Chapter 13: The Spirit Saga
The cold was a knife in his joints. The bell’s toll was inside his skull now, a vibration he felt in his teeth. Caelum swam, each stroke a fight against a weariness that went deeper than muscle. The fog had thinned, replaced by a strange, subaqueous glow that rose from the depths beneath him. The water here was the color of tarnished copper, lit from below by a sickly green luminescence.
He was in the trench.
The current the siren had promised was real—a silent, powerful river within the sea, pulling him eastward. It was the only thing keeping him afloat. He rode it, his head just above the surface, breathing in ragged gulps. The bell tolled again, a long, slow note that seemed to still the very waves.
Then the whispers started.
Not in the air. In the water. They travelled up through his skin, into the marrow of his bones. Wordless at first—just feelings of loss, of vertigo, of a falling that never ended. Then they shaped into voices.
…my ship, the Wavecutter, she went down in the gale…
…the lantern went out, and I stepped right off the deck into the black…
…hold me, the water’s so cold, please hold me…
Caelum shut his eyes, kept kicking. “Not real,” he choked out, saltwater on his lips.
A hand, solid and freezing, closed around his ankle.
He was yanked under.
The world turned green and slow. He opened his eyes, burning from the salt. Figures drifted in the eternal gloom, translucent and shapeless, but their faces were horrifyingly clear. A man with a beard full of bubbles, his eyes wide with the surprise of his last breath. A young woman clutching a locket, her hair floating like seaweed. They reached for him, dozens of them, their mouths moving in silent pleas.
Their voices crashed into his mind.
You can stay. A sailor’s rough cadence. Leave the air behind. It’s easier down here.
You killed them. This one was accusatory, sharp. A voice that sounded like Thorne’s first mate. You charted the course. You led them to the island. Their blood is in the water with you. Why do you get to breathe?
I’m afraid. A younger voice, trembling. One of the Dawn Chaser’s deckhands. It’s so dark. Don’t leave me here alone.
The hands were everywhere, pulling at his clothes, his limbs, tangling in his hair. They weren’t trying to drown him. They were trying to replace him. To make him one of the permanent residents, so one of them could flee to the surface and gasp a final, imaginary breath. The psychological weight of it was worse than any physical force. Their despair was an anchor.
He thrashed, a burst of panic giving him strength. He kicked a specter in the chest—his foot met a strange, spongy resistance—and broke the surface for half a second, dragging in a desperate half-breath before he was pulled under again.
This time, the faces were familiar.
The cook, his kindly face drawn in a rictus of pain. The helmsman, a gaping hole in his chest where a Valdris spear had taken him. They didn’t speak. They just looked at him, their expressions a cocktail of betrayal and vacant sorrow.
Caelum’s will faltered. He was so tired. Letting go would be so simple. To stop fighting. To join the choir of the regretful. He saw Elara’s face again, but it was distant, like a painting viewed from the wrong end of a tunnel. The memory had no power here.
His kicking slowed. Water flooded his nose.
Then, a different grip. Solid. Warm. It clamped onto the collar of his soaked tunic and hauled.
He burst from the water, coughing, vomiting sea. He was being dragged onto a shelf of wet, black rock that rose from the trench wall. He collapsed on it, heaving, the voices reduced to a murmur at the edge of his hearing.
“Get up.”
The voice was dry. Familiar. Impossibly annoyed.
Caelum rolled onto his back, blinking water from his eyes.
Arlo sat on a rock beside him. He looked exactly as he had in the tomb: the same leathers, the same sun-bleached hair plastered to his forehead. Even the same casual slouch. The only thing missing was the mortal wound in his gut. He wasn’t glowing or spectral. He just looked… present. And pissed.
“You look like shit,” Arlo said.
Caelum could only stare, his brain scrabbling for purchase. “You’re not here.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Arlo picked up a pebble and tossed it into the green glow. It didn’t splash. “This is the waiting room. The ‘in-between.’ Pretty crappy decor, if you ask me.” He looked at Caelum, and the sarcasm faded, replaced by something harder. “You can’t stay here. This place eats people who stop moving.”
“They’re all here,” Caelum whispered, his voice ravaged. “The crew. They’re… angry.”
“They’re dead. They’re allowed to be pissy.” Arlo sighed, a real, frustrated sound. “Listen to me. This isn’t a haunt. This is a current. A bad one. You’re in it. You have to get out.”
“I left you.” The words tore out of Caelum, raw and ugly. “I made the call and I left you in that hole.”
Arlo was quiet for a moment. The bell tolled, a shiver through the rock. “Yeah. You did.” He met Caelum’s gaze, and his eyes were the same vibrant, alive blue. “You had the stone. You had a job. It was the right call.”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“It never does.” Arlo leaned forward. “My mother didn’t send her only kid and her best navigator on a summer cruise. She sent us because failing wasn’t an option. You failing now? That makes my death a trivia question. ‘What dumb prince died for nothing on a rock?’ I hate that. So get up.”
A wave of grief, sharp and fresh, threatened to pull Caelum back under. “I can’t.”
“You can.” Arlo stood. He walked to the edge of the rock shelf, looking down into the glowing trench. The lost souls swirled below, faces upturned. “They want your breath because they remember what it was like. You still have it. Use it.” He turned, and a faint, lopsided smile touched his mouth. “You always knew the way home, Cael. Even without the stars. Especially without them. Trust that.”
He reached down to his belt, unbuckled something. It was a ship’s lantern, small and made of tarnished brass. It hadn’t been there a moment before. He struck his thumb against the striker—a spark flashed, and a clean, white flame kindled inside the glass, unaffected by the damp, salty air.
“This’ll burn for a while,” Arlo said, his voice quieter. “It’s not much. But they don’t like the light. They’ll keep their distance. Follow the bell sound. The current is strongest where it rings. It’ll spit you out near the Atlas shoals.”
He held out the lantern.
Caelum pushed himself up onto his elbows, then to his knees. He took it. The brass was warm. The light didn’t chase away the green gloom, but it pushed it back, creating a small, firm circle of yellow in the world of wavering grey and viridian.
“Arlo, I…”
“Don’t.” Arlo shook his head, the smile gone, replaced by a prince’s solemnity. “No goodbyes. You don’t say goodbye in a place like this. You just go.”
He took a step back, towards the edge. His form began to soften at the edges, like ink in water.
“Tell my mother,” Arlo said, his voice beginning to echo, to blend with the whispers of the trench, “that I didn’t trip.”
And he was gone. Not vanishing, but dissolving, becoming part of the mist that clung to the rocks.
Caelum was alone. But he wasn’t.
The lantern’s flame held steady. In its light, the reaching hands that had begun to creep over the ledge of rock flinched back, shrinking into the shadows. Their whispers became just noise again, a static hiss at the periphery.
He stood, his legs trembling. He looked east, into the throat of the trench. The bell tolled once more, a deep, directional thrum that he felt in the rock beneath his feet.
He clutched the warm lantern. He stepped off the rock shelf, back into the current.
The green water swallowed his legs, his waist, but the circle of light moved with him, a tiny, defiant sun in the sea of souls. The hands still reached, but they stopped short of the glow. The accusing voices fell silent as he passed.
He didn’t swim. He let the current take him, holding the lantern aloft, his eyes fixed on the nothingness ahead, following the sound of the drowned bell. Towards home.