The sea was a liar.
It whispered calm while plotting chaos, and Yusuf had spent most of his life deciphering its moods. But nothing—no storm, no leviathan tale from the taverns, no cursed wreck he'd pulled timber from—prepared him for the unnatural stillness that cloaked the Reine des Mers as she slipped into deeper waters.
The ship did not creak like others. Her sails did not strain. She glided across the waves as though repelled by them, moved by something beneath or within. A ship unmoored from natural law.
Below deck, Yusuf moved like a stranger in a haunted house. The crew gave him wide berth—not out of malice, but superstition. A shipwright aboard a ghost ship was as unsettling as a preacher in a whorehouse.
He found Amina sitting in the map room, the lanternlight catching the edge of her curved blade where it leaned beside her. Charts sprawled across the table, but they were no navigational maps. These were etched in coded glyphs, lines like veins running between symbols of war, prophecy, and blood.
"You never told me what the wheel was made for," Yusuf said.
She looked up slowly. "It doesn't steer the ship."
He waited.
"It binds it," she said. "To this world."
Silence followed. He exhaled through his nose and sat across from her.
"And this crew? Who the hell are they?"
Amina allowed herself a small, knowing smile. "Some are alive. Most are not. All are bound to the sea in one way or another. And every one of them has a reason to hate the Eye."
That name again—the Eye. The unseen force that Rouen spat like a curse. The one that sent signals through harbor bells and killed in silence.
"You know they're going to come for us," Yusuf said.
"They already have."
Before he could ask, a bell rang above deck. Not a signal—but a cry. One of alarm.
They raced up the companionway. Night still ruled, the moon low behind choking clouds. Ahead, flames danced on the horizon. A ship burned, far off but fast approaching. Or drifting.
Rouen stood at the prow, telescope to his eye. "Fuck me," he muttered. "It's the Caligar. She was in port two nights ago."
Yusuf took the glass. What he saw chilled him. The Caligar was adrift, her sails in ribbons, smoke rising from her hull. No movement on the deck. But her figurehead—once a proud angel with a crown of coral—had been hacked clean off.
"No lifeboats," Yusuf said.
"No survivors," Rouen replied.
"What did this?"
"Not what," Amina said. "Who."
And then they saw it.
Behind the Caligar, emerging from the smoke like a shark from surf, another ship—sleek, dark, and predatory. Its flag bore a single eye, painted in blood-red.
"Corsaire hunter," Rouen growled. "Fucking Eye's private hounds."
Yusuf's stomach tightened. "They're baiting us."
Rouen grinned like a dog shown its leash. "Then let's not disappoint."
The battle came fast.
The Eye's vessel closed distance faster than wind allowed. Yusuf had never seen sails catch air so violently, unnaturally. Figures moved aboard her deck like shadows unmoored from flesh—faster, wrong.
Cannon fire erupted.
Yusuf dove for cover as the deck splintered beside him. The Reine des Mers retaliated—her gunners calm and surgical. Where most ships would flinch, she danced. Moved.
Rouen barked orders laced with venom. "Aim low! Gut her! Amina, to the boarders!"
Amina was already vaulting the port rail, sword in hand.
Yusuf rose, heart hammering, fury rising. He spotted the enemy's helmsman—tall, draped in crimson, his face covered with a silver mask shaped like an eye.
As the ships collided, boarding planks crashed down. The two crews met in a chorus of steel and screams.
Yusuf grabbed a fallen blade. He didn't know how to fight—not like them. But he swung. Survived. Watched.
One of the Eye's men lunged for him. Yusuf ducked, drove the blade upward—and felt the sick crunch of ribs. The man collapsed.
But he wasn't dead. His eyes opened—black, empty, wide.
"Your wheel," he hissed. "Should have stayed broken."
Then he smiled. And exploded.
Yusuf woke in darkness.
Half the deck was gone. Amina knelt beside him, bloodied but alive. "You still breathing?"
He coughed. "Barely."
Rouen dragged himself across the ruin. "They'll be back. That was just a fucking warning."
Yusuf looked around. Half their crew gone. The Reine wounded.
And carved into the shattered wood of the wheelhouse—three words, burned deep:
The Eye Opens.