THE BONE LANTERN
The sea was still. Too still.Ren leaned over the rail of The Siren's Mercy, staring into waters that should've been choppy with morning winds. Instead, the surface lay flat as glass, reflecting her face back at her with eerie precision. Even the creak of the ship's mast had gone quiet. Behind her, the crew moved with caution. No shouting, no songs. Just silence and waiting. Everyone could feel it the shift in the air, like the ocean was holding its breath.
Then came the whisper.
Not words. Not even a sound. Just a feeling like the back of her neck tightening, like someone watching from deep below. Ren stepped back from the rail and turned. Verek stood at the helm, eyes scanning the horizon.
"You feel it too?" she asked. He didn't answer. But his grip on the wheel tightened. Mist began to roll in not thick like fog, but thin and low, skimming the deck like smoke from an unseen fire. The sky darkened, though no clouds had moved in.
Then, from the crow's nest, a voice shouted:
"Lantern off the port bow!"
Every head turned.
Out in the mist, bobbing like a lonely star, was a faint blue light too dim to be flame, too solid to be illusion. It pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat.
Verek's voice cut through the air. "Drop sails! Brace the hull! Do not approach!" But the ship didn't listen. The Mercy groaned like something waking from sleep. The wheel jerked in Verek's hands, and the sails turned of their own accord. The ship moved slow, steady, deliberate toward the light.
"The sea's pulling us!" someone shouted.
"No," Verek snarled. "The lantern is."
Ren pushed through the crew to the railing again, squinting into the mist.
"What is it?" she asked.
Verek's eyes were hard. "A bone lantern. Worn by ships that sail the Hollow Current."
Ren's blood chilled.
"Then that means"
"They see us."
Ten minutes later, the Mercy drifted within sight of the source.
It was a ship but barely. Half-rotted, its sails tattered and blackened by fire, it looked like it had risen straight from the ocean floor. Seaweed hung from its mast. The hull was patched with coral. Its figurehead was broken, replaced with a twisted jawbone bolted in place.
And hanging from the bow, swinging gently, was the lantern. It was shaped from bones ribs, vertebrae, a skull at the base and inside, a blue flame floated without oil or wick.
No crew moved on deck. No sound came from the ship. It drifted beside them like a ghost.
Ren turned to Verek.
"They're not boarding us?"
He shook his head grimly. "No. They're waiting."
"For what?"
"Permission."
Ren didn't understand until a voice spoke behind her.
"You brought me to them, Captain. That was the deal."
She turned.
The speaker stood barefoot on the deck. Young perhaps sixteen but his eyes were wrong. They were solid black, like wet stones. His skin shimmered faintly, as though covered in fish-scale runes that pulsed with blue light.
"Who are you?" Ren asked.
He smiled. "I'm no one."
Verek stepped between them. "His name is Kael. He came to us in a barrel three days ago. No memory. No hunger. No breath. But he knew about the Sea That Ends."
Ren's stomach turned. "You kept that from me?"
"I didn't trust him," Verek said. "Still don't."
Kael stepped forward. "You shouldn't."
And then he jumped.
Ren rushed to the rail in time to see the boy land with impossible grace on the deck of the bone ship. The lantern brightened instantly.
A sound rose from below deck low and gurgling, like something wet learning to speak.
And then, slowly, a figure rose from the depths of the other ship.
It wasn't human.
It had once been, maybentall and broad but its skin was bloated and gray, eyes glowing faintly green, hair floating upward as if still underwater. Barnacles clung to its arms. And where its mouth should have been, there was only a gaping, tooth-lined wound.
Ren stepped back instinctively.
Verek didn't blink.
"That's a drowned captain," he said. "Bound to the Hollow Current."
Ren felt her fingers twitch toward her pendant.
Kael turned from the creature to face them. His voice echoed unnaturally now, as if it came from inside the sea itself.
> "You seek the Sea That Ends.
Then come.
But leave behind your name.
And your fear.
And your hope."
Ren's pendant pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
And without meaning to, she answered.
"I come not to kneel, but to remember."
Kael tilted his head. The drowned captain stepped aside.
A plank extended between the ships.
Ren looked at Verek. "Are you coming?"
The captain shook his head. "This part's for you."
"Why?"
"Because only those the sea remembers can walk its true path. And it remembers you."
Ren swallowed hard and stepped forward.
The plank groaned under her boots, but held. Mist curled around her legs like fingers. The blue flame flickered as she approached.
And then she crossed.
Onto the ship of bone. The moment she set foot on the deck, something changed.
She could no longer hear the crew shouting. No more waves. No more sky. Only silence, and the soft whisper of water dripping below.
Kael stood beside her. The drowned captain melted back into shadow.
"Where are we?" Ren asked.
Kael raised his hand.
And the sea opened.
Not physically but in her mind. A vision crashed into her like a wave.
She saw a palace beneath the ocean, carved from obsidian and coral. She saw a god made of storms, bound in chains of salt. She saw her brother alive kneeling before a throne of teeth.
Then it was gone.
She staggered. Her hands trembled.
Kael's voice was calm.
"You are the key. The one who can wake him. Or kill him."
"Kill who?" Ren whispered.
Kael smiled.
"The Sea That Ends."