General Ryia

The air in the small, cramped room was thick with the scent of ozone and stale parchment. Alexia stood by the door, her fingers white-knuckled as she gripped the frame, her eyes darting between the packed gear and the closed window. "Ryia, are you sure this is a good idea?" Alexia’s voice wavered, the sharp edges of her anxiety threatening to shatter the silence. "Surely there are better members to take as your crew. People who don't shake at the mere mention of the outer reaches." Ryia didn’t look up. Her movements were rhythmic, precise, and entirely devoid of the frantic energy that radiated from her companion. As she folded a heavy woolen tunic, her hands stilled, and she let out a long, slow sigh. She turned, her gaze steady and flat, like a calm lake before a storm—a stillness that did nothing to soothe the frantic fluttering in Alexia’s chest. "You are more than capable of not going," Ryia said, her voice low and even. "I only asked you because I know you’d listen to me. Others would argue, or worse, they’d try to lead." She stepped closer, closing the distance between them. "At the very least, I know you, Alexia. I trust you enough to bring you along. In a world of liabilities, predictability is a luxury I can’t afford to discard." Without waiting for a rebuttal, Ryia turned back to the cot. She shoved a set of iron-wrought tools and a few rations into her knapsack, the metal clinking softly against the fabric. With a swift, practiced motion, she hauled the pack over her shoulder, the weight of it barely seeming to affect her posture.

She headed for the door, pausing only for a heartbeat to place a hand on Alexia’s trembling shoulder. It wasn't a gesture of comfort, but one of grounding—a firm, immovable anchor. "Let us not keep the princess waiting," Ryia murmured, her eyes already fixed on the path ahead. "Fate has a habit of souring when you make it linger."

The vessel loomed against the harbor, a monolith of dark, polished timber that seemed to drink the morning light. Carved with the precision of master shipwrights, it bore the kingdom’s gilded insignia upon its main sail—a sigil that snapped sharply in the stiff coastal breeze.

Hismena stood on the dock, propped lazily against a weathered wooden piling. Her ears swiveled in rhythmic, wolf-like arcs, cataloging the cacophony of the port: the rhythmic slap of water against hulls, the distant shouts of sailors, and the unsettling creak of the ship’s rigging. Beside her, Princess Elicia looked as though she were waiting for the executioner rather than a voyage. The royal girl’s complexion was pale, her gaze fixed on the churning dark water with undisguised dread. Flanking her, a guard in full plate armor stood like a monolith of iron, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes scanning the horizon with a predatory alertness that suggested he expected the sea itself to declare war.

Boots crunched against the wood behind them. Ryia strode into view, her presence commanding the air around her. She didn't offer a pleasantry; her expression was a mask of professional, distant efficiency. “Hismena. Princess.” Hismena pushed off the pillar, offering a shallow, respectful nod. “General.”

From behind Ryia, a nervous voice piped up. Alexia stepped into the light, clutching a sack of belongings to her chest as if it were a shield. She stared up at the towering masts, her throat bobbing. “That’s... that’s a big ship,” she stammered, her voice cracking under the weight of her anxiety. “How long is this voyage, exactly?”

Hismena shifted, a casual shrug lifting her shoulders. “Less than three weeks. I’m quite excited to be back in the waters, honestly.” The reaction was instantaneous. Elicia’s head whipped around, her eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and genuine alarm. “Excited? Again? You mean you’ve sailed before?” Hismena offered a lopsided, half-amused smile. “Are you surprised, Princess? I am not quite as much a caged bird as you are.”

The words hung in the salt-heavy air, jagged and blunt. They were the sort of remark that, in any other court, would have earned a lash or a banning, yet Hismena delivered them with a lightness that stripped them of malice. Elicia blinked, caught off guard. She let out a singular, awkward laugh that died quickly, followed by a long, heavy silence. She stared at Hismena, searching for the bite behind the joke and finding nothing but playful confidence. Unsure how to navigate the social minefield, she finally looked back toward the ship.

“Well,” Elicia murmured, clutching her cloak tighter against the spray. “I suppose we should set off, before it gets dark.”

The four board the ship, The princess’ guard staying behind on the docks, a precaution taken by the king to ‘preserve the princesses innocence for her wedding’

The sun dropped with a swift, predatory grace, bleeding the sky into a bruised violet and casting the ocean in a liquid, copper glow. By the time the four women retreated to their quarters, the water had stilled, though it remained heavy with the weight of the coming night.

In Ryia’s cabin, the porthole sat precariously close to the waterline. Through the reinforced glass, she watched the rhythm of the sea—a hypnotic, obsidian pulse. Every few seconds, a wave would rise up to lick the bottom of the frame, a soft, rhythmic slapping that felt less like a greeting and more like a reminder of what lay just inches away.

Dinner had been a hollow affair. They had sat around the small galley table, the clink of silverware against ceramic sounding unnaturally loud in the stagnant air. No one spoke, the silence was dense, thrumming with a shared, unspoken dread. They were four women tethered by a mission and bound by a singular, suffocating anticipation—the fear that the invisible thread holding their plans together was about to snap.

According to the charts and the meticulous calculations they had pored over for months, their journey was supposed to be a triumph of precision. They were navigating a corridor of the ocean where the currents were predictable, the depths mapped, and the dangerous, concentrated patches of saltwater were few and far between. They had factored in every variable: the drift, the pressure, the seasonal shifts. The storms, according to the atmospheric sensors, were distant threats, unlikely to cross their path for the duration of the voyage.

But logic was a fragile shield against the vastness of the deep.

Ryia pressed her palm against the cold glass of the window, staring out into the deepening gloom. Mathematics provided comfort, but the ocean offered no such guarantees. It remained an ancient, chaotic entity, indifferent to human planning and entirely unforgiving of human error. As the ship groaned beneath them, a low, metallic vibration that rattled the marrow of her bones, she realized that they hadn't just set a course across the sea; they had walked directly into the maw of something that didn't care if they survived the crossing.

Nature was not a machine to be calculated. It was a predator, and for the next few weeks, they were nothing more than guests in its house.

1 Week In.

The initial days of the voyage had been a sailor’s dream—smooth seas, favorable winds, and a ship that seemed to hum in harmony with the current. For Ryia, sailing was not merely a trade; it was an instinct, a second nature that allowed her to guide the vessel with the grace of a dancer. But the ocean is a fickle mistress, and in the dead of night, the sky had bruised purple and unleashed a fury that defied all logic.

The storm had not merely battered the ship; it had tossed it like a splinter in a whirlpool. When the chaos finally subsided, they were adrift in a sprawling, nameless expanse, hopelessly lost.

“What are we going to do now?” Hismena’s voice was deceptively calm, though the tension vibrating through the timber of the ship betrayed her. Ryia stood hunched over the navigation table, her knuckles white as she braced herself against the wood, eyes scanning the charcoal-smeared map.

“I don’t know,” Ryia admitted, her voice raspy. She straightened, rubbing a hand over her face as a wave of exhaustion rolled through her. “I will get us back on track, but it will take longer than expected to find land. These seas are cursed.”

She didn’t have to elaborate. The weight of the undiluted sea magic clung to them like damp wool. Ryia felt it in the dull, rhythmic ache behind her eyes and the leaden sensation in her shoulders. Worse was the sound echoing from below deck; Alexia had barricaded herself in her cabin, where the silence was periodically shattered by high, haunting wails—inhuman howls that sounded more like a wounded animal than a woman of royal blood. Only Hismena remained untouched, her own mysterious, shadowed past acting as a bulwark against the madness. She remained a sentinel, guarding the princess from the worst of the psychological fray.

Night descended like a shroud. The ship creaked, a rhythmic groaning that harmonized with the slapping of waves against the hull. The moon was strangled by thick, suffocating clouds, and the horizon had vanished into a wall of impenetrable fog. Ryia, shivering in the grip of a cold sweat, gave up on sleep. She had been tossing in her bunk, her mind a fraying rope. Then, she heard it—a lullaby.

It didn't drift through the air so much as it bloomed inside her mind. It was beautiful, angelic, and undeniably ancient. It spoke of deep trenches and starlight captured in salt water. Ryia stood, her movements mechanical, and buckled her belt. She checked the weight of her sword, her fingers curling around the hilt until her skin turned pale. She climbed the stairs to the deck, each step feeling heavier than the last. The lanterns, once bright, were dark, their flames long extinguished by the heavy, damp air.

She pulled her spyglass from its case, peering into the abyss. At first, there was only the erratic churning of the black water. Then, she saw it. “Impossible...” The word left her lips as a ghost of a breath. A figure moved amongst the waves—not swimming, but walking upon them, approaching with the speed of a hunting predator. Ryia’s heart hammered against her ribs, but her grip on her sword remained iron-tight.

“State your business!” she commanded, her shout cutting through the fog. A flicker of foolish hope remained—a desperate prayer that this was a lost fishing vessel or a survivor of the storm.

But the only answer was the lullaby. It grew in volume, swelling with a potency that defied the laws of sound. As the music washed over her, Ryia’s thoughts began to unravel. The sharp edges of her pragmatism—the logic that had kept her alive through countless storms—began to soften into a warm, intoxicating haze. The sword hilt felt less like a weapon and more like an anchor she no longer needed to hold.

The figure drew closer, and as the lullaby reached a fever pitch, Ryia felt the cold, dark ocean whispering her name, welcoming her home.

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