Instead, the horizon wore a veil.
A dense wall of fog stretched in every direction, thick as wool, unmoving despite the rising wind. It hadn’t drifted in. It hadn’t rolled from some distant front. It had simply arrived — as if the sea itself had decided to go blind.
The crew moved in tense silence, ropes drawn taut, sails trimmed to reduce speed. Voices were low, wary, and sailors who had joked easily days before now moved with careful purpose, eyes flicking constantly toward the thick white miasma surrounding the ship.
Captain Serrak stood near the helm, her mouth a hard line beneath her sun-scarred cheeks, fingers tracing a prayer circle over the wood grain of the wheel.
It was not storm-fear.
It was the kind of fear people carried for old things.
The kind they didn’t name aloud.
ProlixalParagon stood at the starboard railing, fur damp with salt and condensation, his ears twitching at every creak of wood and groan of shifting hull.
The fog dampened all sound. Even the waves.
It wasn’t silent — not exactly — but smothered. Muffled.
As though the world had been sealed in a jar.
Even Ralyria, beside him, moved quietly — her gears turning more slowly, her voicebox silent. She reached out once to brush the edge of the fog with her fingertips, only to recoil sharply, her head tilting in confusion.
“S-s-something in it,” she whispered. “M-mana-wrong.”
Then came the call.
Not a scream.
Not panic.
Just a voice from above — the sailor in the crow’s nest — strained, confused:
“...What is that?”
Every eye turned upward.
Then outward.
The fog shifted.
Not parted. Not blown. Shifted.
As if something within it moved — vast, slow, and rising.
And then, like the breach of some ancient beast, it emerged:
Stone.
A structure, slick with algae and salt, rose silently from the water no more than a few hundred meters off the bow.
It looked like the top of a temple — blackened stone, carved with spiral glyphs and symbols half-swallowed by erosion and time. Great columns emerged in uneven intervals, broken and leaning, draped in tangled kelp like drowned banners.
A toppled bell lay crooked in a basin that filled and spilled with seawater as the structure shifted upward.
Then stopped.
Half-submerged. Silent.
The fog curled tighter around it, wreathing it like a crown.
Captain Serrak muttered something under her breath in Soohanese, then snapped out, “Helm — drift to leeward! Slowly! Don’t engage the current!”
The crew obeyed without question.
No anchor was dropped.
No signal sent.
The Reverie simply moved — gently pulling away, as if afraid to wake the thing that had risen.
Prolix felt his fingertips tingle.
Not from magic — not entirely.
From recognition.
The glyphs on the stone — barely visible beneath slime and ruin — were similar to what he’d seen during the dungeon collapse in Sern Ka’Torr.
Not identical.
But cousins.
Spirals. Fractures. Rebirth etched into basalt bones.
Behind him, Ralyria murmured, “Not... dead.”
He glanced at her.
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Her eyes glowed faintly, casting refracted spirals of light.
She was trembling.
As the ship began to slowly veer away, a final ripple pulsed through the sea — as if the ruin exhaled — and the fog thickened, swallowing it whole.
In less than a minute, it was gone.
Not sunk.
Simply... vanished.
As if the sea had forgotten it ever surfaced.
A long silence followed.
Only then did Kaelthari speak, appearing at Prolix’s side with her gaze locked on the blank sea.
“That wasn’t a ruin,” she said softly. “That was a threshold.”
Prolix didn’t ask what she meant.
He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.
Not yet.
The fog began to lift slowly, reluctantly, as if shedding memory instead of mist.
And the Distant Reverie sailed onward — its wake trailing softly through waters that now remembered something ancient.
Something waiting.
Below deck, the lanternlight swayed gently with the ship’s motion, casting long shadows that danced along the curved beams and low bunks of the Troupe’s assigned quarters.
It smelled of salt, old wood, poultice herbs, and faint oil — the mingled scents of home, healing, and something far older still lingering in their lungs.
The children were quiet.
Even the most excitable of the kits — the ones who normally turned every rolling barrel or swaying hammock into an impromptu game — sat hushed in the corner, whispering to each other in low voices, ears flattened and tails tucked close.
ProlixalParagon sat cross-legged near the central support pillar, his back resting against a crate of dried vegetables. The ache in his ribs was dull now, faded by rest, but his mind churned restlessly, pulled back again and again to the temple that had risen from the sea.
Not a ruin, Kaelthari had said.
A threshold.
Across from him, Marx was carefully rewrapping his prosthetic leg with a length of leather cord. The runes etched into the mana core glowed a dim orange, still functional but unusually quiet.
Marx hadn’t spoken since the fog lifted.
Not until now.
“That thing wasn’t built by anything still alive,” he said, not looking up.
Prolix tilted his head. “You sure?”
Marx nodded, tightening the cord with practiced ease. “Craftsmen like me… we know old work when we see it. And that?” He jerked his chin toward the upper deck. “That was carved with tools that don’t exist anymore. With intentions that don’t breathe anymore.”
He glanced up then, his olive-toned face pinched in thought.
“But it watched. And it waited. That’s worse.”
Prolix didn’t disagree.
Before he could respond, Kaelthari ducked into the cramped space, her horns brushing the lintel. The golden chains between her sweeping, markhor-like horns shimmered softly, still damp from sea mist. Her expression was unreadable — calm, but too calm.
She moved to stand near the door, arms crossed over her chest, tail flicking once.
“It surfaced at our passing,” she said quietly. “Not a coincidence.”
“You think it was watching us?” Ralyria asked, her voice low and uncertain. Her glass optics flicked between them, faint pulses of mana curling down her arms where her fingers twitched with unseen calculations.
Kaelthari nodded once. “Not us. Him.”
She didn’t need to gesture. Every gaze drifted toward Prolix.
He shifted uncomfortably under the weight of their attention.
“I don’t know why,” he admitted.
“Because you carry part of a cycle,” Lyra said from the back of the cabin.
All heads turned.
She sat alone at the edge of her sleeping mat, her silver-furred hands folded neatly in her lap, her golden eyes glowing faintly in the lanternlight.
“A thread of the world that no longer runs in one direction,” she continued, her voice soft and dry. “The gods may not speak plainly, but they do not waste their gaze.”
Prolix opened his mouth, but Lyra held up a hand, already anticipating his protest.
“You did not ask for it. That doesn’t mean you aren’t marked.”
The room fell silent again.
After a long pause, Ralyria shifted closer, sitting down beside Prolix, her motions small and precise.
“If it was a threshold,” she said slowly, “maybe it was… offering something.”
Prolix blinked. “Like a quest?”
Ralyria tilted her head. “Like… an invitation.”
That word lingered.
Unspoken among them was a quiet truth:
You don’t always want to know who’s inviting you.
A soft cry from one of the kits broke the silence — just a dream, nothing more. Nara rose, her steps gentle as she crossed to comfort the child.
The moment passed.
But the unease remained.
Not panic.
Not dread.
Just the growing awareness that the sea they crossed held secrets.
And not all of them would stay buried.
Sleep didn’t come easily.
The quiet in the Troupe’s quarters grew thick as the night wore on, weighted by thoughts too dense for rest. ProlixalParagon lay still for a long time, watching the way lanternlight cast slow-moving shadows along the curved walls. Ralyria’s light snores clicked gently in rhythm with the low hum of her core. Marx breathed slow and steady. Kaelthari hadn't returned below.
Eventually, Prolix slipped free from his blanket and moved silently toward the narrow staircase leading above deck.
No one stopped him.
Topside, the wind was cooler, scented with salt and a faint, metallic tang like distant blood. The Distant Reverie cut slowly through black water glazed with moonlight, her sails swollen but quiet, her hull creaking with the soft murmur of long travel.
Stars filled the sky above, brilliant and sharp, but the moon had begun to fade into cloud. Or fog.
He moved toward the starboard rail and let his eyes adjust, ears twitching with each faint sound.
Something about the ship itself felt… tilted.
Not physically.
Spiritually.
He leaned against the railing, paws curled tight around the edge of damp wood, when the system flared softly in the corner of his vision — pale blue, almost hesitant.
This location is no longer passive.
Memory and consequence are not always bound to presence.
Some doors do not open.
Some wait to be knocked upon.
A hidden thread has begun to unwind.>
>Tracking: Echoes of the Submerged Loom (???)<
>Objective: Unknown<
>Progress: [ 0% ]<
>Status: Passive Thread - Will Evolve When Observed Differently<
He stared at the words, a chill crawling up the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the wind.
It wasn't a quest.
Not yet.
It was a presence watching from behind a curtain, waiting to see if he'd pull it back.
And worst of all — some part of him wanted to.
He closed the prompt slowly, breath fogging faintly in the cold air.
Something shifted on the deck behind him.
He turned — slow, cautious — and caught the faintest motion: a figure slipping through a narrow service hatch along the upper deck. The glow of a cigarette ember winked out as it vanished down the companionway — too stealthy for a sailor simply stepping out for air.
There was no sound.
No chatter. No boots.
Just the quiet whisper of someone too practiced in moving unseen.
Prolix frowned.
He stepped carefully up toward the helm.
There, the wheel was loosely tethered with a rope loop — a minor precaution in calm seas — but behind it, tucked into a cargo crate at the stern, was something new.
A set of black leather gloves. Lightly oiled.
And beside them — a long, fine-toothed metal comb with a crimson bead tied at its base.
A sailor’s grooming kit? Perhaps.
But the comb bore a faint engraving Prolix had seen only once before.
A spiral-and-wave sigil — the mark of the Crimson Wake, one of the more organized pirate fleets that operated in the Baigai trade routes.
The sigil was nearly rubbed away.
But not quite.
He didn’t touch it.
Just stared.
Because it wasn’t proof.
Not yet.
But it was enough to start asking questions.
As he turned to head back below, he caught sight of Kaelthari near the portside stairwell, half-shadowed. She didn’t speak, but her eyes gleamed faintly as they met his — not alarmed, but cautious.
You saw it too, he thought.
She nodded once, slow.
And disappeared down the stairwell before he could ask.
The wind picked up, threading through the rigging like a voice trying to form words but never quite finding shape.
ProlixalParagon returned to the lower decks with his thoughts churning.
The Distant Reverie sailed on.
But its name — like the fog — now felt more like a veil.
And veils always concealed something.