The first drops of rain hissed against the pier, darkening the splintered wood where the stranger's bullets had chewed it apart.
Herzl's grip on his pistol was a vise, knuckles pale, the pounding of his heart syncing with the thud of waves slapping the pilings.
Kael glanced at the horizon. The storm wasn't drifting toward Redwater — it was hunting the harbor, black clouds curling like claws, swallowing what little moonlight remained.
"We need to move," Kael said, reloading with jerky, hurried motions.
Herzl didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the empty stretch of pier where the man in the ashen coat had stood. He could still see the faint afterimage of that silhouette, burned into his mind like a gunpowder flash.
Kael stepped closer. "Herzl—"
"Did you see his eyes?" Herzl asked without looking at him.
Kael frowned. "Eyes? I was focused on the part that was trying to kill us."
"They weren't just looking at me," Herzl said, voice low. "They were inside me. Every move, every thought… he was there before I was."
Kael muttered a curse. "Sounds like more of that Arc-sense crap from the coast. You know how I feel about—"
Herzl cut him off. "No. This was different. He didn't just predict. He pulled at something. Something in me."
Before Kael could reply, a deep hum swelled in the air. The puddles scattered across the pier trembled, rings pulsing outward though no footstep disturbed them. Herzl felt it in his bones — a vibration that stirred the same pressure he'd felt when dodging the stranger's shots.
The storm's edge clawed over the harbor, dragging cold air that stank of iron and brine. Lightning bled through the clouds, but the flashes came before the thunder, as if time itself was misstepping.
Kael's voice dropped. "Tell me that's just the wind."
Herzl's grip tightened. "That's not the wind."
The hum became a tone — low, resonant, almost like a voice buried too deep to understand. It curled into his skull, not through his ears, but through something else.
It wasn't the first time. He'd felt it before, in brief moments when death was a breath away — that flicker of knowing where the bullet would fly, where the blade would fall. He'd always dismissed it as luck, instinct.
But now it surged in him like a tide, and with it came images: a silver key turning in a lock he'd never seen, a map of shifting constellations drawn in burning ink, the taste of salt and ash on his tongue.
He staggered, clutching the pier rail. Kael reached for him, but jerked back as a thin arc of pale light flickered over Herzl's skin and vanished.
Somewhere within the storm, a bell tolled — slow, deliberate, each note sinking into the marrow.
The sound was coming from the water.
And whatever was ringing it… was calling his name.