Tems waited behind, melting back into the silence of his traitor's half-loyalty, neither friend nor enemy, but something razor-thin in between.
The false wall sealed with a whisper.
And ProlixalParagon emerged into the ship’s main corridor like a shadow unhooked from its source.
His thoughts raced.
Too soon for confrontation.
Too few allies.
Too many lives chained to the deck above.
But he knew now.
They all had a noose around their necks — and the Reverie would tighten it the moment they reached Baigai.
So he did what he always had:
He planned. He built. He prepared.
By sunrise, the deck returned to routine. Ropes tightened, sails checked, soup stirred in iron pots by sleepy-eyed sailors. But to Prolix, everything had shifted.
He saw the too-casual glances between certain crew members.
The whispered conversations that ended too quickly.
The absence of the captain at key times, leaving the first mate in silent command.
He began his work with care.
Step one: Secure the Troupe.
He approached Ralyria first — slipping beside her as she performed diagnostic routines on the mana linkages powering the youngest kits’ vardo.
“She still runs smooth,” she said absently, one hand tracing the glow of a crystal relay.
“She might need to run smoother soon,” Prolix murmured.
She blinked once. Her eyes whirred quietly as they re-focused on him. “S-situation?”
“Danger. Soon. Tell no one else. Just you for now.”
Her voice lowered. “Understood.”
No panic. No questions.
Only recalibration.
Next came Kaelthari — out on the stern deck, where she practiced slow, deliberate patterns with her bardiche, the haft glinting in the sea air.
He didn’t speak right away.
Just watched until her forms ended.
She turned to him, expression unreadable.
“Trouble,” he said softly.
She nodded.
“How deep?”
“Deck-deep. Crew-deep. Possibly hull-deep.”
Her tail stilled.
“Tell me when to strike.”
Marx took more convincing.
He was loyal — but practical. Suspicious. Hardened.
“You’re saying we’re cargo,” he muttered later that evening, sharpening one of his carving knives with long, precise strokes.
“No,” Prolix said. “I’m saying they’re being paid to hand us over like cargo.”
Marx grunted. “To who?”
“Draggor.”
The knife stopped.
Then resumed.
“Tell Lyra?”
“Not yet. She’ll know soon enough.”
Marx nodded once, jaw tight. “I’ll start prepping escape kits. Quietly.”
For now, he left Lyra be.
He would not unsettle her until every piece was in motion.
He owed her that much.
By the second night, the preparations had begun:
Ralyria installed subtle mana-triggered failpoints in the lockfasts of the wagons’ chains.
Marx stashed food and spare water in hidden compartments.
Kaelthari practiced night drills.
Prolix rewired two inactive constructs into short-burst decoy rigs. Small, but enough to distract if a fight broke.
They were careful. Quiet.
But a storm was coming.
And when it broke?
The crew of the Distant Reverie would find the Troupe far more than a simple haul.
They would find teeth.
The Sky Breaks Back
The sea changed first.
The wind came second.
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Neither announced themselves in words — but in absence, in pressure, in the way the water ceased to ripple naturally and instead began to breathe, slow and massive beneath the hull.
By midday, the clouds had thickened into a canopy of iron, bruising the horizon with green-black coils that spun without center. The temperature dropped — not cold, but wrong, tinged with the charged taste of mana gone sour.
Sailors moved faster, sharper.
The first mate barked orders with a clipped edge.
No one laughed now.
And above it all, the Distant Reverie groaned — not from the pressure of waves, but as if remembering something.
ProlixalParagon stood amid the chain-lashed wagons, one paw pressed against the wood of Lyra’s vardo.
His golden eyes swept the sky.
He’d grown up watching weather roll across desert salt flats. He knew what a storm looked like.
This wasn’t a storm.
This was something older putting on the shape of a storm.
Something that had been watching since the moment the threshold ruin rose from the sea.
And now it moved.
Below deck, Ralyria was re-calibrating dampeners on the wagons' core stabilizers. Marx had pulled out his real blades — not woodcarving knives, but thick crescent iron blades etched with fire-scored grooves. Kaelthari stood beside the Troupe's main ladderwell, her scaled arms folded, the wind hissing across the gold chains between her horns.
They all felt it.
The storm wasn’t natural.
And it was coming fast.
The first strike was soundless.
A spear of sky — not lightning, but pure white void-light — split the clouds, slamming into the sea not far off the bow. The ocean surged upward in a geyser of boiling foam and steam.
A wave hit the starboard side hard enough to lift the ship several feet and slam it down again.
Crates snapped free.
Ropes tore.
Children screamed.
The sails twisted like wounded wings and the mana engine faltered, sputtering in blue sparks.
Captain Serrak finally appeared — no longer absent, no longer aloof.
Her eyes burned with focus as she bellowed, “DROP THE AUX CRYSTALS! HARD TETHER THE FORELINE!”
But it was already too late to outrun it.
The sky above shattered into movement.
Sheets of rain fell sideways, driven by a wind that howled with voices — not words, but the suggestion of memory.
Prolix heard screaming in a language he didn’t know.
He heard his own name whispered as if from a thousand drowning throats.
Ralyria’s voice sparked in his ear through the earpiece they had rigged from salvaged communicator nodes.
“S-s-seismic build-up! We’re above a fault line! This isn't just a storm!”
Then the system chimed — not gently, but like an alarm.
>Warning: Unnatural Phenomenon Detected<
>You are within the influence radius of a Resonant Anomaly Surge.<
>Stabilization not possible under current conditions.<
>Defensive action advised.<
>The Cycle Is Watching.<
Prolix grabbed the nearest rigging line, fur drenched, heart pounding.
He turned to Kaelthari. “We need to get below. Now.”
But Kaelthari didn’t move.
She was staring past him — into the heart of the storm.
Where, for the briefest moment, a tower rose from the sea.
Not stone. Not wood.
Glass and light. Fractured and impossible. A spire made of memory.
And atop it—
A sigil.
Spiraled. Cracked.
Prolix’s lattice burned.
The storm was not just a storm.
It was a summons.
The ship listed hard to port, throwing him against a tied-down crate.
He gritted his teeth, vision swimming, ears ringing.
And somewhere within that ringing — as the Distant Reverie tilted into chaos — he heard it again.
A voice not shouted. Not spoken.
But woven into the world’s edge.
“You carry what should not have survived.”
“Let us see if you endure.”
The storm roared louder now, not with thunder, but with a pressure that crawled down the spine and made the bones ache — a deep, droning resonance that set the very nails of the Distant Reverie to shivering in their sockets.
The rain came in waves, not droplets, striking like thrown daggers.
The deck bucked underfoot, slick with water, splinters, and seafoam.
ProlixalParagon surged toward the central wagon cluster, grabbing a struggling kit by the scruff and pressing the child into Nara’s arms. She was already drenched, her fur clinging to her skin, her eyes wide but clear with determination.
“Get them below!” he shouted over the wind.
“What about you?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Just turned toward the next wagon — the red-wheeled communal kitchen — as a shackle pin snapped loose, and the entire vehicle lurched to the side with a groan of metal.
“Ralyria, I need that stabilizer now!”
“Engaging!” her voice crackled in his ear, fragmented but urgent. “Hold—!”
Mana flared beneath the wagon’s frame as one of the hidden runes activated, humming to life with pale blue light. It slowed the wagon’s tilt just enough for Prolix to wedge his shoulder under the support beam and brace it, legs trembling with effort.
Kaelthari was already moving, chain-wrapped horns gleaming under lightning-flashes, her bardiche in one hand as she slammed a wedge into place and barked, “Marx! Reinforce the bindings!”
Marx slid across the deck, his mana-prosthetic sparking from water exposure, but he didn’t stop. “On it—!”
Then it happened.
A flash of movement in the corner of Prolix’s vision.
A figure — cloaked, lean — slipped through the wagon shadows, knife flashing low, headed straight for Nara and the children.
Not a crew member. A hunter.
“NO!” Prolix roared.
He lunged forward, slammed into the man just as the blade rose. They both tumbled to the slick wood, grappling in the downpour. The man snarled — Fennic blood, eyes glazed, no remorse — and drove a knee into Prolix’s ribs.
Pain exploded.
But Prolix didn’t let go.
A horn blast sounded across the deck.
Then shouting.
Steel rang against steel.
And Prolix realized the moment he’d feared had arrived.
The pirates had made their move.
A gang of sailors surged from belowdecks — armed, wet, wild-eyed — cutting toward the Troupe with brutal precision.
“Take the kits first!” one barked. “Bind the elders!”
But they didn’t expect resistance.
Didn’t expect Kaelthari to drop two of them with a single sweep of her bardiche, golden charms ringing like war bells.
Didn’t expect Ralyria to fire a pulse of unstable mana from her bracer, blasting a man backward into a mast post.
Didn’t expect Marx to step into the storm like an executioner, knives spinning in either hand, eyes burning.
Prolix rolled to his feet, blood in his mouth, eyes blazing.
The system pulsed in the corner of his vision.
>Combat Encounter Initiated: Sundered Pact – Pirate Mutiny<
>Enemy Faction: Crimson Wake<
>Objective: Protect the Vermillion Troupe<
>Optional: Secure or Sabotage the Ship’s Core<
>Rain – Accuracy reduced (minor)<
>Slippery Deck – Agility check required for high-speed movement<
You may call on hidden allies. Tems will answer once.
Another pirate charged him — axe raised.
Prolix ducked low, yanked a gadget from his satchel — a tangle of soul-thread and leywire — and slammed it to the deck.
It detonated in a bloom of shimmering force, flinging the attacker backward in a tangled heap.
His breathing came fast now, heartbeat thundering in his ears like a second storm.
But still he moved.
Still he fought.
Because they weren’t taking his people.
Not while he had breath. Not while he could build.
As the Distant Reverie listed hard into another surge, the battle sprawled across her deck — pirates and protectors locked in rain-slick combat.
Above them, the fractured sky crackled.
Below them, the ship screamed with secrets.
And in the heart of it all, ProlixalParagon raised his voice into the storm.
“WE HOLD THIS DECK!”
The deck had become a crucible of chaos — steel clashing, ropes snapping, the storm howling overhead like a beast denied its kill.
Blood slicked the wood. Mana flickered through the air like fireflies made of pain. Somewhere behind him, a child cried out and was silenced by Nara’s embrace. Ralyria’s power conduit sparked blue fire as she drove a pirate back with her halberd's haft, voice fractured by static.
And ProlixalParagon…
He stood near the mainmast, surrounded.
Three pirates closed in — coordinated, fast, blades in hand, eyes gleaming with the cold certainty of a crew who had done this before.
He wouldn’t win a straight fight.
Not like this.
Not on their terms.
So he didn’t fight their way.
He fought his.
He yanked his satchel open with a trembling claw and pulled free the prototype he’d been too cautious to test:
A dense, fist-sized sphere of obsidian-veined alloy etched with spiraling rune-lattices — unstable, unfinished, and infused with his own soul-thread, void-aspect, and metal resonance.
The Cathexis Core.
It pulsed erratically in his hand — not alive, but listening.
And it would do exactly what he feared.
Break everything.
And make something new.
Kaelthari caught his eye from across the battle — her blade coated in blood, two pirates at her feet.
She saw the device.
Her eyes narrowed.
Then… she nodded.
Do it.
Prolix slammed the Cathexis Core against the deck with both hands and snarled a command in broken Tinkersign:
“EXECUTE. FORGE. FRACTURE.”
The orb cracked.
The runes blazed.
The air tore.
The Distant Reverie screamed.
The storm froze mid-howl.
And reality bent inward.
<(Anomaly Trigger Detected)>
>Initiating Emergency Pocket Space Reconfiguration…>
>INSTANT DUNGEON CREATED: (Vessel of the Fractured Deep)<
>Scale: Mobile / Tier-Skewed<
>Environment: Layered Maritime Constructs<
>Anomaly Depth: 3<
>Warning: Entity Dedisco is aware.<
>Objective: Restore Stability, Seize Control<
>Time Limit: Until Mana Core Overload<
The Distant Reverie was no longer on the sea.
Or perhaps the sea had come inside.
The deck warped beneath their feet — planks shifting into interlocked, rune-laced panels that glowed with sullen light. The masts twisted upward like spires of bone and metal, sails tattered but alive, twitching in winds that didn’t blow.
Fog rose around the wagons like incense from fractured altars.
The pirates recoiled, blades raised.
The Troupe rallied, instinct rising through fear.
And ProlixalParagon stepped forward — eyes glowing gold, the void singing through his lattice, his voice low and absolute:
“Now we play my game.”