By dawn, Kael left Blackwake Harbor.
He did not look back.
That mattered more than he expected.
The ship that took him east was a merchant cutter with patched sails and a captain who asked no questions so long as coin was real and silence was kept. It was bound for Vaeloria—not the gentle coasts near Moonwater, but the outer reaches where storms broke first and ports changed hands faster than flags could be raised.
Twenty-one days, the captain said.
If the sea allowed it.
Kael took a place among sailors and drifters, people who lived between homes and names. For the first time since leaving Ashfields, no one watched him with expectation. They watched him the way sailors watched any stranger at sea—measuring usefulness, threat, and whether he would hold when the work turned brutal.
He did.
The sea tested him early.
On the second day, a squall rose without warning, wind shearing sideways and waves slamming the hull hard enough to throw men across the deck. Kael moved where he was needed without being told—hauling lines, bracing beams, taking the weight of a snapping rope that should have ripped his shoulder from its socket.
It didn't.
Pain flared, sharp and bright, then folded into heat and steadiness. His body adjusted as if it had already accepted the outcome and decided to survive it.
A sailor named Torren noticed.
"You don't move like a dockhand," he said later, passing Kael a cup of bitter spirits.
"I move like someone who doesn't want to drown," Kael replied.
Torren laughed, satisfied.
On the fifth night, the ship passed through a region sailors called the Quiet Belt, where winds died and the sea went glass-still. No waves. No birds. No sound but water sliding along the hull.
That was when the dreams began.
Not nightmares—worse.
Dreams where Kael stood still and people gathered around him, not kneeling, not pleading, just waiting. Faces blurred, voices overlapping with the same question spoken in a thousand different tones.
What do we do now?
He woke drenched in sweat, the strength inside him coiled tight, impatient.
On the sixth day, a woman approached him.
She had dark hair cropped short, skin marked with old burns, and eyes that missed nothing. She called herself Selene and worked passage by gambling with sailors who underestimated her.
"You don't sleep much," she said, sitting beside him as the sun bled into the sea.
"Neither do you," Kael replied.
She smiled at that—not flirtatious, but curious.
They talked without intention at first. About storms. About ports that vanished. About the kind of mistakes people only made once. She did not ask his name. He did not ask hers again.
That night, when the ship rocked gently under a forgiving sky, she came to him without ceremony.
There was no romance in it.
No promises.
Just heat, shared breath, and the relief of being wanted without being needed. For a few hours, Kael was not an answer or a solution. He was a body, present and imperfect, grounding himself in sensation rather than expectation.
Afterward, Selene traced the scar on his arm with two fingers.
"That one wasn't luck," she said quietly.
"No," Kael replied.
She did not ask more.
That restraint mattered.
On the ninth day, something followed them.
The sea darkened beneath the hull, shadows moving against currents, too deliberate to be natural. The captain ordered silence, oars shipped, sails furled.
The thing surfaced at dusk—long, segmented, armored in plates that reflected Sol Noctis like dull blooded metal. A leviathan spawn, driven shallow by hunger or belief.
Kael felt the pull immediately.
Not fear.
Expectation.
Sailors looked at him without realizing why.
Kael swore under his breath and moved before the thought finished forming.
He did not leap into the water.
He didn't need to.
He anchored a harpoon line, calculated drift and current, and timed the throw not for strength but for interruption. The barb struck an eye ridge, not killing, but blinding.
The creature thrashed.
The sea erupted.
Kael braced, held, redirected force that should have torn him loose. Sailors joined instinctively, pulling, cutting, shouting.
The creature fled bleeding and enraged.
When it was over, men stared.
"You saved us," someone said.
Kael shook his head. "You did."
But belief had already shifted.
On the twelfth day, they ran into another ship drifting dead in the water.
No sails.
No signal.
Bodies lashed to the mast, throats cut clean.
Pirates—but not for loot.
For message.
Kael boarded with three others. Blood slicked the deck, old and drying. Symbols carved into wood—human marks mimicking divine sigils, crude and furious.
"They're hunting stories," Selene muttered behind him.
They found survivors below deck—two women, barely alive.
Kael cut them free.
One clutched his wrist.
"They said you were coming," she whispered.
That was new.
Kael left the ship burning.
On the fifteenth day, tempers broke.
Food ran low. A sailor accused another of hoarding. A knife came out. Kael stepped between them before the blade fell.
"Move," the sailor snarled.
Kael didn't.
The knife struck.
Kael caught the wrist, twisted once, hard.
Bone snapped.
He let the man fall screaming.
Silence followed—not awe, not fear.
Relief.
That was worse.
Selene found him later.
"You can't keep pretending you're not what they see," she said.
"I'm pretending I have a choice," Kael replied.
She kissed him then—not gently.
"You do," she said. "Just not the one you want."
On the eighteenth day, a storm like a wall rose from the east.
Lightning struck the mast.
Men screamed prayers.
Kael tied himself to the deck and worked until blood ran from his palms again. The strength answered every demand without question. Not exultant. Not cruel.
Competent.
When the storm passed, the captain crossed himself and avoided Kael's eyes.
On the twenty-first day, Vaeloria rose from the sea.
Not welcoming.
Familiar.
Forests layered with ruin. Cliffs etched by old wars. A land heavy with memory and gods who believed they still owned it.
As the ship slowed, Selene stood beside him.
"You'll go inland," she said.
"Yes."
"And you won't come back."
"No."
She studied him for a long moment.
"You're not running anymore," she said.
Kael watched the coast grow larger.
"No," he said softly. "I'm distributing the damage."
When he stepped onto Vaelorian soil, something deep in the continent shifted—not awakening, not alarmed.
Recognizing.
Behind him lay twenty-one days of sea, blood, and borrowed intimacy.
Ahead lay forty-nine continents still waiting to learn his name.
And Kael knew, with the kind of certainty that came only from exhaustion and clarity:
He would leave Vaeloria again.
And again.
And one day—after distance had failed enough times—he would have to return.
Not as a wanderer.
But as the thing the world had been shaping him to become all along.