It’s been five months since the seafood buffet—more like a calamari buffet, really. Not that the ocean’s been short on variety. We’ve fought other oversized sea life too: a lightning-spewing eel that nearly cooked our ward grid system—sent arcs down the conduits like it was trying to fry the ship from the inside out. Then came a giant shark—huge, menacing, and frankly the most normal thing we’ve seen. A swarm of man-sized shrimp with a taste for mana nearly chewed through the hull just to lick the ‘engine room’. And reefs—yes, actual coral reefs—that move on their own like sleepy turtles and keep drifting right into our path. Not malicious, just annoying, like nature’s version of traffic cones.

  Morale? Depends who you ask.

  Brono’s crew takes it in stride—they’re Port Kier born, half saltwater by blood. The mage, Rainer, barely says a word and hasn’t flinched since the kraken. I’m starting to think he sleeps standing up with his eyes open. Hein keeps busy wrangling schedules and throwing me looks every time something new tries to kill us. He calls it “mild concern.” I call it barely restrained panic dressed in sarcasm.

  The recruits? They’ve split into two factions. One group treats each new threat like a badge of honor, betting on what monstrosity will surface next—“ten crowns says we get sky-piranhas”. The other group has adopted a thousand-yard stare and smokes like they’re trying to summon death with a nicotine circle.

  Me? I’ve stopped pretending this is a normal deployment, although i wouldn’t know. At this point, I’d be more surprised if nothing weird happened. I even caught myself smiling when the shrimp started chewing through the gunwale. That’s how far gone I am—although I’m pretty sure I’ve been like this since I came to this world.

  As usual, I’m standing out on the deck—stormy or not. Mana, for whatever reason, empowers everything from muscles to immune systems, so weather’s more of an inconvenience than a threat these days. Mostly I’m just making sure there isn’t another clown show brewing on the horizon.

  Eventually I decide to head back in, but I’m not alone. Bull’s out here too. I’ve been calling him that since the interviews, but his real name is Roman—Roman Atilia, to be exact. Turns out he’s from noble lineage. Minor family now, sure, but that wasn’t always the case.

  I’ve had a lot of time over the past few months to poke through the ship’s surprisingly massive library—Brono’s a serious history buff. That’s how I found out Roman’s house used to be one of the major players in Alysia before their blood rivals, House Mystire, gutted their power in the most theatrical way possible: betrayal at a wedding. Strangely poetic. Felt like something out of a show I actually liked once that almost made the numbness go away for a minute.

  Moral of the story: Roman’s not just big and brave. He’s got purpose. He’s here to restore his family’s honor—probably the only thing louder than his footsteps.

  But right now? He looks… conflicted. Which is weird. Roman doesn’t do conflicted. His emotional range typically runs from quiet to rage to battlefield murder-frenzy. Seeing anything else on that face is like spotting a storm cloud frown at the rain.

  I walk over, meaning to ask Roman what’s eating at him—but then I remember I’m not exactly the most socially gifted person on this boat. So I do the logical thing: turn right around and shamelessly leave him to his brooding.

  On the way back to my humble closet of a cabin, something catches my eye—a satchel resting near the main hall wall. Same one I spotted back at HQ: raven crossing a crescent moon, stitched in deep silver thread. That’s the symbol of House Mystire, isn’t it? I remember the books describing it in detail… and I’m almost certain I saw it once before—yeah, during the war room briefing, when I got my death sentence. One of the snickering nobles had it etched on their lapel. Strange that it’s here.

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  It was marked as a personal item in the cargo manifest, but no one in our squad is related to House Mystire—well, except Roman, and only in the blood-feud sense. So what’s it doing aboard? Did Roman spot it and get upset? Is that why he looked so shaken? Still doesn’t explain who brought it.

  I pick it up, figuring I’ll ask tomorrow.

  For now, I shuffle back to my humble hole, drop the satchel beside the bed, and don’t think much more of it. Sleep takes me fast.

  ***

  I wake up—but not really. I’m back in those dreams again.

  I thought maybe, now that the numbness was gone, they’d finally stop. But no—same as always.

  I find myself in one I’ve had more times than I can count, back on Earth. And while I talk like I wanted it to stop, that’s not exactly true. Some dreams were good—warm, almost hopeful—but others were horrific. I didn’t enjoy the bad ones, and I didn’t exactly crave the good ones either. What they gave me wasn’t pleasure—it was something sharper than that. Fear, comfort, grief—anything that reminded me I could still feel. In a life where numbness ruled everything, even nightmares were a kind of mercy.

  Funny thing is, the mundane doesn’t feel numb to me here, in this world. Is it the context that changed? Or the world itself?

  The dream always begins the same. A quaint village. Dirt roads winding through scattered cottages. A serene stream nearby. Open fields of wheat and barley. A lone hill with a single tree perched on top, two boys sitting beneath it. One is me. The other is always faceless and nameless, like everyone else in these dreams.

  Aside from that, it’s picture-perfect. Almost fairy-tale, fitting for the child I am in it. We play. We run. I go home to my mother, we eat dinner, she tucks me in for bed. All of it warm, familiar. Safe.

  But that’s never where it ends.

  At midnight, just after I fall asleep, I always wake again—inside the dream. I assume it’ll follow the same path it always does: screams, shouts, gunfire. My mother pulling me from bed in a panic. She comforts me, tells me it’s going to be okay, then hides me beneath the floorboards of our little cottage.

  I wait there for hours, listening to the horror outside. My mother shakes above me, trying to hold it together, preparing for whatever’s out there. And me? I always feel oddly calm. Detached.

  Eventually, someone barges in. Faceless like the rest. A soldier in grey—not unlike the uniforms worn by Anreik’s troops. What follows… I won’t repeat. Some things even nightmares shouldn’t say out loud.

  Afterward, he sets the house ablaze.

  Somehow, I always survive. I claw out from under the floor, covered in soot, and wander the blackened ruins of the village—ashen, barefoot, lost. I drift through what’s left until I reach the village square.

  There, the same faceless boy from the start stands waiting. Same clothes. Same height. Same silence.

  Like a mirror with no reflection.

  And that’s when I wake—always in that moment.

  And always… feeling empty.

  ***

  As I wake and shake off the lingering fog of that dream—and the apathy clinging to its edges—I realize it’s still night. The ship is quiet, but something deep in my gut insists something’s wrong.

  There’s a pulse nearby. Mana.

  Faint, but strong. Too strong to ignore.

  Ever since I reached the Second Dream—four months ago, not long after the battle with King Calamari—I’ve been able to sense mana much more clearly. Especially the way it forms and moves inside my body. That battle changed something in me, cracked open a layer I didn’t even know existed. Understanding came faster than it should have—because of what I had figured out during that fight.

  But this pulse… this isn’t just ambient magic or a passing fluctuation.

  It feels familiar.

  Like the bomb I built back in the trenches—same unstable flavor, just more faint. Contained. Waiting.

  The ship lurches violently as a deafening explosion tears through the center of the hull—metal screams, the deck bucks beneath me, and I’m thrown off my feet, slamming headfirst into the bulkhead.

  Everything snaps to black for a second. Maybe longer.

  When I come to, ears ringing, lights flickering, the air is thick with smoke and heat. I lurch upright, heart pounding, vision still swimming. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.

  I scramble to the bulkhead and try to wrench it open—but it’s jammed solid.

  ‘Okay—more power.’

  Mana floods my limbs, muscle and instinct working in sync. I rip the door free, metal shrieking… only to find the hallway gone. Just rubble. A collapsed mess of steel, pipe, and fire.

  ‘Shit.’

  Then I feel it—water, cold and rising, creeping around my feet.

  Of course. Just my luck. We’re almost there, and a bomb goes off.

  Now the ship’s sinking.

  Worst vacation ever.