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Chapter 6 - Memories

The smuggler's ship groaned as it carved through the towering waves, each crest sending spray crashing over the deck. Nero clutched the salt-crusted railing, his muscles taut against the violent rocking of the vessel. Around him, the crew shouted curses to the storm gods, their voices barely audible over the shrieking wind. But Nero barely noticed the chaos—his mind was lost in the tempest of his own memories, unraveling the truth that had been stolen from him.

The vision came in fragments, sharp and disjointed like pieces of a shattered mirror:

Two and a half years ago. The deck of The Serpent's Death, Krieg's flagship, eerily silent despite the storm that should have been raging. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and something fouler—rotten seaweed, the metallic tang of blood. Krieg, the Lord of Storms himself, lay motionless on the quarterdeck, his famed armor—forged from the heart of a hurricane—split open as if by an unseen blade. His eyes, once crackling with lightning, were dull and empty.

And standing over him, draped in a hooded cloak that seemed to drink in the light, was a figure with a face of bleached bone.

Nero—no, Rylan—had stumbled forward, his breath ragged. The Bone Collector. A phantom spoken of in whispers, a reaper of the drowned who supposedly wandered the Isles, collecting debts no mortal could understand. Its hollow gaze fixed on him, and when it spoke, its voice was the sound of waves dragging corpses across the seabed.

"They will blame you."

Then, like mist before the wind, it was gone.

Seconds later, the Stormguard had burst onto the deck, their weapons drawn, their faces twisted in fury. They took one look at Krieg's corpse, at Rylan standing over him, and their verdict was instant.

Traitor. Regicide. Storm-cursed.

Nero gasped as the memory released him, his fingers trembling against the ship's rail. It hadn't been him. He—Rylan—hadn't killed Krieg. He'd been set up.

But why?

The Bone Collector was no mere legend. It was real. And it had wanted the Stormguard to believe Rylan was guilty.

A cold realization settled in his gut.

Krieg's death wasn't an accident. It was an assassination.

And Rylan had been the perfect scapegoat—the heir to the Storm Lord's legacy, the only one close enough to be blamed.

The wind howled around him, but beneath its fury, Nero felt something else—a presence, ancient and vast, stirring in the depths of his blood. The storm inside him recognized something about that night. It remembered.

The smuggler captain, Jorik, staggered toward him, his face grim. "We're nearing the Blackchain Isles," he shouted over the gale. "If the Teeth are awake, we're dead before we see shore."

Nero barely nodded. His mind was racing.

If the Bone Collector had framed Rylan, then it had a reason. And if the Stormguard were still hunting him, then the truth of Krieg's murder was a threat to someone powerful.

Someone who didn't want it known that Krieg's death was no accident.

The ship lurched violently as a wave slammed into the hull. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the sheets of rain, the jagged silhouettes of the Blackchain Isles rose from the sea like the spines of a submerged leviathan.

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