THE DROWNED MAP
The smell hit first. Salt and rot, like something ancient trying to breathe again. The lower deck of The Siren's Mercy was cramped and dark, lit only by a lantern swinging from an iron hook. Shadows danced along the warped wooden walls like specters whispering secrets in a tongue Ren didn't yet understand.
She stepped down the last creaking stair, careful not to wake the crew sleeping in the hammocks strung like cobwebs along the walls. These men didn't sleep as much as they waited trapped between tides, between lives, between deaths. Cursed men didn't dream. And that was the only reason Ren still trusted them more than most nobles she'd known.
At the far end of the corridor was a door banded with brass and scorched by something not fire. She hesitated, clutching the pendant at her throat. Then she knocked.
A long silence followed. Then a voice rasped from within.
"Enter. But leave the sea outside."
Ren pushed the door open.
Inside was a room unlike anything else on the ship. It was circular, windowless, and smelled of wet parchment and brine. The walls were plastered with maps layered, torn, stitched together like a patchwork of lost worlds. A strange fog clung to the floor, curling around her boots. At the center of the room sat an old woman hunched over a basin of black water.
Mistress Ansa. Ren had seen her only once before, when she first boarded the Mercy. Verek had called her "the drowned one," and no one else on the ship spoke to her. Not out of disrespect. Out of fear.
The old woman did not look up. Her hair was seaweed-damp, hanging in ropes over her face. Her skin was wrinkled like a dried kelp leaf, lips a faded blue.
"You've brought it," she said.
Ren touched the pendant instinctively.
"My mother said it was the only way to find the Hollow Current."
Ansa stirred the water with two fingers, her nails cracked and green. "The Hollow Current does not want to be found. It sails beneath the sea not on it. And its captain does not forget bloodlines."
Ren frowned. "You know who I am."
"I know your scent. Salt and silver. A heretic's daughter with fire in her blood."
She gestured to the maps.
"These show the sea as men know it. But not as the sea truly is."
Ren stepped forward. Among the layered charts, one stood out drawn in ink that shimmered faintly under the lantern light. It showed islands that didn't exist, currents that defied logic, and in the corner, the spiral she'd seen before. "What is this?" she asked. Ansa turned toward her, and Ren caught her eyes for the first timemilky white, but glowing faintly with deep-blue veins, like ocean depths caught in glass. "That," the old woman whispered, "is a drowned map. Written in the ink of leviathans. It can only be read by those who've heard the Sea God's call."
Ren swallowed. "And what if I haven't?"
Ansa smiled, and it was not a kind thing.
"You will."
Suddenly, the basin of water rippled, though Ren hadn't moved. A voice thin and distorted whispered up from the surface.
"You sail toward the end.
But the end is a mouth.
And the sea will eat what you love. Ren staggered back.
"Was that…?"
Ansa nodded solemnly. "The Sea God knows your name, child. And he is hungry."
Later, back on deck, Ren found Verek watching the horizon with narrowed eyes. The sun had not fully risen its red light smeared across the waves like spilled blood. The crew moved quietly, as if even sound was something to ration.
"You went to see the drowned one," he said without looking at her.
"She showed me a map. A real one."
"There are no real maps of where we're going," Verek said. "Only memories. And curses."
Ren handed him a parchment. The drowned map. "She said this is drawn in leviathan ink."
He took it carefully, eyes flicking over the spiral near the bottom. "We're close then."
"Close to what?" she asked.
Verek stared out at the shifting sea.
"To the Hollow Current. To the truth. To whatever gods want with you."
She bit her lip. "My brother… do you really think he's still alive?"
The captain didn't answer right away. Instead, he looked to the crew his men, all cursed to sail until they found peace in the Sea That Ends.
Finally, he said, "If he was taken by the Hollow Current, then yes. But if he joined them... then he's something else now."
Ren's fists tightened.
"I'll find him," she whispered. "And if the Sea God thinks he can use me... I'll make him regret it."
Verek cracked a smile. "That's the fire of a tideborn."
"A what?"
He turned to her fully now.
"You're not just heretic blood. You're sea-blessed. You didn't just come here by choice. You were summoned."
Ren's skin prickled.
"I'm not a pawn," she said.
"No," Verek agreed. "You're a storm.
Beneath the ship, far below, something vast turned in the dark.
A god older than time stretched its limbs, bones cracking like ship masts breaking. It smelled the girl. The key. The fire. The promise.
The sea would rise again. And when it did, the storm would ride its back.