The Horizon Talon slid free of dry dock with a quiet finality that felt like a blade slipping clean from its sheath.

  Fresh paint gleamed along her hull, a deep steel-blue kissed with silver trim, bright in the morning sun. The reinforced gun ports, the sharpened prow, and the new bracing along her sides were not ornamental. The Talon had been a survivor before. Now, she was a warship. Reborn and unapologetically dangerous.

  She floated proudly in the water, cutting a clean silhouette against the soot-stained skyline of Portland. Above her, gulls wheeled in the stiffening air, unaware they circled over something far more lethal than the fishing trawlers or salvage ships of the Tidebound Front.

  A line of sailors stood rigid along the deck, faces grim but taut with pride. Below, dockhands hustled to clear scaffolding. The caulk smell lingered on the planks like a memory already fading.

  Kade stood dockside, boots planted shoulder-width apart, cutlass belted at her side, hands resting idly near her hips. The soft rasp of rigging above and the creak of hullwood settling in water were familiar comforts. But her eyes stayed on the horizon and not the ship.

  "She’s sharp," Lawson said from behind her. "Sharper than she’s ever been."

  Kade didn’t turn. "She will. Question is who gets to be the first lesson."

  Captain Voss stepped beside her without a word, arms folded behind his back, expression unreadable as always. He watched his ship the way a father might watch a grown child walk into a bar full of knives. The wind teased his silver hair.

  Kade gave a quick salute. "You’re really going to try to get Burrell and Callan to play nice?"

  "I am."

  "You’re not dragging them into a negotiation. You’re dragging them into a cage match with PowerPoint slides."

  Voss’s mouth twitched. Not a smile, exactly. Just the idea of one tired around the edges.

  "It’s not hatred," he said. "Not really. It’s grief. Unprocessed, weaponized grief. Everyone lost something when the cataclysm hit. Family. Cities. Their sense of order. You take people used to filing taxes and posting memes, then drop them in a world where the walls bleed and monsters want to eat them. It breaks something."

  Kade looked at him, the wind catching strands of her hair. "Sure. But just because two dogs were both kicked doesn’t mean they won’t bite each other’s throats to get the last bone."

  "True," Voss said. "But if they don’t learn to share, they’ll starve. Or worse, someone else takes the bone entirely."

  "I'm not thrilled about leaving you here," Kade said. "I wouldn't put it past any of these idiots to do something stupid."

  "Half the Marines and I are staying here. Captain’s not going unguarded," Lawson said.

  "I don’t need babysitting, Lieutenant," Voss said mildly.

  "You’re not getting it," Lawson replied. "Just insurance."

  Kade said nothing at first. Her eyes took in the lines of the ship, the marines prepping for departure on the decks, the riggers tightening the last bolts along the bow chaser. She wanted all of them. Every blade and boot, every trained killer with a sharp weapon and a sharper set of instincts. The Talon was about to push into territory that they hadn't yet encountered.

  But Lawson wasn’t wrong.

  The summit was a powder keg dressed up in committee badges and ration trays. Eventually, someone was going to tire of talking and reach for something sharper. When that happened, Voss would need more than words to walk away clean. Still, she knew Lawson could handle it.

  "Good call," she said. "Just don’t let them rope you into a uniform inspection."

  "So," said Bishop, joining the trio, "are we doing the part where Kade takes command again, or are we skipping straight to the tearful goodbyes?"

  "You’re still mad I didn’t let you keep the chair warm longer last time."

  "I polished that chair," Bishop said. "With dignity. Grace. And my own ass."

  "Poor chair," Kade said.

  They didn’t laugh exactly, but the tension bent just slightly.

  "Faction reps inbound," Lawson said, jerking his head toward the head of the pier. "Brace for disappointment."

  Three figures approached together. Two men and a woman walked behind an attaché with a clipboard and too much purpose in his stride. They weren’t speaking. Just moving in loose formation, their steps uneven, their gear mismatched. The group had the look of people who had all been told the same destination but very different reasons for going.

  The man looked like someone had challenged a forge to make a human. The man looked like he ate steel rebar for breakfast and belched I-beams. His arms bulged beneath a sleeveless jacket, the build you got from actual work, not gym mirrors. Across his back, a warhammer wider than Kade’s torso.

  Lawson eyed him as he stepped onto the dock. "That's Colt Darven," he said. "I met him the other day while scrounging for salvage. He’s not military, but I’ve seen him drag a rail axle one-handed."

  Kade studied Colt’s pack. Loose straps, barely enough gear. The hammer was real. The readiness wasn’t.

  "He’s going to get someone killed," she said flatly. "Who are the other two?"

  The man directly behind Colt looked like an actuary who’d taken a wrong turn at the cataclysm. No armor, no weapon, not even a decent coat. His boots showed scuffs in all the wrong places. He gave a nervous wave to no one in particular and almost tripped on a mooring line.

  The woman, by contrast, moved like a coiled snake. Leather armor molded to someone who’d earned its wear. A pistol, much like the one Kade wore, sat at her hip with a rapier on the other side. Her pack was strapped tight against her back with quick-release clasps. It was the setup you used when you expected to drop weight fast in a fight. A sharp departure from the way most academics carried theirs, flopping around like half-filled laundry bags.

  Kade’s eyes narrowed. "That one’s real."

  The attaché cleared his throat as they approached. "The Restoration Council presents its selected envoy, Mr. Levi Lennox."

  Levi adjusted his glasses as if on cue. Still not meeting anyone’s eyes.

  Kade stared at him. Then at the attaché.

  "They sent an accountant."

  Levi opened his mouth.

  "Don’t answer that."

  The attaché continued. "Ebonwake Institute is represented by Robin Cypress."

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Robin didn’t react. Just gave a small head jerk toward Kade and shifted her weight to keep eyes on the ship’s deck.

  Kade watched the three of them with a creeping unease that settled low in her gut.

  She wasn’t sure what worried her more. That none of them looked remotely like a soldier, or the nagging possibility that at least one of them didn’t need to.

  Every faction had an agenda. That much was certain. The Restoration Council pushed for structure and chain of command. Over at the Tidebound Front, they talked about freedom but meant control by a different name. Finally, the Ebonwake Conclave chased knowledge, or power, or both, depending on which part of the Institute signed the requisition forms. On paper, they were all aligned. Everyone wanted the second half of the artifact to protect the civilians. Off the record, Kade did not know what would happen once they actually got their hands on it.

  She glanced at Colt again. He had raw strength, sure, but probably no control. Levi looked like he’d faint if a rat barked at him. And Robin... she moved like someone who had survived more than one close call and didn’t feel the need to brag about it. She might be useful. Or she might be the sharpest knife hidden in the stack.

  Kade’s mission was simple on paper. Get in, retrieve the second piece, and bring everyone home. But these weren’t her people. They were passengers. Maybe ballast. Or maybe the reason none of them would come back.

  She kept her face unreadable as the last of them stepped into boarding range.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll kindly board. I'd like to be on our way," Kade said, gesturing up the gangplank.

  The moment stretched as dockhands stepped back. All three faction reps boarded the Talon without fanfare, shadowed by marines already settling them into quarters.

  Kade looked once more at the captain.

  "I still don’t like it. Leaving you here."

  "I trust you, Lieutenant."

  "That’s not what I said."

  "No. It’s what I said." He turned and walked away along with Lawson and several Marine guards.

  Kade watched until he disappeared behind a line of stacked crates.

  Then she turned sharply to head up the gangplank with Bishop and called, "All hands to cast off stations! Helm, take us out!"

  The call echoed. Ropes were pulled, cleats unlocked, shouted orders rippling down the line like a live current. The riggers scrambled up the lines, sails unfurling with practiced urgency.

  The Talon shifted gently, then steadily as the Tempest Mage stationed amidships raised her hands. A breeze unfurled like a slow exhale, catching the sails with precision.

  Lines were thrown free. The Horizon Talon creaked, surged forward, and glided from the dock.

  The Horizon Talon slid forward with growing confidence, sails catching the low conjured wind as if they’d been waiting for it. The hull eased out from between the piers with only the faintest brush of wake, like a beast finally unshackled but still under control. It was midmorning, and the city’s ruins slouched against the light behind them, blackened stone and twisted steel giving way to gray water and sharp sky.

  "We’re clear of dockside. Helm has the heading. Orders?" Bishop asked.

  "Straight line to Halfway Rock," Kade said. "I'd like to get there as quickly as possible with no detours."

  "Aye."

  Below them, the three observers from the separate factions were being led aft and below by a pair of marines, shadowed by a silent bosun’s mate. Colt had his warhammer balanced across one shoulder as if it were a length of pipe. Robin followed, already scanning bulkheads and footing. Levi looked like he was trying not to vomit.

  Kade kept her eyes off them. For now, they weren’t her problem. Not until they hit the dungeon.

  She took her place beside the helm, hands behind her back as she used her eyepatch to scan the horizon. The ship beneath her felt tight, tuned, lethal. Not a piece out of place. Sailors moved with a crisp efficiency of a crew that had come together under pressure to form something greater than the sum of its parts.

  The Talon held steady for nearly an hour, gliding through calm water and soft current with the precision that came from long drills and tighter discipline. Orders were few. Efficiency stayed high. But as the ship passed beyond the mouth of the bay and slipped into open sea, the rhythm aboard shifted. At first, the change was subtle. Voices grew quieter. Footsteps slowed. Glances drifted west and stayed there longer than they should have.

  Kade felt it in her spine before she registered the cause. The crew wasn’t afraid, not exactly. They stayed resolute and focused. But the closer they drew to the edge of the known, the sharper every sailor’s instincts became. These weren’t greenhands anymore. The Talon’s complement had bled and survived their way through the first waves of the cataclysm. They remembered what it felt like when the sea itself turned hostile. That moment when the world shifted under their feet and never shifted back.

  They remembered the Kraken.

  She didn’t have to speak the name. No one did. The memory of that day was stitched into the bones of the ship. The frenzied escape and a container vessel torn clean in half like a toy. Steel twisted into scrap. Screams bleeding through the air. Kade could still picture the wake it left behind, a wound carved straight across the water.

  Now, as the Talon slid past the last rise of the bay, the view opened wide and sharp, revealing the ocean beyond. And there it was.

  A jagged black tooth on the horizon.

  Halfway Rock.

  It stood crooked in the water like something left behind by a larger predator, its lighthouse spire broken halfway up, the top swallowed by scaffolding and rebar. Even from this distance, the structure looked wrong. Unfinished. Or worse, unfinished again, like something kept tearing it down from the inside.

  A faint gull cry broke the silence, but the wind didn’t carry the sound far.

  Then the fog started. It didn’t roll in from the coast or drift down from the cliffs the way it should have. It thickened and poured in heavy and low. Dense gray curtains pulling in from all sides at once. The shoreline vanished first. Then, the sea surface flattened into colorless soup. Shadows warped and vanished. Sound went with them.

  Someone near the forward hatch muttered in low Cajun French, the words carrying that slow, swamp-born rhythm of someone used to naming things best left unnamed. Another sailor backed away from the rail and made the sign of the cross, eyes fixed on the fog ahead.

  "Ma’am," Bishop said beside her, keeping his tone professional, "weather doesn’t look coastal anymore."

  "No."

  "What are the odds we’re looking at standard mist?"

  "None."

  He didn’t argue. "Here there be monsters," he replied.

  "We're not off the edge of the map yet," Kade said, continuing to scan the fog banks ahead, watching for movement.

  Then she saw it. A single point of sickly green light in the fog. Swinging slow and wide, almost hypnotic. It flickered like a lantern hung from a ship’s prow, dipping and rising, too uneven to be random. The light swayed again. Left, then right. Then left.

  Bishop squinted into the fog. "Tell me that doesn't match that ship's report?"

  "Matches it."

  "Well, shit." Bishop replied.

  It matched the report. The same light described by the merchant crew that had crashed into the docks days earlier, torn up and half-burning. Something they swore was a ghost ship had attacked and run them down. It opened fire without warning, then pursued them through the fog until something else pulled it away. If this were the same vessel, then the Talon would not outrun it. She was going to get the chance to show her teeth, and likely sooner rather than later.

  Bishop didn’t say the name. He didn’t have to. Kade kept her eyes on the light, steady against the drift, and let the thought rise without trying to chase it away.

  Naomi.

  She still believed it was her. Not a ghost ship. Not some cursed echo dragging bait through the mist to lure in the desperate. Naomi and the Widow’s Grin were still out there, operating just beyond the unspoken lines most others had learned to avoid. They weren’t hunting monsters. They were hunting their fellow survivors. And Kade meant to make Naomi pay for that transgression.

  She kept her eyes locked on the light, steady in the fog, swinging like a slow signal just ahead of the veil. If it were Naomi, then this would not end with words or warnings. Kade had no intention of letting the Widow’s Grin slip away again. Not after what she’d done. Not after the trail of dead left in her wake.

  There was no hesitation or weighing of outcomes. Just the old rhythm of command settling into her spine like it always did when violence was no longer a possibility but a requirement.

  She turned toward the mid-deck and called an order sharp and loud. "Action stations! Action stations!"

  Movement hit the deck immediately.

  Chief Gunner’s Mate Kai Maleko sprinted across the starboard gangway, his coat snapping in the wind, a priming torch clutched in one hand and a lanyard of cannon keys rattling at his belt. His gun crews broke off without a word, heading straight to their positions. Cannon hatches opened. Powder bins unlocked. Tools landed in the right hands with no one calling for them. No one asked what was coming. They just got to work.

  Bishop stepped closer. "You think it’s her?"

  Kade didn’t look away from the light. "I know it is."

  The crew didn’t speak. They just moved. The weight of the ship shifted as the Talon readied her broadside. Sails stayed tight. Lines held. Rigging quieted under the hands of veteran sailors who had already seen the worst the ocean could offer. Now they waited for the next version of it.

  "Maintain course," Kade said. Her voice stayed even, steady. "Keep it smooth and let her come."

  "Aye," Bishop replied.

  The lantern swung again, dipping once more into the mist.

  Then the fog parted.

  What emerged was not the Widow’s Grin.

  It was something older and much meaner. Armor had been welded over barnacled plating, the hull half-rotted and half-reinforced, with cannons bristling from a prow that looked stitched together from a dozen wrecks. The sails hung like sheets of sea moss, thick and dark, the kind that grew low across the ocean floor. They were full of holes, fluttering like torn skin with each shift of wind. The figurehead was gone, long since rotted away, replaced by a twisted snarl of chains and bones that clacked with every roll of the hull..

  And as the silhouette cleared, its forward guns lit up with the first volley.

  The Grand Crusade).

  Thank you for letting me share my world with you. I really appreciate all of you for your support and encouragement.