Amina bled silence.
She sat cross-legged in the dim light of the Reine des Mers' map room, her fingers still stained with ash and ink. The symbol she had traced—a jagged circle splitting two halves of the known seas—smoldered faintly on the old vellum beneath her. It was the Seal of Binding. A glyph even her grandmother had only whispered of.
Yusuf stood across from her, watching the flickering candlelight dance across her bruised face. He didn't interrupt. Not yet.
Outside, the aftermath of the storm and the battle with the Eye's first emissaries still clung to the ship like salt. The deck was stained. The sails torn. Old Marek's body had been wrapped in sailcloth and given to the sea hours ago.
"I remember him," Yusuf said finally. "Marek. He told me once that the Eye sees clearer in death. I thought he was just drunk."
Amina didn't look up. "He wasn't wrong."
Yusuf's jaw tightened. He crossed the room, stepping over scattered scrolls. One parchment showed the coast of Orashi—an island nation said to be lost to the Eye a generation ago. Another depicted an arcane leyline spiraling beneath Qasr Al-Bahr.
"What is it, really?" he asked. "The Eye. What does it want?"
Amina finally looked at him. Her eyes were hollow, and something ancient swam in them.
"There are two kinds of power in the world, Yusuf," she said. "One that binds, and one that breaks. The Eye is the third kind. It watches."
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
"It waits until the balance is off. Then it opens."
Yusuf recalled something his grandfather once muttered while carving a rudder: "The sea punishes those who forget her watchers."
"And this prophecy," Yusuf pressed, "what does it say?"
Amina rose slowly, her body stiff with strain. "It's fragmented. The part I've translated says: 'When flame returns to the deep, and the bound ones stir, the Eye shall open—not to watch, but to unmake.'"
He exhaled. "And we're in the middle of that prophecy."
"Worse." She looked toward the hull. "We're the ones accelerating it."
Footsteps echoed down the stairs, sharp and metallic. Rouen entered, his brass arm still dripping with dark fluid from the repairs he'd helped make topside.
"Speak of unmaking and I come to find you whispering over cursed maps," he said. "Either we're sealing this thing or steering straight into its throat."
Amina turned toward him. "We need to go to Iskar."
Rouen scoffed. "That's madness. It's a ruin."
"A ruin built on one of the last surviving anchor-wards. We'll need it if the Eye opens fully."
Yusuf felt the pull again—the terrible clarity that came before a decision no sane man should make.
Rouen leaned against the doorframe. "Then I'll tell the crew. But if anyone else dies for your riddles and ghosts, Amina…"
"I know," she said.
He left without another word.
Yusuf turned to her. "There's more, isn't there?"
She nodded. "The mask-wearers. The Eye's envoys. I've seen one before."
He felt the air shift.
"In my first life," Amina whispered, "I was one of them."
Silence swallowed the room.
Then, from the corner of the map table, the seal glowed.
A warning.
The Eye was watching again.