Captain Kinsley's boots crunched against the jagged obsidian shore as he stepped onto the soil of Isla Rhea for the first time in his life. The sirens' song still clung to his ears like the echo of a dream, a warning woven into melody, but the defiance in his blood made him only more resolute. This was no place to turn back.
The island rose before them like a leviathan heaving its body from the abyss, its green slopes veined with the charred scars of dragon fire long cooled. Waterfalls crashed down the cliffsides in torrents, their spray catching sunlight to birth fragile rainbows above the volcanic ruin.
The air itself shimmered with an old, hushed magic, Neptune's magic, braided through every breath. This island was his greatest creation.
"Oh, Neppie," Edward whispered, the moniker tumbling raw into the salt-stung breeze. "It's… stunning."
"Terrifying's more like it," Bonnie said. She kicked at the ash that clung stubbornly to her leather boots. But as her heel sank into the black sand, the pendant at her throat flared — Neptune's insignia pulsing once in argent light, as though the island had recognized her. She pressed the medallion flat against her chest, smothering the glow with her palm. When she looked back up, her face was iron.
"Both," Edward said with a strange smile, "in equal measure." His eyes climbed the peaks that clawed the sky like blackened talons.
Edward's hand found the map in his coat, fingers tracing Neptune's own inked lines, almost tender. The island that was only legend - Neptune had outlined this journey for him and only him.
****
They climbed into the island's heart. Sulfurous mist coiled through fissures, the ground trembling with the muffled pulse of molten stone beneath. Edward led with a lantern; Bonnie followed, shadows biting across her features as she kept close, hand near her cutlass.
The cave mouth gaped before them, stalactites hung like fangs. They stepped into its throat, where daylight was swallowed whole, where even sound faltered.
"Edward," Bonnie said, voice echoing sharp against stone, "how do you plan to kill this thing?"
"Don't you worry," Edward muttered, patting the sword at his side — Neptune's blade, cold heirloom of his god. "He wouldn't have sent me here if I couldn't."
Bonnie let out a humorless laugh, fingers brushing her pendant. The metal was warm now, almost fevered, as if the dragon's lair quickened it. She did not let him see.
They wound deeper, the air thickening to tar. Steam hissed from fissures, the rock walls sweating heat. Their breath came ragged, dripping with ash. The cave narrowed to a choke point, shadows shifting like conspirators. Edward's stride was manic with devotion.
"It's not that I don't want to save him, Captain …"
"Then keep going."
"Neptune was a petty, vindictive bastard," she said suddenly, slicing through the oppressive dark.
Edward's gaze whipped to her, hard as the obsidian walls.
"It's true," she pressed, pendant hot as coal under her hand. "You know it is. I don't think he wanted you to—"
"He is not dead!" Edward's roar shattered against the stone, reverberating like thunder trapped in a jar. "Not for long, anyway." His voice cracked on the last word.
Bonnie didn't flinch. She had loved before, too — but unlike Edward, she had learned to let go.
Some loves were just not meant to be saved.
****
The cave vibrated with a subterranean heartbeat as they descended. Then — light: a chamber where molten ruby scales glistened.
But not the colossus Edward imagined. A baby dragon, no larger than a hound, curled against something that looked like dead skin.
"It's… a baby," Bonnie whispered, halting him with a hand.
The creature lifted its head, eyes luminous, hissing a thread of smoke.
Edward's cutlass hissed from its sheath. He stepped forward, grief shaping him into predator. This small beast was the key to his resurrection.
Bonnie's pendant seared against her chest, brighter than it had glowed on the shore. She seized his wrist, stopping the blade mid-descent.
"We need the witch," she hissed. "Do this wrong and it damns us both."
His arm faltered. The dragon whimpered, then climbed onto Bonnie's boot, curling fragile claws into the fabric. Edward froze, staring at the creature, kinship choking him.
Bonnie let herself smile. "Seems we've made a friend, Cap'n."
****
As the Lioness began to edge away from the island, Bonnie's gaze sliced through the frothy wake to something unexpected—an anomaly in the rhythm of the waves. Her heart hitched as she discerned the motionless forms of two naked humans, adrift and vulnerable amidst the unforgiving swells.
"Man overboard!" The words cracked like a pistol shot. Her arm shot outward, finger spearing the waves.
Two bodies floated in the churn, pale as driftwood, naked and limp, carried like offerings in the tide's palm.
The crew erupted into motion, ropes unfurling, nets arcing out.
The bodies thudded onto the deck with the gracelessness of the half-dead.
Bonnie dropped to her knees beside the man — hair like spun gold, face too still — while Edward took the girl, whose lashes fluttered like kelp in a current. Salt water gushed from her lips, her body convulsing with life clawing its way back. She coughed, gasped, and her eyes opened: blue, uncanny, ocean-bright. For a breath, Edward forgot grief itself, undone by the abyss gazing back through her irises.
Beside him, Bonnie's palms pressed against the man's chest, the heel of her hand pounding rhythm into water-logged lungs. She counted under her breath, jaw set.
No air came. No movement. His body was a husk the waves had claimed.
Then the girl rasped, voice cracked like old timbers: "Please… he is my brother. You must save him."
Edward's grief cracked wider. Here was another soul in mourning. He looked to Bonnie.
Bonnie did not believe in miracles, not in the way Edward did. But as her hands worked, as she bent low to press her breath into the stranger's lungs, she felt the echo of that terrible hunger — the same hunger that had driven her ashore on Isla Rhea, the same hunger that still whispered Neptune's name in her blood.
You owe a debt, repay a debt. You owe a debt, repay a debt.
Saving this man felt like defying Valorian, and some part of her thrilled at it.
"Come on," she hissed between compressions, a prayer disguised as command. "Come back, damn you."
The crew stood in a wide ring, silent but for the ship's groan and Bonnie's ragged breath.
She punched the boy in the chest with both her fists. Then — a cough. Small, violent, a tear in silence. Water erupted from the man's throat. His body seized, then he rolled weakly to one side, sucking air.
A cheer broke from the crew, ragged and disbelieving.
Bonnie sat back on her heels, sweat and seawater slicking her hair to her temples. Her chest rose and fell in rapid relief. Edward's gaze clung to her, but she would not meet it.
She looked at the girl, who clutched her brother's hand with trembling fingers, eyes bright with gratitude and terror both.
"You've saved him," she whispered, her voice gathering strength. "Both of you."
Bonnie only nodded, though a strange heaviness tugged inside her — as if she had wrestled with the sea itself and for once, won.
Edward exhaled a laugh, bitter and astonished. "The ocean gave him back," he murmured. "Maybe it's learned mercy after all."
But Bonnie's jaw tightened. She did not believe in the sea's mercy. She believed in debts, in bargains waiting to be paid. And as she rose, wiping her hands against her trousers, she thought not of mercy but of Neptune — and how resurrection never came without a price.