For three hours, Argent’s Shadow had been slicing through the waters, leaving behind a pearlescent trail of moonlight. Adiar, leaning against a mast engraved with ancient elven runes, traced an attack plan onto a tar-blackened board with his dagger. The crew nodded, their gazes flickering between the gold-filled sack by the helm—their eyes gleamed far brighter than the promised reward.
"I’ll spend my share on the girls from the Silver Sails!" roared a young sailor, adjusting the holster of his pistols.
"You’d be better off buying a brain—if you find a shop that sells one!" scoffed a girl with a sea serpent tattoo winding around her neck.
Laughter rippled across the deck, mingling with the cries of seagulls. Adiar clenched his fists—their foolishness hung in the air like the stench of rotten fish.
At the ship’s prow, beneath the figurehead of a weeping wolf, Rachel found her captain, his fingers nervously turning an elven pendant.
"Do you not even trust the stars?" she tried to melt the ice with a jest.
Steel sang—its edge halted a mere inch from her throat.
"One more step, and it will be your last breath," Adiar’s voice scraped like icebergs grinding in a storm.
When the deck fell silent, the boy unrolled a map marked Argent Depths. Beneath three kilometers of crushing water, the Answer awaited.
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Midnight met them with the toll of the ship’s bell. From the ink-black depths, tentacles thick as towers coiled around the vessel like a monstrous kraken’s embrace. The beast—living nightmare of legend—unhinged its maw, revealing crystalline teeth that shimmered like cursed gems.
"Fire!" Adiar’s blade slashed through the air, and the sky erupted with flaming comets.
The crew moved as a single, ruthless machine:
— Rachel scorched patches of viscous slime with torches of blue flame.
— Simon’s twisted fingers guided the cannons, each shot finding its mark.
— The boy-captain danced upon the thrashing limbs, leaving jagged stone spikes in his wake.
When one of the tentacles snatched a deckhand, Adiar did not turn—another red smear on the water was merely a new stroke in this bloody canvas. His conjured boulder struck the beast’s eye, detonating in a storm of shattered granite. The final lightning strike seared an elven rune onto the kraken’s scales—Vengeance.
At dawn, the captain left a parchment on the helm. When Simon read it, his wooden prosthetic trembled against the deck:
"The ship is my altar. Move it, and your guts will become ropes, your screams the creaking of rigging. Elyusei."
Then, without hesitation, Adiar plunged into the abyss. The water-bubble spell shimmered like a fallen star, lighting his descent toward the ruins, where murals of dancing elves still adorned the ancient walls.
