slums—she excelled. His father saw it, too. Every time she succeeded, his father would congratulate her with a grin and turn to Dax with his fists.

It wasn’t the same for her. His father didn’t beat Irene, not like he beat Dax. No, he only threatened to kill her when she crossed him. And somehow, Irene always came out on top, untouched.

Dax didn’t know if he admired her for that or despised her.

The past clung to him.

Dax stretched, his body aching with exhaustion, and moved toward the door. He couldn’t stay here, not with Madu stirring in his bed and Irene still roaring through his mind like a hurricane. He needed air.

Needed space to drown in his thoughts.

Dax left the room, his boots heavy against the wooden floor as he made his way to another chamber in the guild.

The air inside was dark and stagnant, carrying the faint, familiar scents of salt and smoke. With every step, the pain in his side flared—a sharp, gnawing reminder of his failure.

The wound throbbed, but physical pain had never bothered Dax. He’d gotten used to it long ago.

He shut the door behind him and stood in front of a tarnished mirror, its surface cracked in places.

The reflection stared back at him, hollow-eyed and fierce. Shirtless, his skin glowed pale under the golden lantern light, each sharp line of muscle etched with tension. Dax hissed softly as he unwound the bloodied bandage from his side, the cloth peeling away like a second skin, stuck to dried blood. It fell to the floor with a wet thud, leaving the gash beneath exposed—red, angry, and pulsing.

The gash stretched from his ribs to the deep-cut V of his hip, a brutal slash. Blood crusted around the jagged stitches, his handiwork from the night before. He’d stitched it himself, muscle tense, sweat dripping down his chest, biting back the pain without so much as a drop of rum to dull it. He preferred to feel the burn. Pain grounded him.

He could have ordered someone else to treat him, of course. He ruled so much of this cursed city’s slums that healers and surgeons would come running if he so much as snapped his fingers. Hell, he could’ve found someone to erase the scar entirely. But he didn’t want that.

He needed the scar. Just like the pain, he kept it deliberately. A physical reminder of the damage Irene Delmare was capable of inflicting.

Dax exhaled slowly and soaked a cloth in a bucket of water by the wall. As he began scrubbing the dried blood from the wound, his jaw clenched. The memory of Irene’s blade was still fresh in his mind.

That’s what she was. A parasite. Feeding off him, twisting his thoughts, bending his will.

Despite everything he’d done—every desperate effort to rid himself of her—she had come back. And the first thing he’d done was let her bury a blade into his side.

Dax’s hand trembled as he scrubbed harder, fury rising in his chest. He knew he was hurting himself, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t stop. Anger clawed at him—anger at Irene, and anger at himself.

She made him weak in a way that rotted him from the inside out. Slowly. Painfully.

He hated her for it. Hated the grime she left on him, the filth she smeared across his hands, his mind, his soul .

The night before, he hadn’t stopped himself. When Ezel—his right-hand man—knocked Irene to the ground, Dax had fallen to his knees like some lowly recruit. Captain of the most feared pirate guild, and he’d been there, sprawled in the dirt for her .

His knuckles still ached from what came after.

When Dax returned to the guild, Ezel paid the price. He’d beaten the man bloody—hard enough to feel the crunch of bone beneath his fists, hard enough to leave Ezel limping for days.

It wasn’t that Dax cared about Irene. No. He didn’t like the way Ezel had touched her, that was all. Irene might be a parasite, but she was his parasite. Dax had ordered her brought back to the guild, not beaten to within an inch of her life.

But all of it—all of this—was Dax’s fault.

He had lied too well, spun the perfect story of betrayal, and now every Viper in the guild hated her.

Dax leaned heavily against the wooden ledge of the mirror, his arms braced for support. His breath was shallow. He stared at his reflection—the sunken eyes, the scarred wrists, the faint sheen of sweat on his skin—and shook his head.

“I’m so goddamn tired,” he muttered under his breath, his voice hollow and sharp.

The truth was, he had plans. Big plans. Plans that required every ounce of focus, every scrap of cunning and ruthlessness he could summon. That was why he’d cast Irene out in the first place. He’d been ruthless when he did it, cruel even, but it had been necessary. He’d needed her gone so he could finally think clearly.

Because his thoughts had never been his own since the day he met Irene.

It had started when they were twelve, and his father had pitted them against each other so perfectly, so mercilessly, that the rivalry had become second nature. A question of survival.

Sending her away had been his way of breaking free.

He needed clarity. His mind had to be sharp—his focus unshakable—if he was going to find the divine sapphire.

The sapphire. The most coveted treasure in the world.

Captain Lorax, his pathetic excuse of a father, had spent his life chasing it. He’d scoured the seas, razed entire fleets, and spilled blood for the promise of it. And in the end, he’d failed.

Dax wouldn’t fail.

He couldn’t fail.

The sapphire was his salvation—not just a way to outdo his father, but the key to everything. To proving that every blow he’d endured as a boy hadn’t been for nothing. To finding a cure for the tremors that still shook him to his core.

Straightening, Dax raised his head to meet his reflection in the mirror. He forced a smile, but it wavered, weak and hollow.

“It’s fine. Everything is fine,” he whispered, though the words tasted bitter in his mouth.

He repeated the vow that had driven him forward since he was a boy, the one that gave him purpose when nothing else did: 'Glory. Wealth. Eternal life sailing the seas.

But even as he spoke, a shiver of disgust rippled through him.

He realized he was talking to himself. To his own reflection.

Goddamn it. Irene had been back for one single day, and she’d already ruined him.

His hands curled into fists against the ledge. This— this —was why he’d sent her away.

Dax splashed his face with cold water. Weakness was useless. What was done couldn’t be undone. Irene had returned, yes—but whether she stayed or vanished again, there was nothing he could change.

He gripped the edge of the basin tightly, his knuckles whitening, as fragments of memory clawed at him. Words. Images. Her body sprawled on the ground the night before. The hollow look in her eyes. He forced the image away, shoving it to the furthest corners of his mind. He refused to think about it—about the moment the Peacock Guild’s captain had dragged her away. It wasn’t his problem. It shouldn’t matter. But it did.

Dax was a selfish bastard, and he didn’t care who got hurt to get what he wanted. If Irene wasn’t with the Vipers anymore, fine. But she sure as hell wouldn’t belong to any other pirate guild. Not the Peacock Guild. Not anyone.

She was his. Even if he hated her for it. Even if he hated himself more for caring.

Her name was Jessalyn. The pirate captain—the only woman captain, for that matter—who, just last night, had given Dax no choice and ripped Irene away from him. That… pirate witch who never left her damn hole.

Dax hated her.

Maybe it was because of her untouchable, arrogant aura. Or maybe it was because her territory was laughable—limited to nothing more than the Peacock Guild’s decrepit building and a tiny patch of the docks. Her guild was made up of street rats and children. Yet Dax couldn’t stand her.

She was suspicious, slippery. And despite his father being a drunken, abusive bastard, Lorax had been a sharp and cautious pirate. He’d always warned Dax about Jessalyn, called her as ancient as the slums themselves, and just as dangerous. She rarely showed her face, and when she did, trouble followed.

Now she had Irene in her hands.

Dax wanted to throw himself out the nearest window, just to stop the panic clawing at his chest.

Irene knew everything about the sapphire. That damned sapphire—unique, legendary, its story lost to the depths of time. Its very existence was a mystery.

Because if Jessalyn tortured Irene and she cracked—if she revealed to Jessalyn that the Vipers held a fragment of the map—Dax was screwed.

The last thing he needed was another thorn in his side, and Jessalyn chasing him in a race for the sapphire.

Why did fate never seem to smile on Dax?

No.

Dax shook his head hard, droplets of water splattering against the warped wood of the counter. There was no point in thinking about it. What was the use? It was too late—just like it always was when it came to Irene.

He nodded to himself, his gaze dragging upward to meet his reflection in the cracked mirror. His face was drawn, shadows pooling beneath his bloodshot eyes, a faint twitch in his jaw betraying the tension locked inside. He didn’t care what happened to Irene. He couldn’t regret or doubt what he had done to her—the choices that had led them both to this reckoning.

“She would’ve destroyed me if I hadn’t done it first.”

The words fell from his lips like a curse—sharp, bitter, and familiar. The same words his father used to hiss at him between slaps.

Dax exhaled sharply and stormed out of the room, his boots thudding against the wooden floor. The noise echoed through the halls, sharp as gunfire, as a warning to anyone foolish enough to get in his way.

A few pirates loitering nearby saw him coming and stepped aside immediately, their gazes dropping. “Aye, Captain!” they called in unison, tipping their hats with mechanical precision.

He didn’t bother to acknowledge them. He had far too many problems to deal with right now to waste another moment thinking about Irene. Pirates who were supposed to be at sea were still slumped around the guild, wasting time—and the scammers in the slums were getting bolder, forgetting who owned them.

It was his job to remind them.

Dax descended the narrow staircase, weaving through dimly lit hallways choked with stolen goods. Barrels of smuggled powder. Crates spilling over with spirits and narcotics. Loot torn from merchant ships, scattered in careless heaps. Pirates lounged against walls and doorframes, gambling, drinking, their curses ricocheting off the stone like ghostly echoes.

His heart was pounding too damn hard.

Dax slammed the door shut behind him, locking it with a quick twist of his wrist, then turned to face the chaos that awaited him.

The desk at the center of the room was a disaster. Maps and ledgers lay scattered across its surface, their edges curling. Stolen jewels glittered faintly in the low light, discarded next to crumpled letters and paintings looted from merchant ships. Coins spilled from broken pouches, their metallic sheen mocking the disorder.

It was a mess. But it was his mess.

Dax took a slow step into the room, his boots crunching faintly against sand tracked in from the docks. He inhaled deeply, trying to focus on his breathing.

The chaos was his silent revenge against his father, a man who had prized order and discipline above all else. Lorax had once ruled this desk, this guild, this life.

Until Dax had strangled the last breath out of him.

Claiming the title of captain had been easy. Claiming freedom from the man’s memory was another matter entirely.

Dax leaned over the desk, his fingers brushing past the worn maps until he found what he was looking for—a black shirt, folded neatly as if waiting for him. He slipped it over his scarred torso, the fabric stretching snug across his broad shoulders. His jaw clenched as the shirt grazed the wound on his side

The thought steadied him, if only a little. He missed the open sea—the untethered freedom, the salty winds, the promise of danger and glory. The slums were suffocating sometimes. The weight of them pressed down on him like a noose tightening around his neck.

He needed to act normal until then. Keep everything running smoothly, at least enough to avoid attracting more bad luck.

The sapphire. He couldn’t afford distractions. Not Irene, not his father’s ghost, not anything. In five days, his journey toward the divine sapphire—the most coveted treasure in the world—would begin again.His salvation.

Finding it meant more than wealth or glory. It was bigger than ego, bigger than proving himself better than Lorax. Bigger than the bruises and scars Lorax had carved into his skin with his relentless, twisted lessons.

The sapphire was the only future he had left.

Dax exhaled deeply, moved around the desk, and sank into the heavy wooden chair behind it. The weight of the seat pressed into him. He rested his arms on the desk and let his gaze wander across the chaos.

He needed to work. Or at least pretend to try.

Dax flipped through the pages of the ledger, immediately regretting it. Each entry was worse than the last—a brutal, unrelenting reminder of just how deep he was drowning in shit.

“Damn it…” he muttered, the word leaving him in a sharp exhale as the numbers began to blur together.

The Vipers praised him as if he were a god, but they didn’t know the truth. They didn’t know he was a damn good actor—hell, an even better liar. Dax had always been the best at making everything look fine, even when it was falling apart at the seams.

Sure, the guild had plundered three royal ships in open waters. Sure, those ships had been bursting with rare saffron and piles of gold trinkets ripe for sale. But behind the curtain, the truth was ugly.

No, worse. It was catastrophic .

He had lost seven ships. Seven ships weren’t just bad luck—they were a death sentence. To lose that many, you had to be one of two things: the dumbest idiot alive or the unluckiest bastard to ever sail the seas.

Dax wasn’t an idiot. No, he was a goddamn genius when it came to numbers. He could calculate faster than any merchant, think five steps ahead of his enemies, and speak the language of violence better than anyone. The other captains in the guild could barely count past their fingers, but Dax? Dax had built an empire in the slums through sheer cunning.

He was cursed.

And for the past months, that curse had only grown stronger.

It had been more than 124 days since he’d banished Irene from the guild, taking her father’s life and her place as captain. Over one hundred and twenty-four days since he’d torn her out of his world with the belief that it was the only way to save himself.

And every day since, Dax had faced the same biting, unforgiving truth: no one—not a single goddamn pirate in this entire guild—was like Irene. Not even close.

For all her recklessness, Irene had been the foundation. She was the eye of the storm, the calm within the chaos. And Dax, in his arrogance, hadn’t realized it until he’d burned her to the ground.

Frustration surged through him, and he slammed the ledger shut, the sound echoing through the room like a pistol shot. Grabbing another one, he flipped it open. Somehow, impossibly, it was even worse.

To chase the sapphire, he needed more. Gold. Ships. Crews that wouldn’t crumble at the first sign of trouble. What he had now wasn’t enough—not even close. He needed a miracle. Someone insane enough to believe in the sapphire’s legend, crazy enough to fund it.

Dax’s jaw tightened, his mouth twisting in disgust. He didn’t beg. He never begged. But this sapphire... he wanted it as much as air, and the resources it demanded were fit for a king.

“Just this treasure… just this one,” Dax muttered under his breath. “And everything will change.”

The words weren’t for himself.

They were for the plush toy sitting on his desk.

A small, battered crab. Its once-bright fabric had faded to muted hues of pink and blue, one of its button eyes barely hanging by a thread.

It was Irene’s.

And it was pink.

Dax hated that, even his favorite color was somehow tangled up with her.

But he was glad he’d taken it from her. He wanted her to lie awake at night, aching with the same restlessness, the same hollow pit of rage.

Whatever the reason, it was pathetic.

And yet, here he was, talking to her damn crab .

Dax raked a hand through his dark hair and tugged hard, his eyes dropping back to the pages in front of him. Seven ships lost. Three fortunes squandered. Two taverns burned to the ground. A dozen men dead.

He had banished Irene because he thought it would make everything better. Yet, everything was worse.

“It’s just the beginning,” he murmured, glancing at the plush toy. “Everything will be fine once we find the sapphire.”

The crab didn’t answer, of course.

Dax leaned back in his chair, snatching the bottle of rum beside him and taking a long, burning swig. The alcohol scalded his throat, but it was a welcome distraction. Anything to silence his thoughts.

But the memory came anyway. Sharp. Uninvited.

The moment he’d made the decision to betray her.

He had agonized over it for days, to the brink of madness. He’d even written her a letter, a goddamn letter, and slipped it under her cabin door. A desperate, futile hope that she’d understand. That his intentions weren’t just cruel. They were deeper. Twisted, but deeper.

He had consulted a fortune teller.

The thought made him chuckle now. He had always mocked his parents’ superstition, but in the days before his betrayal, he’d been desperate enough to believe. The fortune teller had been a vision in white feathers, her ebony skin gleaming in the firelight as she drew the tarot cards.

Her voice, low and smoky, still echoed in his mind: “If you want to become the King of the Seas, you must rid yourself of your greatest obsession.”

Then she’d drawn the card.

The Siren.

Even now, Dax felt the same chill he’d felt when he saw it—the haunting image of the siren staring back at him, her eyes piercing, her lips curved into a cruel smile.

“Let her go,” the fortune teller had whispered. “Free yourself from her weight, and the world will open to you. Every treasure. Even the divine sapphire of the fallen goddess you seek.”

He hadn’t told her about the sapphire. And yet, she’d spoken of it.

Dax had taken her words as absolute.

His father’s gravelly voice, drunken and slurred, came back to him, muttering over and over: “That girl’s a goddamn good luck charm.”

But now? Now Dax was certain of one thing: whether Irene was near him or far from him, she wasn’t his luck. She was his curse.

He took another swig of rum, leaning forward, his elbows digging into the desk.

No.

It wasn’t good to spend too much time in his thoughts. He hated it. Thinking too much made him feel trapped, caged in his own mind.

Dax was a man of action.

And so, he stood.

He glanced at the towering pile of papers on his desk. Dax had lost his mind—there was no other explanation. Call it guilt, madness, or the fact that he missed her. Whatever the reason, the damage was done.

It hadn’t stopped at one letter.

No, he’d been stupid enough to write her more. Many more.

He’d sent them, too. And they weren’t even about important things. He didn’t apologize, he had barely explained himself. Instead, he rambled about pointless shit—describing his days like some pathetic diary. He came off like an obsessed idiot. And now, looking back, he realized why Irene had never responded to a single one.

She was likely too furious at him for sidelining her to even grasp the meaning behind his words.

Dax tore his gaze away from the letters scattered across his desk. The ones he hadn’t sent. There were so many. Sometimes he wrote one every single day.

Suddenly, rage boiled over. He swept them all to the floor in a single violent motion.

He ran a hand through his hair, gripping it tightly, trying to pull himself together. Trying to pretend he wasn’t completely unraveling.

Dax felt an urgent, almost desperate need to cling to something good. Damn it, just one victory.

His mind was a battlefield, dark thoughts stacking one on top of the other, smothering him, choking him. He couldn’t breathe beneath their weight.

Slowly, he paced the edge of his desk, his fingers trailing along the worn wood, splinters biting into his skin. His gaze lifted, sharp and restless, to the opposite wall.

There, an enormous portrait hung—or what was left of it.

Once, it had been a portrait of his father, captured in all his ruthless glory. The imposing tricorne hat, the cold gray eyes that Dax had inherited, and a presence that screamed both cruelty. The painting had been a monument to Lorax’s reign over the Vipers and his unshakable authority.

Dax had grown up in its shadow.

Until recently Dax had decided to "fix" it.

He’d ripped his father’s head clean out of the canvas, literally torn it from the painting with his bare hands. There was now a gaping hole where his head should’ve been.

It had been his first trophy to commemorate the moment he’d wrapped his hands around his father's throat and squeezed until the bastard’s eyes had gone lifeless.

Dax stopped in front of it, a cynical smile tugging at his lips. He ran his fingers over the jagged edge of the canvas. Then, with a swift motion, he slid the frame aside to reveal what lay behind it.

A safe.

Built into the wall, its iron face glinted faintly in the dim light of the room. Dax's fingers found the key, his hand steady as he slipped it into the lock.

Click.

The sharp sound echoed through the stillness, followed by the creak of the safe door swinging open.

What waited inside left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Once, the safe had been a treasure trove.

Rare pearls, crystal hearts, emeralds the size of fists, and gold coins plundered from the wealthiest galleons of the Six Kingdoms. There had been enough wealth to drown in, enough to make him feel untouchable.

Now, there was almost nothing.

The safe was a hollow shell of what it had once been.

They had used it all—sold it all—chasing one thing. The sapphire.

Dax’s jaw clenched. His father’s obsession with the sapphire had been endless, consuming. Every coin they had ever stolen, every treasure they had ever plundered, had been funneled into that one hunt.

"It’s here, boy," Lorax had once hissed at him, eyes wild and teeth bared. The divine sapphire. The key to everything. Wealth, immortality, the power to own the seas.

But they had never found it.

All the wealth they had burned, all the blood they had spilled, all the promises Lorax had made—it had been for nothing.

And now, Dax was the one left standing in the ruins of his father’s obsession, staring at a near-empty safe and wondering how the hell he was supposed to succeed where the old bastard had failed.

He stared at the pitiful scraps of gold and jewels that remained, his chest tightening with frustration.

Just one victory, he thought again, the words sinking into him like a blade. Just one, and everything will change.

Dax plunged his hand into the chest and pulled out a map. Not just any map.

The story of the sapphire was complicated, tangled so deeply in myth and time that its threads had nearly frayed into nothing. Hundreds of stories swirled around it, each one more elusive than the last. Dax had spent three long years chasing those whispers with Irene at his side, dragging the Vipers through hell and storms.

Three years of following every lead and searching every cursed island. Three years of combing through lies and legends, through old men’s drunken tales, trying to catch the faint glimmer of something real.

And they’d found it. The fragment.

It didn’t look like much—a jagged, torn piece of an ancient map—but it had led Dax to a single, undeniable truth: if the fragment was real, then the sapphire had to be real, too.

His fingers trembled as he lifted the map, the worn edges crumbling faintly under his touch. He liked to believe that his mother guided him to this discovery. That, she helped him from beyond—or wherever the hell she was now. She had adored the legend of the sapphire.

It was said to belong to the goddess Nehalennia, her favorite deity. One of the Ancients—the powerful beings who had ruled the world millennia ago. While most of Eldoria had long since abandoned the Ancients, his mother never had.

She would whisper prayers to Nehalennia by candlelight when far from shore, her voice soft, reverent. She called the goddess kind and gentle, the keeper of the oceans and all the lives they held. But her devotion had cost her dearly.

If his father had raised Dax to be a hardened pirate, Vittoria—his mother—had raised him to believe in destiny. She’d begged him to believe that he was born for greatness, that he was meant to find the sapphire and rewrite the stars.

His mother had always said that falling in love with his father—a wicked, ruthless pirate—had cursed her. Worse, it had cursed her unborn son. She swore the sapphire was the key to breaking it, the only thing that could save them from the ruin she’d brought upon them both.

But she had died with the taste of burned hope on her tongue.

And his father? Lorax hadn’t cared about the sapphire until her death. Then he’d turned his greed toward it, not for salvation, but for power.

Dax’s grip on the map tightened. The tremors started to ripple through his body—a sensation like thunder shaking his bones. His vision blurred, and he staggered, gripping the edge of the desk to steady himself.

He was alone. Alone with his failures and problems. With only a fragmented map that mocked him with its incompleteness. His breathing turned shallow.

His hand reached blindly for the bottle of rum sitting on the desk, but his fingers shook too much. In a single motion, he hurled it against the wall, the glass shattering with a deafening crash.

Still trembling, Dax rolled up his sleeves, his veins bulging like storm-tossed ropes beneath his skin. His fingers clawed at the collar of his shirt, yanking it loose as he tried to drag air into his lungs. The air felt too thick, too heavy—burying him alive in the weight of his past.

He slumped into his chair, the fragment of the map still in his hands.

His jaw clenched as he laid it flat on the desk, its surface trembling beneath his touch.

Pain rippled through him, sharp and electric, but he ignored it. He reached into a drawer, pulling out a small vial. His hands shook as he uncorked it, his breath uneven.

The gray powder spilled onto the back of his hand, forming a ghostly line against his skin.

Dax inhaled deeply, the powder burning his nose as it shot through him like fire. He exhaled hard, his chest heaving. Slowly, the relentless buzzing in his ears faded, and the tremors began to dull.

Leaning back in his chair, Dax spread his legs wider, the fabric of his pants pulling taut over his muscled thighs as he shifted, rolling his hips upward to adjust. His body slackened, but there was a coiled tension beneath the calm creeping through him. The fragment of the map lay before him, catching the faint light filtering through the window.

He lifted it again, holding it toward the sunlight.

The edges of the map felt strange beneath his fingers, almost alive. He didn’t even know what material it was made of, but its surface sent a shiver racing down his spine every time he touched it.

Dax had done everything to decipher the map. Every experiment, every trick he could imagine. But something was missing. “It needs something else,” he muttered, his voice rough.

More precisely, after months of grueling research, he’d discovered what the map required: ashes. Sprinkled across its surface, they would supposedly reveal the secrets hidden in its text, according to tales.

He cursed himself for not realizing it sooner. It had been so obvious.

Lifting the map again, he tilted it toward the light. Indistinct lines of shimmering text flickered across its surface—elusive, mocking. The words moved.

They shifted and twisted, blurring and rearranging themselves like whispers from a long-dead language.

He couldn’t read them. It was driving him mad.

Dax shoved back from his desk, the chair scraping loudly against the wooden floor. His steps were unsteady as he staggered toward the open window. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, trying to find relief in the sharp, morning stench of the slums below.

But then a sound broke through his thoughts. A faint hum.

Dax opened his eyes, his gaze sharpening. A bee.

The damned creature buzzed around him, its irritating hum slicing through the fragile stillness. His frustration snapped.

Dax swatted at it, his hand missing its mark and slamming against the window. The bee struck, driving its stinger into his neck. Pain flared white-hot. His hand shot to his neck, and the world around him began to tilt.

His vision blurred, the ground tilting beneath him. He muttered something incoherent, reaching instinctively for his sword.

But his grip faltered, his body refusing to obey him. Dax collapsed, darkness swallowing his world whole.