By the time they crested the final ridge and descended into the harbor town, the sun stood high and glaring in a colorless sky. It was nearly noon, and already Yvain could feel the press of time like a weight on his shoulders.
Vaelha would have woken by now. She would know.
He quickened his pace, Celeste close behind. The harbor was modest, little more than a crooked stretch of dockyards bristling with old timber and salt-stained crates. Laborers moved like ants beneath towering masts, shouting orders, hoisting ropes, stowing barrels. Most of the ships had already set sail with the morning tide.
Only one vessel remained. A long-haul merchant brig, stained with the grime of distant coasts and bearing no visible flag. Its crew moved hastily, suggesting imminent departure.
Without hesitation, Yvain pushed through the throng of workers, weaving between crates and sweating sailors until he reached the gangplank. But as he stepped forward, a thick arm shot out and barred his path.
A broad-chested man, likely the ship's quartermaster, glared down at him. His beard was iron-grey, his nose crooked from too many brawls. "And where d'you think you're going, lad?"
"Passage," Yvain said, straightening. "Wherever you're headed."
The man narrowed his eyes at Yvain, then at Celeste, who had just caught up, breath steaming in the cold. She looked like she belonged in a warcamp, not a port, tall, regal, wrapped in dark wool and defiance.
"We can pay," Yvain added, reaching into his cloak and producing a heavy pouch of coin. It clinked with promise.
The man didn't take it immediately. "You two on the run or something?"
Celeste's eyes narrowed. "That," she said, voice like a blade's edge, "is none of your business."
Tension prickled in the air. The quartermaster's hand hovered near the axe at his belt.
"We're not fugitives," Yvain said quickly, forcing a smile. "Just travelers seeking new lands, new opportunities. Adventurers, if you will."
He cast a sideways glance at Celeste. If left unchecked, she'd likely make a thrall of the man and have him serve her lesser than a slave.
The quartermaster stared a moment longer, then snorted. "Adventurers, eh?" He held out a calloused hand. "Seven silver marks. Port Adwini, in Yelich. That's where we're bound."
Yvain dropped the coins into his palm without argument.
The man stepped aside. "Board fast. We cast off within the hour."
Yvain nodded, ushering Celeste up the gangplank behind him. As they stepped aboard, the wind picked up, salt-laced and chill, tugging at their cloaks.
Celeste leaned in close, her voice low. "We've escaped the Needle. What now, cousin?"
The hour that followed was long and torturous.
Yvain paced the deck in silence, every creak of wood and snap of canvas ringing in his ears like a harbinger. His fingers twitched toward his ring with every passing minute. Celeste lounged against the rail with irritating calm, her arms crossed, pale eyes narrowed on the harbor.
They both half-expected Grandmistress Vaelha to burst through the mist at any moment, riding a storm of conjured bone, fury in her eyes, death on her breath.
But no such storm came.
At last, the anchor was hoisted. Sailors shouted, lines snapped taut, and the ship groaned forward, slipping from the dock like a serpent shedding its skin. The prow carved a slow path into the oily waters of the Wet Wastes, a sea as ancient as it was unwholesome, black as pitch and flecked with motes of silver light that did not belong to the sky. The waters were still, yet sick. Dead, and still dying.
Yvain stood beside Celeste at the aft rail, watching as the jagged mountains of the Far-Ends receded into the mist. The tallest spire, Thamur's Needle, pierced the sky like a monument to all they had fled.
They had done it.
They had escaped.
"Freedom," Celeste purred beside him, the wind tugging at her white hair. "It makes me... hungry."
Yvain sighed inwardly before she continued, her tone too gleeful for his liking.
"I say we gut the quartermaster and sup on his blood. He looked thick around the liver, didn't he?"
Yvain pressed two fingers to his temple. "Gods, not this again…"
Indeed, she meant it. Celeste was a shapeshifter, and she'd long since embraced the more... primal appetites of their cursed bloodline. He had tried it once himself, raw manflesh, stolen from a battlefield corpse. The memory was vivid and nauseating.
Uncooked, it had been vile. Cooked, he sometimes still wondered.
"You can at least pretend to be civilized," he muttered.
She tilted her head and smiled, her sharp canines barely showing. "I'm only ever what I want to be."
The truth was, Yvain wasn't entirely free of the madness in his blood either. None of them were. Born of mortal ambition and Nephilim seed, their bloodline had always teetered between divinity and damnation.
But he... he clung to control. To knowledge. He studied, mastered, restrained. And still the madness lingered behind his eyes, whispering to him when he dreamed.
Celeste, on the other hand, Yvain's mind flickered to her with a mixture of admiration and dread. If she ever took the throne, ruled as their ancestor emperors once had, he feared the world would look back and consider his father's iron yoke almost merciful by comparison. Where Yvain clung to restraint and reason, she embodied wildness and ruthless ambition, a tempest barely held in check.
He shivered as the chill wind from the Wet Wastes swept over the deck, stirring the edges of his cloak. His gaze drifted once more to the vast, black sea stretching endlessly before them. The future lay before him like these waters. Unknown, unwritten, a blank canvas soaked in shadow and light.
They had fled the tower, the spires, the haunted halls where ghosts of their house whispered dark legacies. They had escaped the suffocating grasp of Grandmistress Vaelha and the heavy weight of centuries of expectation.
But what came next?
What did freedom mean to a Dehmohseni, born in blood and madness, raised in power and cruelty?
Yvain exhaled slowly and reached into his pocket, pulling out the small pouch of coins. He held it out to Celeste, who stepped closer with a sly smile.
"Get something to eat," he said quietly. "I'll retire below deck. And don't do anything stupid."
She caught the pouch effortlessly, her fingers curling around the leather with a casual grace. "You worry too much, cousin," she teased, eyes gleaming with that same reckless fire that both fascinated and frightened him.
He nodded once, already feeling the weight of what lay ahead settle heavier on his shoulders.
With a last glance at the dark horizon, Yvain turned and headed down into the belly of the ship.