Chapter 1: The Drowning Weight of Victory

The ironclad dreadnought Bloodfang groaned like a dying beast as cannon fire tore through her hull. Lieutenant Kaelen Bosh pressed his back against the buckled steel plating, salt spray and sulfurous smoke stinging his eyes. Around him, the Aethelgardian fleet's elegant white-sailed vessels danced through the waves like sea birds, their elemental cannons painting the dawn sky in brilliant blues and greens. Against them, the Iron Empire's coal-black warships belched crimson fire and dark alchemy into the churning waters.

This was what victory looked like—bloody, brutal, and balanced on a knife's edge.

"Thirty seconds until she goes under!" Kael's partner, Sergeant Thorne, shouted over the din of battle. The grizzled sailor's face was streaked with soot and blood, his usual grin replaced by grim determination. "Whatever you're planning, make it quick!"

Kael's grey eyes swept the tilting deck of the enemy flagship. Somewhere in the chaos of screaming metal and dying men lay their prize: the Cipher of Tides, a dwarven artifact that intelligence claimed could turn the tide of this endless war. Literally, if the stories were true.

"Cover me," Kael commanded, drawing his enchanted cutlass. The blade hummed with stored lightning, crackling blue-white in the dim morning light. "I'm going below."

"You're insane!" Thorne grabbed his arm. "The magazine could blow any second!"

Kael shook him off. "Then I better move fast."

He sprinted across the listing deck, his boots finding purchase on blood-slicked planks as the dreadnought's death throes threw him from side to side. A Khordian marine, his face hidden behind a brass rebreather that leaked toxic green vapors, lunged from behind a fallen mast. Kael's blade took him clean through the chest, the lightning enchantment cooking the man's soul-forged armor from the inside.

The companionway leading to the captain's quarters was a twisted ruin of metal and flame. Kael squeezed through the wreckage, his naval uniform tearing on jagged steel. Below decks, the ship's death song was different—a low, resonant moan that seemed to come from the very walls themselves.

There. In the captain's private study, past overturned charts and scattered alchemical vials, sat a simple wooden chest bound with dwarf-forged iron. But the moment Kael's fingers touched the lid, he knew this was no ordinary treasure.

The chest was heavy. Not physically—though it certainly was that—but heavy in a way that made his bones ache and his mind reel. It was as if the thing contained the weight of every drop of water in all the seven seas.

Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay a disc of polished stone covered in intricate runes. The Cipher of Tides was smaller than he'd expected, no larger than a dinner plate, but as his fingers closed around it, the artifact's true nature made itself known.

Impossible weight. The Cipher didn't just become heavier—it became immovable, as if Kael had tried to lift the ocean itself. His knees buckled, his augmented strength meaning nothing against this supernatural mass.

The ship lurched violently to starboard. Through the study's porthole, Kael could see green water rising fast. In moments, this compartment would be completely flooded.

"Come on!" he snarled through gritted teeth, straining every muscle as he tried to lift the artifact. The runes along its surface seemed to pulse with their own inner light, mocking his efforts. "Move, damn you!"

But the Cipher might as well have been rooted to the earth's core.

Water began seeping through the buckled walls. First a trickle, then a stream, then a roaring cascade as the sea claimed its prize. Kael's boots slipped on the flooding deck, but he refused to release his grip on the artifact. If he couldn't take it with him, he'd die trying.

The water reached his waist, then his chest. His vision began to tunnel as the freezing ocean filled the compartment. Still he held on, even as his lungs burned and darkness crept in at the edges of his sight.

This is it, he thought as the last pocket of air disappeared above his head. This is how I die. Drowning with a gods-damned paperweight.

But then, in the murky green darkness, something moved.

A flash of crimson, like blood in water. A shimmer of scales that caught the dying light filtering down from above. And most impossible of all, a voice that spoke directly into his mind—clear and musical despite the crushing depth.

Foolish surface dweller. You would die for a trinket you cannot even understand.

Kael tried to speak, to shout, but only precious bubbles escaped his lips. His grip on the Cipher began to weaken as consciousness faded.

Your people's war has consequences beyond your small understanding, the voice continued, tinged now with something that might have been pity. The Balance shifts. The Bleed spreads. And you... you may be the key to setting things right.

Through the haze of drowning, Kael saw her—a figure both terrible and beautiful, with flowing crimson hair that moved like fire underwater and eyes the color of deep emeralds. From the waist down, her body was that of some great fish, scales shimmering sapphire and gold in the filtered light.

Sleep now, she commanded, and her voice carried the authority of the deep places where light never reached. When you wake, your true duty will begin.

The last thing Kael remembered was the strange sensation of the Cipher's weight lifting away, not because it had become lighter, but because somehow, impossibly, he had become strong enough to bear it.

Then darkness claimed him completely.

---

Consciousness returned slowly, like tide creeping up a beach. First came the sound—not the crash of battle or the roar of drowning water, but the gentle whisper of waves against stone. Then the sensation of rough rock beneath his cheek, and the blessed feeling of air filling his lungs.

Kael opened his eyes to find himself on a narrow shelf of black stone, waves lapping just inches from where he lay. His uniform was torn and salt-stained, but miraculously, he was alive. And clutched against his chest, as if he'd never let it go, was the Cipher of Tides.

He sat up carefully, every muscle in his body screaming in protest. The artifact felt... different now. Still heavy, but in a way he could manage. And when he looked closely at the runes carved into its surface, they seemed almost familiar, as if their meaning danced just beyond the edge of understanding.

It was then that he noticed the mark on his right hand—a small, glowing rune that pulsed with soft teal light. It hadn't been there before the drowning. Before her.

Your true duty will begin.

Kael looked out over the empty sea, searching for any sign of the crimson-haired woman who had somehow pulled him from certain death. The horizon showed nothing but endless water and the distant smoke of the continuing naval battle.

But something had changed. He could feel it in his bones, in the way the Cipher hummed with potential energy in his hands, in the strange new weight of purpose that settled over his shoulders like a mantle.

Whatever debt he now owed to his mysterious rescuer, whatever "true duty" awaited him, one thing was certain: Lieutenant Kaelen Bosh was no longer the same man who had boarded that enemy dreadnought in search of victory.

The real war, it seemed, was just beginning.