The kraken coin felt like a talisman against the darkness.

  As they scrambled out of the malevolent quiet of Black Rock Cove, leaving the whispering waves behind, the coin, solid and heavy, rested in Frankie’s pocket. It offered proof, a tangible lead. After days of free-falling through a nightmare of sickness and doubt, it represented the first solid rung on a ladder that might just lead them back into the light.

  The hope it gave them, heady and intoxicating, made them feel like detectives, like adventurers on the cusp of a great discovery. Fear, an icy knot in the pit of Frankie’s stomach, persisted, but now it had a target. They were no longer just victims. They became investigators.

  Their investigation began, full of misplaced optimism, at a dusty little antique shop on a side street off the main pier. “Curios & Knick-Knacks,” the faded sign read. The place smelled of mothballs and old paper. Mr. Abernathy, a crusty old man with spectacles perched on the end of his nose and a permanent look of sour disapproval, as if the modern world was a constant, personal offense to him, ran the shop.

  “He’ll know what it is,” Ted had said confidently as they walked in. “The man’s been dealing in old junk since Norchester was founded.”

  Mr. Abernathy polished an old silver locket with a soft cloth, his movements slow and meticulous. He looked up as the bell over the door jingled, his sour expression deepening as he took in the sight of three teenagers.

  “We were wondering if you could help us,” Dee Dee began, putting on her most charming, non-threatening smile. “We found something, and we were hoping you might identify it.”

  Frankie carefully placed the dark, heavy coin on the glass countertop.

  Mr. Abernathy picked it up. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, squinting at it through his spectacles for only three seconds. Then he made a sound, a short, dismissive sniff.

  “Fantasy piece,” he declared, dropping the coin back onto the counter with a dull clink. It sounded like a death knell for their newfound hope.

  “What?” Frankie asked, her heart sinking.

  “It’s a fake. A prop,” the old man said, picking up his locket again as if the conversation were already over. “Probably from some board game or a Renaissance Faire. Worthless.”

  “But it feels so old,” Ted insisted, picking the coin up. “Look at the corrosion. The patina…”

  “You can fake a patina with vinegar and salt, son,” Mr. Abernathy said without looking up. “It’s a piece of pot metal, stamped with a monster to sell to children. Now, unless you’re interested in this authentic Victorian mourning jewelry, I’m very busy.”

  He dismissed them.

  They stumbled out of the shop, the bell mocking them on their way out, their bubble of hope thoroughly popped.

  “He’s wrong,” Dee Dee said, though her voice lacked conviction. “He didn’t even really look at it.”

  “He didn’t have to,” Frankie said, the coin feeling cold and worthless in her hand now. “He knew right away.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “No,” Ted said, his jaw set stubbornly. His pragmatic brain kicked in, refusing to accept this first, easy defeat. “He’s a cranky old man who deals in teacups. He knows nothing about maritime history. We just went to the wrong expert. We need to go to the library.”

  The Norchester Public Library, a quiet, solemn place, a temple of whispered words and dusty knowledge, presented another sensory battlefield for Frankie. Fluorescent lights overhead hummed at a frequency that felt designed to split her skull open, a low, buzzing torture making her eyes ache. The musty smell of old paper and binding glue, a smell she usually loved, now acted as a thick, cloying perfume, churning her stomach with nausea.

  She tried to ignore it, focusing on the mission. They commandeered a large table in the local history section, a forgotten corner of the library filled with decade-old books.

  They began their search.

  They pulled down heavy, leather-bound volumes on the history of Norchester Bay. They sifted through books on colonial-era trade routes, on famous shipwrecks, on the Golden Age of Piracy. They searched for anything—a crest, a symbol, a name—that matched the horrifying image on their coin.

  An hour passed. Then two. Silence pervaded the library, broken only by the soft rustle of turning pages and the incessant, maddening hum of the overhead lights.

  They found nothing.

  They read about smugglers who used the coves for their illicit trade. They read about British naval patrols and French privateers. They found maps of the bay from the 1700s, charting its currents and sandbars.

  But no mention existed of any family, guild, pirate crew, or vessel that used a kraken as its crest.

  The symbol simply did not exist in the recorded history of Norchester. It was a ghost.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Frankie finally said, rubbing her throbbing temples. Her eyes throbbed with unbearable pain.

  “Okay, new approach,” Dee Dee said, pulling her laptop from her backpack. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “The books have failed us. We shall turn to the oracle. The great and powerful internet.”

  She excelled at online research, a master of search terms and digital deep dives. If the answer existed, Dee Dee would find it.

  But the internet frustrated her even more than the books.

  The search term “kraken coin” yielded thousands of results. Page after page of fantasy art, of concept designs for video games, of cheap, mass-produced pendants sold on crafting websites.

  She tried to narrow it down. “Antique kraken crest.” More of the same, mixed with articles about naval mythology and modern nautical-themed jewelry.

  “18th-century pirate coin kraken symbol Norchester.” The search engine returned a jumble of disconnected tourist information about the Norchester pier and links to a seafood restaurant called “The Kraken’s Galley.”

  A digital dead end. The sheer, overwhelming volume of irrelevant information resembled a wall, burying their one tiny clue under an avalanche of modern noise. As if the ship on the coin, and whatever terrifying history it represents, had been deliberately and perfectly erased from existence. Or, worse, as if it had never existed at all.

  Frustration tasted like a bitter pill. The coin, which had felt like such a monumental breakthrough in the cove, now felt like a cruel joke.

  Frankie slumped into her hard, wooden chair, the useless coin held loosely in her hand. The hope that had surged through her just a few hours ago had completely evaporated, leaving behind a residue of pure, cold despair.

  They were alone with this. Victims of a history that had no record. Cursed by a monster that left no trace.

  She looked at her friends. At Ted, staring at a map of shipwrecks with a look of intense frustration. At Dee Dee, scrolling endlessly through pages of digital junk, her shoulders slumped in defeat.

  They believed her. They supported her. But they felt as lost as she did.

  The hunger in her stomach gnawed at her, a hollow reminder of what she became. The lights hummed. Her head pounded.

  A freak, haunted by a ghost ship no one had ever heard of, her only clue a cheap piece of metal a cranky old man had dismissed without a second glance.

  Perhaps he was right.

  Perhaps it was all just a fantasy piece.

  And she, the worthless one.