“Thank you.”

  The words slipped out before Dion could stop himself.

  He stared at the figure.

  The same man who’d caught his arm, he leaned back against the damp planks, chains rattling softly.

  He was all hard angles, a gaunt frame, skin mapped with scars, and one clouded eye that gleamed strangely in the dim lantern glow.

  He barked a laugh, low and sharp. “Don’t thank me, boy. Won’t matter. The sea’s already licking its lips for us.”

  “You know the myth, soon you start to lose pieces of yourself. By the time we get to the New World, you might not even remember your own name.” The man paused, studying him.

  Dion frowned in silence. The sea myth was familiar to him, but it had always been just a story. Until now.

  “Traveling these waters… it hollows you out, you become something different. A slave without memories.”

  “By the time we get to the new world, everyone forgets who they were”

  “And them?” he asked, following the man’s meaning. “How do they survive it?”

  The man’s smile was thin. He knew exactly who Dion was talking about. The slavers.

  If the sea could magically strip a person of their memories, how did the host survive? Weren’t they in the same predicament?

  “Apologies. I often forget how primitive we are compared to the new world. You haven't been introduced to the great works.” He paused, seeing no reaction on Dion's face, he clicked his teeth before continuing.

  “There are preparations against the curse of the sea. Elixirs and Potions. Things that fortify the mind. Keep the whispers out.”

  Dion nodded, coming to the same conclusion. “And you? What’s your story?” he asked, his gaze narrowing.

  “You know more than you should. You’re not from here, are you?”

  “Smart kid. Although I'd expect nothing less than Prince Dion.”

  GASP

  Somehow his words managed to reach the ears of the others. Their reaction was immediate.

  Pain, fear, grief and anger.

  Emotions he had seen countless times on the face of those who dared stand in the way of Lavos.

  Dion’s gaze remained steady, he didn't really try to keep his status a secret.

  He simply didn't care. His thoughts were on something else. Yet one eye remained trained on them.

  “I am, actually,” the figure replied. “Bathorr. I am a merchant.” His smile didn’t waver. “A merchant sees more of the world than a prince”

  Dion scoffed.

  Any merchant capable of traversing continents was no simple tradesman. The potions the slavers used to ward off the sea’s whispers alone cost a fortune.

  He knew of other ways to travel.

  Stories of men flying through the sky in distant lands, but he found them preposterous.

  “The name’s Varro,” the man said, cutting into his thoughts.

  “Merchant Varro. I would say ‘at your service, my prince.’” He raised his manacled hands, chains rattling like a grim laugh. “But not anymore.”

  “Why are you talking to him?” A woman across the hold shifted her baby on her hip, unable to stay still any longer. Her voice was cracked, but brimming with hatred.

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  “You know what his kind is. THEY KILL!. THEY STEAL!. THEY PLUNDER!. He’s no different from the slavers who chained us here.” She spat the words like venom.

  Her words seemed to resonate with the rest.

  Dion stared, unable to refute. There was nothing to refute.

  Lavos was not born a kingdom unlike most.

  it was forged into one. Its banners advanced not just for glory, but for order. Its laws were imposed not just for peace, but for control.

  To Lavos, conquest is not an act of war, but a civic duty, the inevitable absorption of the chaotic into the perfect whole.

  Uniting Westland was the sacred duty of its royal line.

  One could only imagine how the other kingdoms had reacted. With fierce defiance, leading to centuries of war.

  To any who stood outside its borders, Lavos had become synonymous with conquest and destruction.

  A man shackled in the corner spat and muttered, “Fucking Lavosi.”

  Dion paid no heed.

  “Haha, don't mind them prince” A sly grin spread across Varro’s face.

  Dion understood this. It was the oldest, grimmest calculus of power. He’d seen the caravans trailing his father’s armies like vultures, their wagons heavy not with supplies for the troops, but with silks, spices, and exotic trinkets to sell to the bored, flush officers.

  He’d tasted the strange fruits they imported, fruits that only grew in soil recently watered with Lavosi blood and Lavosi gold.

  War didn’t just create demand, it created a grotesque, thriving economy of its own, where men like Varro thrived.

  “Listen closely if you want to last longer than the rest of these poor bastards down here, you need to follow these three rules"

  Dion's thoughts snapped back to the present.

  “Rule one, keep your head down. Pride gets men killed faster than chains. Rule two, when the guards throw scraps, you eat. Doesn’t matter if it’s mold, rot, or shit. Don’t save it. Don’t wait. Eat it.”

  “And rule three?” Dion asked.

  The scarred man leaned closer. His breath smelled of rusted iron and salt. “Ignore the Brine when it whispers.”

  Dion swallowed. Was that even possible?

  Silence fell again, thick and heavy.

  Above, boots thudded on the deck. A laugh cut through, sharp as a knife, followed by the groan of the hull.

  The hatch screeched open. Light spilled into the hold, stabbing Dion’s eyes. Two Carrion Host guards stomped down.

  They carried a slop bucket between them, the smell foul enough to make Dion’s stomach twist before he even saw it.

  “Dinner, pigs,” one sneered, kicking the bucket over. Moldy bread heels, fish guts, and half-chewed bones slopped across the planks.

  The prisoners surged, a frenzy of chains, elbows, snarls. Shackled men clawed at each other like dogs in a pit.

  Dion froze.

  Varro shoved him hard. “Go boy, or you starve!”

  Dion dropped to his knees, grabbing a half-rotted crust. His stomach turned, bile clawing up his throat.

  This... Was this food?

  He forced it down anyway. Bitter, slimy, it burned his tongue, but he chewed. He swallowed.

  The guards snickered, turning into full blown laughter as they trailed up the stairs. The hatch slammed, plunging the hold into black again.

  —

  The days on the sea blurred. Hunger marked them more than light. No sun reached the hold, only the scrape of the hatch and the stink of buckets.

  They fed them when they remembered. Some nights not at all.

  Varro’s rules became gospel. Dion bent his pride each time he forced down rot, each time he lunged with the others for scraps, each time he bit his tongue against the Brine’s whisper pressing in from the hull.

  The first to give in was an old mutter chained in the far corner.

  Dion watched it happen from his own shackle-point, two bodies away. The man had whispered to himself for weeks.

  Prayers, maybe, or arguments with ghosts. Then, one day, the whispers took on a new rhythm. They weren’t frantic anymore.

  The man’s head would tilt, as if listening to a voice only he could hear from the groaning hull. Then he’d nod or mutter a reply.

  His eyes, which had once darted in fear, grew still.

  He stopped fighting for the ladle of brackish water. He stopped recoiling when the guards passed.

  The final change came at night. The mutter began humming a low, resonant tune that didn’t sound human.

  It sounded like the creak of the ship’s timbers, or the slow drag of water against the keel.

  The guard barked at him to be silent, the man simply turned and smiled, a vacant, placid smile and kept humming.

  His gaze suddenly turned to Dion. He smiled, muttering something underneath his breath.

  The person he’d been was gone, shed like a skin. What was left was something calm, empty, and belonging entirely to the Brine.

  Dion felt the understanding like a knot tightening in his gut.

  For the next few months, many more followed, and the hold grew quieter. The frantic weeping, the hateful glare, the whispered plans, it all began to die away, replaced by long stretches of silence, broken only by the ship's groans and the humming.

  A girl, no older than sixteen, who had clawed at her shackles until her wrists were raw, went still one morning.

  She just sat, listening, before her eyes too found Dion, and her lips shaped a silent word.

  Another man, who looked like he was in his thirties and had the build of a blacksmith, began tracing the same pattern on the floor for days.

  When he finally looked up, his gaze was vacant and seeking. It landed on Dion. A mutter passed his cracked lips.

  And two more. A woman who had sung lullabies in a language Dion didn’t know, and a boy who hadn't spoken a word since they’d been thrown into the hold. One by one, they stilled, they listened, and they turned.

  Every time, before the last light of personhood faded from their eyes, they turned their gaze his way. Every time, they muttered something underneath their breath.

  The words, he could almost make the words out now.