Cold.

  It struck him like a thousand knives, gnawing through flesh and bone, devouring warmth with an insatiable hunger.

  Mathias woke, and he was drowning.

  The depths of the Ceruvian Ocean stretched endlessly in every direction, dark and suffocating. The weight of the sea crushed his chest, the pressure mounting, his heartbeat a frantic drum.

  Where—?

  Fragments of memory splintered through his mind—the storm, the leviathan, the ship splitting apart like rotten wood beneath a titan’s wrath.

  The wreck.

  The wreck—

  The others. There was no sign of them, the woman, the mercenary. Gone.

  Through the murk, movement—a silhouette thrashing violently against the pull of the tide.

  Mathias kicked his legs, forcing his body to move, the cold turning his limbs to iron. His lungs screamed. He reached—

  A hand, pale and desperate, seized his wrist.

  The exile. Another ‘passenger’ on the ship. Rumours were mentioned about him too during the voyage. Though he’d kept to himself.

  A man, younger than Mathias had first thought, barely more than a year or two older than himself. Dark hair tangled in the currents, his sun-bronzed skin pallid beneath the deep. His eyes were wide with panic, bubbles of air escaping from his mouth as he struggled.

  Beyond him, another shape, still and drifting.

  Mathias’ heart lurched.

  The scholar. Another passenger on the ship, one he had seen only once before, she spent most of her time in some kind of private quarters.

  Her body hung weightless in the abyss, dark hair spiraling around her face like strands of seaweed. Unconscious. Dying.

  Mathias didn’t think.

  He moved.

  A sharp pull, dragging the exile toward him, forcing the man’s flailing movements into stillness. The weight of the water fought against him, slowing every motion to a crawl. His chest burned. He swam.

  Kicking forward, Mathias reached the scholar, grabbing the collar of her soaked tunic.

  Up. Up. Up.

  They burst through the surface, air slamming into their lungs like a fist. Mathias gasped, choking, his arms wrapped tightly around the scholar’s limp form. The exile surfaced beside him, coughing violently, his body trembling from the cold.

  The ocean was a churning maw, the remnants of the ship scattered in every direction. Broken beams, shattered planks, cargo barrels bobbing in the furious tide.

  Mathias scanned the wreckage with burning eyes, seeking—

  There.

  A half-splintered piece of the hull, floating.

  Mathias pushed himself toward it, the scholar dragging against his weight, his limbs raw with exhaustion. He was going to sink. He was going to die—

  The exile reached first, clinging onto the edge.

  "Here! Rak'han!" he rasped, extending his arm.

  Mathias gritted his teeth, the saltwater stinging his eyes.

  He threw the scholar toward him. The exile caught her, struggling to haul her onto the broken wood. Mathias followed, gripping the slick surface, heaving himself onto the wreckage with the last strength in his body.

  They collapsed, gasping, alive.

  For a moment, nothing but the sound of their ragged breathing and the relentless crashing of waves.

  Then—

  The scholar coughed.

  Mathias turned sharply, rolling onto his side as the woman choked up seawater, her body trembling violently.

  "She’s breathing," the exile muttered.

  Mathias nodded, pressing his forehead against the damp wood, his body aching from the effort. His fingers trembled.

  They were alive.

  But for how long?

  The Black Coast, Nesrath’s Edge

  The tide dragged them to land.

  At some point, the currents had begun to shift, pulling them eastward, toward jagged cliffs of blackened stone. The wreckage scraped across the surf, crashing against the ashen sands of the shore.

  Mathias stirred first, the world spinning as he rolled off the wooden plank and collapsed into the sand. The exile groaned beside him, muttering curses between ragged breaths. The scholar remained motionless, her body shivering under the waning moonlight.

  Mathias forced himself upright, his legs shaking as he pushed onto his knees.

  The shore stretched into an endless, lifeless expanse. No trees, no vegetation, only dunes of fine, gray and black sand rolling toward the horizon. To the west, jagged cliffs rose like the broken teeth of some ancient beast, dark stone glistening with the remnants of the passing moons. The sun would slowly greet them

  Beyond that—silence.

  The continent of Nesrath was deathly quiet. The storm had waned.

  It was too quiet.

  The exile sat up, rubbing at his face. A young man, not much older than Mathias himself. He had darker, tanned skin. He wore ragged pants and a tunic, and light leathers across his chest. Black hair, a light stubble and vibrant amber eyes. And his ears seemed to be cut at the corners.

  "Where did the winds take us?" he muttered.

  Mathias swallowed, tasting blood. Taking in the coastline. The darkened rocks and boulders, the black sand, all covered in ash.

  "Welcome," he rasped, his voice hoarse, “to the Cursed Lands.”

  The exile let out a bitter laugh, running a hand through his soaked hair. "Great. Fantastic. Because the sea was not already trying to kill us.”

  Mathias ignored him, shifting toward the scholar, checking her pulse. Steady. Weak, but steady.

  She would live. For now.

  The silence between them stretched, thick as the mist rolling in from the tide. The exile sat hunched over, arms resting on his knees, his breath still ragged from their near-drowning. Mathias leaned back on his hands, staring up at the storm-laden sky, the aftershocks of exhaustion weighing heavy on his limbs. The scholar—he still didn’t know her name—lay unmoving beside them, her breathing slow but steady.

  Mathias exhaled through his nose, rubbing the salt from his face.

  “So,” he muttered, voice raw. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

  The exile let out a sharp exhale, something between a scoff and a tired laugh. He glanced sideways, dark eyes still glinting with the last remnants of fight-or-flight.

  “Did not give it,” he said, cracking his knuckles absently. “A dead name is a heavy chain. Not like names matter much when you are fish food.”

  Mathias arched a brow. “We’re not fish food.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “Give it time.”

  Mathias snorted. Despite the ache in his ribs and the cold biting into his skin, there was something oddly grounding about the exchange.

  The exile sighed, finally shifting his weight. “Vael,” he said after a pause. “They call me Vael.”

  Mathias nodded. “Mathias.”

  Vael tilted his head. “What is your story, Mathias?”

  Mathias hesitated.

  How much did he want to say? Perhaps keeping his story to himself would be the smarter choice. He’d already spilled too much to the others.

  Vael didn’t press, but his eyes carried a sharpness beneath the exhaustion. Not unfriendly, but not naive either. He had the look of someone who had been through too much to accept vague half-truths.

  Mathias exhaled, dropping his gaze to the sand. “I was supposed to be dead,” he admitted.

  “Right. Well. That is vague as hell.”

  “I mean it literally. I was on the gallows not long before I stepped onto that ship.”

  Vael gave a low whistle. “That so? What did you do?”

  Mathias hesitated, then smirked dryly. “Would you believe me if I said nothing?”

  “No. But I will humor you.”

  “I stole something.”

  Vael snorted. “Hah! So you are criminal.”

  “Says the exile.”

  “Fair,” Vael conceded with a lazy shrug. “Go on.”

  Mathias ran a hand through his damp hair. “It was an accident,” he admitted. “I was trying to lift a few coins, maybe some rations, roasted duck to be exact—whatever I could carry.” His voice darkened. “Didn’t realize the man I picked was carrying something else. Something… arcane.”

  Vael frowned slightly.

  Mathias clenched his jaw. “I triggered something. A reaction. I don’t know what I did, but magic flared up around me. And then—” He inhaled sharply. “And then the Templars saw.”

  Vael’s expression tightened.

  “Holy warriors don’t take kindly to magic outside their control,” Mathias muttered. “Next thing I knew, I was in chains, waiting to die.”

  Vael tapped a finger against his knee. “But you did not.”

  Mathias shook his head. “No. Something—someone—intervened. The rope snapped before I could hang. Magic again.” His hands curled into fists. “I don’t know if it was my own, or if something else was at work.”

  Vael studied him, then exhaled. “That is rough. And lucky, Rak'han.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Vael was quiet for a moment. Then, to Mathias’ surprise, he lay back on the sand, staring up at the swirling storm clouds high above.

  “We are a cursed bunch, are we not?” Vael murmured.

  “What?”

  Vael shrugged. “Think about it. A thief who accidentally dabbled in magic, a scholar who washed up in the worst place in the world, and me—well. Let me just say I did not exactly leave my last home on good terms.”

  Mathias considered him. “What did you do?”

  Vael smirked. “You will have to buy me a drink before I start spilling my tragic backstory.”

  Mathias huffed a quiet laugh. “If this is indeed the coast I think it is… Then we’re on Nesrath. I doubt we’ll find a tavern anytime soon.”

  “Then I guess you will have to wait. Rak'han.”

  "What's that mean?" Mathias asked.

  "It means... eh, burned one," he pointed at Mathias' wrist.

  "Right, it's a reminder."

  "For what?" Vael asked.

  "To never return."

  "Every exile leaves footprints."

  "And what's that supposed to mean? Everyone leaves footprints."

  "It means that your past will always follow you." Vael groaned.

  A strange sense of camaraderie settled between them, fragile but real. They had nothing in common except misfortune, but in a place like this, perhaps that was enough.

  The wind howled over the sand, carrying with it the scent of something wrong and the faintest sound of movement. Something distant, yet close enough to linger.

  Rot. Decay.

  The exile stiffened beside him. He smelled it too.

  Mathias turned his head—And froze. Beyond the dunes, barely visible against the darkened landscape, a shape moved.

  Not an animal. Not a person. Something else.

  The exile cursed. “What is that stench?”

  Mathias' fingers curled into the sand, his breath caught in his throat. They had survived the storm.

  But now—Now the real nightmare began.

  Mathias tensed. Vael sat up sharply. Their reprieve was over. The silence of Nesrath had shifted. Something was coming.

  The air had changed.

  It was subtle—so subtle that at first, Mathias thought he imagined it. The wind, which had been whispering softly through the dunes, hesitated. As if the land itself was holding its breath.

  Vael was already pushing himself up, his posture shifting from exhaustion to readiness. His hand hovered near the knife strapped to his belt—a small, unimpressive blade, but a weapon nonetheless. Mathias followed suit, his limbs still aching, still waterlogged, but now thrumming with adrenaline.

  Behind them, the scholar—who had remained quiet until now—finally stirred, groaning softly. Mathias cast a quick glance at her. She was alive. For now.

  Then he heard it.

  A crack. Not loud, not forceful—just the soft, splintering sound of something fragile breaking underfoot.

  Too close.

  Vael heard it too. His gaze flickered towards the dunes ahead, where the sand rose in uneven ridges, casting jagged shadows in the dim morning light. The storm had passed, leaving the sky a sickly mix of gray and amber, the sun struggling to break through the haze.

  "No sun, no home." Vael muttered.

  Mathias reached for something—anything—to defend himself with. His fingers brushed against a driftwood plank, barely longer than his forearm, and he snatched it up like a lifeline. Not much, but better than nothing. The silence stretched. Then a low, rasping breath—inhuman and wrong—shuddered through the dunes.

  Mathias' stomach turned to ice. “I thought it passed us,” he whispered. They were not alone. A figure emerged from the dunes, moving in that slow, dreadful way that things only move when they should not still be standing.

  Mathias' grip tightened on the plank. He didn’t know what this was.

  He had heard stories though.

  "The Red Madness."

  The affliction that turned men into things—hollowed, mindless, crumbling mockeries of the living.

  Damned stories, he thought.

  The figure that stumbled into view had once been a man, but no longer. His flesh was cracked and brittle, veins replaced by jagged lines of deep crimson, pulsing dimly beneath his skin like dying embers. His eyes—if they could still be called that—were glossy, unfocused, staring into nothing.

  But worst of all was the way his body splintered as he moved—like stone under strain, as if his limbs had been reforged in something brittle, something wrong.

  Mathias' breath caught in his throat.

  “We’re dead.”

  Vael muttered another curse.

  The scholar let out a strangled gasp. “Do you think it heard us?”

  Then the thing lurched forward.

  A Desperate Fight

  It moved faster than it should have.

  One moment, it was dragging its ruined limbs through the sand—the next, it was lunging.

  Mathias barely had time to raise the plank before the creature was on him.

  “Don’t let it touch you!” The scholar’s voice came out a strained shout.

  It hit like a crumbling avalanche—not heavy, but strong in a way that defied its brittle appearance. Mathias staggered back, feet sliding against the damp sand, his arms burning with the effort of keeping the thing at bay.

  The plank splintered on impact.

  “Shit.”

  Vael moved first. His knife flashed—quick, practiced—and in the span of a heartbeat, the blade found the creature’s ribs.

  It did nothing.

  The thing jerked, unfazed, and its head snapped toward Vael with an unnatural crack.

  Mathias reacted on instinct.

  He didn’t know if it was his own power or something else, but the moment he felt the spark in his chest—that rush of something old and restless, something he had spent days trying to ignore—he reached for it.

  Entropy.

  The magic answered.

  A pulse of violet light crackled between Mathias’ fingers, weak, unrefined, but real. He shoved his hand forward, pressing it against the creature’s chest, and let the energy leak out.

  It wasn’t much. But it was enough.

  The thing jerked violently—as if something unseen had dug hooks into its flesh—and for the first time, it hesitated.

  Mathias didn’t waste the opportunity.

  “Vael, move!”

  Vael dropped low, yanking his knife free as he rolled away.

  Mathias forced more energy outward.

  The creature convulsed. Its body shuddered, twisted—and then, like cracked pottery giving way beneath too much strain, it collapsed inward. Its form shattered into a heap of brittle, bloodstained shards.

  Mathias fell to his knees.