Cilian opened his eyes to sunlight—and found himself on the deck of the Vigil's Wake. The salt air burned his lungs like a first breath. The compass at his feet spun furiously, a mad needle unable to find north. The sails, ragged and flayed, hung in the windless hush. Around him the crew stirred, their eyes flickering open one by one, faces pale and lined with exhaustion as though they had been asleep for centuries.
Old Wren gripped the helm, gnarled hands steady as she hummed that same ancient song—low and circular, like the tide drawing pebbles back into the sea.
Captain Halgrave stood at the rail, shoulders bowed as though bearing the weight of a thousand voyages. His hair, once coal-black, now spilled in threads of silver down his back. In his palm rested the talisman's unbroken half, the surface worn smooth by fingers that would never let it go.
Cilian's own hands trembled as he lifted them into the sunlight. He saw scars he did not remember earning. He was boy and man both, recruit and captain, hunter and hunted. He felt the heartbeat of the sea throbbing up through the planks beneath him, and in that pulse came memories: the laughter of the crew around a fire, the stink of blood and brine, the flash of the white ridge splitting the horizon.
A distant shape breached—the White Ridge, the wound in the ocean—its monstrous body coiling into the sky, impossibly vast. Water cascaded from its ridged spine like rain, catching the light in a thousand fractured rainbows. The crew gasped, murmuring oaths and prayers. Even Wren faltered in her song.
Halgrave turned, his weathered face a mask of sorrow and defiance. "We sail again, Cilian. The hunt never ends." His voice cracked on the last word, as if it carried the weight of countless lifetimes repeating this moment.
Cilian nodded slowly. In his chest, resolve blossomed—not the sharp, defiant kind he remembered from his youth, but a steady, aching determination. The realization settled over him like the weight of a mantle: This is what we are now. This is what we have always been.
But beneath that, another thought stirred: What if there's another way?
He scanned the deck. The crew's faces told a thousand stories—some tear-streaked, others set like stone. Anders, the first mate, gripped the rail until his knuckles whitened. Brynn, the youngest, stared at the horizon with hollow eyes. They too were caught in this endless loop of sea and memory.
Cilian stepped forward, boots creaking on the soaked wood. "We've chased it before," he said, his voice stronger than he expected. "And every time, it slips through our fingers. Every time, we're brought back here."
Halgrave's eyes narrowed. "You would have us stop? Let it roam free?"
"No," Cilian said, shaking his head. "But maybe the hunt isn't about catching it. Maybe it's about understanding it."
A silence fell, broken only by the creak of the mast. The White Ridge loomed in the distance, its massive tail flicking clouds into chaos.
Old Wren spoke for the first time, her voice thin and reedy. "The sea keeps what it loves. And it loves us dearly—perhaps too dearly to let us go."
Cilian looked up at the horizon, at the bleeding light where ocean and sky entwined. He raised a hand toward it and whispered, "Forward."
The Vigil's Wake groaned as the wind caught the sails. Slowly, painfully, the ship turned her bow to the horizon that bled white.
Cilian felt the shift in his bones as the crew took up their stations. The air vibrated with the promise of another chase, another loop in the great circle. He didn't know if they would ever break free—or if freedom even mattered anymore.
But as the whale breached again, sending tremors through the water and sky alike, Cilian felt something he hadn't felt in an eternity.
Hope.
He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. For a moment, he thought he heard laughter—the sound of boys on their first voyage, full of courage, grit, and gut. And somewhere beyond the bleeding horizon, he imagined redemption waiting like a faint star, just out of reach.
And so, the Vigil's Wake forged on into the endless loop of sea and memory, hunting the curse that hunted them—never to break free, yet driven by a flicker of humanity that even the sea could not drown.