The sea was calm.
Which, in Raiyo's experience, meant it was planning something.
He leaned against the rail of the Hikari's Folly, staring down at the water as it rolled by in lazy, glittering waves. Sunlight scattered off the surface in a million little shards. It should've been peaceful.
Instead, he had a headache.
A tiny spark fizzled on the tip of his index finger, then sputtered out like a dying firefly.
"Come on," he muttered. "Do the thing. Be cool. Not explodey. Just a little pew, not a big KABOOM."
Nothing.
He scrunched his face in concentration, trying to remember the exact feeling from Fort Aegis. Adrenaline, fear, anger—yeah, sure, he'd had plenty of that. But there was something else.
He'd flicked light. Just a bead of it. Like it was a marble he could throw.
That had been new.
That had also been useful as hell.
He held his breath, focused on his fingertip, and pushed.
A bright, concentrated pellet of light popped into existence.
Raiyo's eyes widened. "Oh shit—!"
It detonated in his own face.
He yelped as the world went white. Stumbling backward, he smacked into a coil of rope and tumbled onto his ass.
"GODS DAMMIT!"
"Did you blind yourself again?" came Takeshi's flat voice from somewhere above him.
Raiyo blinked furiously, seeing nothing but sizzling afterimages. "No, I'm just lying on the deck and screaming for fun."
Boots thudded closer. Something cast a shadow over him.
"Don't move," Takeshi said.
Raiyo squinted at the vague green blur that might've been his swordsman. "Why, are you gonna mercy-kill me?"
He felt rough fingers grab his chin and tilt his head. Calloused thumbs pulled his eyelids up gently.
Takeshi's breath huffed across his face. "You didn't fry them. Just stunned."
"Great," Raiyo said bitterly. "I'm evolving. Next step: weaponized incompetence."
Takeshi let go and straightened. "You said you wanted to practice."
"Yeah, I wanted to practice control, not speedrun becoming a walking cautionary tale."
Raiyo flopped back on the deck, arm flung over his face.
The Folly creaked gently around them, the mast swaying in the breeze. Seagulls cried overhead. Somewhere, a flying fish launched itself out of the water and slapped back down with a sound like a badly timed punchline.
The dizziness faded enough that Raiyo could roll to his side and push himself up. He sat cross-legged, squinting.
Takeshi stood near him, arms folded, the wind tugging at his dark green hair. Two swords at his hip, one at his back. His default expression: resting "I will absolutely cut you in half" face.
Raiyo pointed at his own eyes. "On a scale of one to Apollo's worst hangover, how screwed are my retinas?"
"You'll live," Takeshi said. "Unfortunately."
"Rude, but fair."
Raiyo flexed his fingers again, light itching under his skin like static.
He hesitated.
"Hey," he said. "Back at Aegis Port…"
Takeshi just stared, waiting. The guy could make silence heavier than armor.
Raiyo scratched the back of his neck. "I didn't… black out the whole time, you know? When the fight started going to shit, I… changed something."
"You mean when you blind-fired half the garrison," Takeshi said.
"That was unintentional!" Raiyo protested. "No, before that. Remember when I hit that one guard from across the yard? The guy whose spear I dodged? I—" He mimed flicking something with his fingers. "I threw the light. Like it was a stone. I've never done that before."
Takeshi's eyes narrowed slightly. "I noticed."
"Oh, cool, thanks for mentioning it earlier," Raiyo muttered.
"I was busy not dying."
"Excuses, excuses."
Raiyo exhaled slowly, looking at his hand.
"I've always just… burst," he admitted. "Like all-or-nothing. Either I flashbang everyone, or nothing happens. But that moment? I aimed. I don't know how. And now that I know it's possible, if I can't figure out how to do it again, I'm going to go insane."
Takeshi considered him for a moment.
"Tell me exactly what you were feeling," he said.
"Terrified?" Raiyo said. "Like normal. Also mad. Also kind of hungry. Does that help?"
"Focus," Takeshi said. "What was different?"
Raiyo chewed his lip.
"I was cornered," he said, slowly. "Guard right in front of me, your arms still chained, more coming. I knew if I exploded, I'd blind you too. And that would get us killed. So I… I just really, really needed the light to hit him and only him."
He clenched his fist.
"I wasn't thinking about power," he said. "I was thinking about who it needed to hit."
Takeshi nodded once. "Intention."
Raiyo blinked. "What?"
"You've been treating your ability like a bomb," Takeshi said. "But it's not just energy. It's… extension. Of you. Of your will. In the yard, your intention narrowed. 'Hit him, not us.' Your body reacted."
Raiyo frowned. "So you're saying my magic is… picky?"
"I'm saying you're an idiot who keeps flailing and hoping something works instead of directing it," Takeshi said blandly. "Discipline. Same as a blade. You don't just swing and hope. You cut where you mean to."
Raiyo rolled the idea around his head like a marble.
"Intention," he repeated softly.
He lifted his hand, palm outward, toward the empty sea.
"You're going to blind a fish," Takeshi warned.
"Shut up, I'm experimenting."
He inhaled slowly. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. He tried to copy the way Takeshi breathed before a swing—grounded, steady, like the world shrank to the line of his strike.
"Okay," Raiyo murmured. "No explosion. No big area. Just a flick. Like throwing a coin. Just there."
He picked a point on the rail a few meters away.
Then he focused.
"Right there," he whispered. "Just there."
Light flared in his palm—a small sphere, no bigger than a marble.
Raiyo held it, heart hammering. It wobbled in his hand, wanting to pop.
"Okay, buddy, easy," he muttered, sweat slicking his fingers. "We're not making a star. We're making a… a rude flashlight. A rude little flashlight."
He pulled his arm back and flicked his fingers toward the rail, imagining the light as something he could actually throw.
The sphere zipped away in a thin arc and struck the rail.
It burst in a quick, sharp flash—bright, but localized. The wood smoked faintly.
Raiyo's jaw dropped. "HOLY HESTIA'S LEFT SHOE, I DID IT!"
He sprang to his feet so fast he nearly fell again. "Did you see that!? Did you see that!?"
"I'm not blind," Takeshi said. "So yes."
Raiyo grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "I CONTROLLED IT! I MADE A CHOICE AND IT LISTENED. MY POWER LISTENED. THIS IS UNHEARD OF."
"Stop shaking me or I'll use your face as a whetstone," Takeshi said calmly.
Raiyo let go, bouncing on his heels.
He held up his hand again, excitement humming under his skin. "Again."
The next three attempts were… less graceful.
One fizzled in his palm and singed his fingertips.
The second veered wildly off target and flashed right over Takeshi's head.
The third detonated about halfway between them, forcing both to wince and curse.
"Gods, why is it so moody?" Raiyo groaned. "Make up your mind. You either work or you don't."
"Your breathing fell apart," Takeshi said. "You rushed. You got excited. Your focus scattered."
"What are you, my therapist?"
"No," Takeshi said. "I'm the one who has to fight next to you. It's in my best interest that you don't blind me mid-swing."
Raiyo blew out a breath, rolling his shoulders.
"You really think this can get… reliable?" he asked quietly. "That I can actually aim it like a weapon instead of praying I don't nuke my own side?"
Takeshi shrugged. "You just did it. Once. That means it's possible. Now you repeat it a thousand times."
"A thousand? Seriously?"
"That's the bare minimum for a basic form."
Raiyo made a strangled noise. "You and I have very different ideas of 'basic.'"
He flexed his fingers again, then winced. The skin was already tingling, faintly raw.
"Alright," he sighed. "I'll pace it. Don't want my fingers falling off."
"We agree on something," Takeshi said. "Terrifying."
Raiyo flopped onto a barrel, watching the horizon rock up and down. The endless blue was starting to blur together. Days at sea were weird like that—time stretched, squished, looped. You either lost your mind or found ways to fill it.
Raiyo pulled the cracked compass from his pocket, thumb tracing its battered rim. The needle pointed stubbornly ahead, as always.
"Got us into one prison break," he told it. "Wonder what fresh nightmare you're dragging us toward next."
He glanced at Takeshi, who had already drawn one sword and started a slow, careful drill. Each cut was precise, measured. No wasted effort.
The guy moved like the promise of violence wrapped in discipline.
Raiyo watched in silence for a while.
Then cleared his throat.
"So," he said. "Kyoji taught me something for long voyages."
"If it's more magical cursed items, I'm not interested," Takeshi said.
"It's a song."
Takeshi paused mid-swing. "That might be worse."
Raiyo placed a hand dramatically over his heart. "Wow. I pour my soul out and this is the thanks I get."
He hopped off the barrel and climbed a few steps up the mast ladder, just enough to feel a breeze. The sky overhead was a wide, endless blue, the kind that made you feel small—and oddly brave.
Kyoji's voice drifted up from memory, lazy and warm and just a little sad.
"There's an old shanty he liked," Raiyo said. "Said it was older than the Navy, older than half the islands. Pirates, Irregulars, sailors, they all sang it. When crews parted. When storms came. When they wanted to piss off stuffy officers."
Takeshi slid his sword back into its sheath. "Does this story end with you singing?"
"Yes."
"Then I already regret asking."
Raiyo grinned.
He took a breath, let the rhythm of the ship under his feet set the beat, and began to sing.
His voice wasn't perfect, but it was loud and clear, riding the wind.
**"Pour the light and raise the tide,
Let the old gods turn away,
We'll sail on the wounds of a dying sky,
Till the dawn eats up the grey.
Bring out the cups of shattered stars,
Drink deep for the ones who fell,
For the crew that laughs in the jaws of death,
And the fools who pissed off Hell.
So heave, my hearts, let the world grow wide,
Let the waves be cold and cruel,
We'll trade our blood for a shot at fate,
And a story to break their rules.
Oh, sing for the ships that never came home,
For the flags burned down to thread,
For the broken blades and the bargains made,
And the names we leave for the dead.
So pass the flask of borrowed time,
Let the sea decide our sins,
We'll dance on the edge of the thunder's grin,
With the storm beneath our fins.
And if the sky should crack tonight,
And the stars fall in our wake,
We'll toast the gods with a fearless laugh,
For the chains we dared to break.
So heave, my hearts, to the endless deep,
Where the Irregular dreams still hide,
We'll chase that myth till our bones turn salt,
We are ghosts of the endless tide."**
The last line rolled out over the water, carried away by the breeze.
For a moment, the world felt… bigger. Like something old and listening had leaned in, just a little.
Raiyo's throat felt tight. He hadn't meant for that to happen.
He coughed it away. "And that," he said, hopping back down, "is the official shanty of the Hikari's Folly. No complaining allowed. Captain's orders."
Takeshi was staring at him, unreadable.
"What?" Raiyo said. "If you say my singing sucks, I'm pushing you overboard."
"It doesn't," Takeshi said reluctantly. "It sounds… like a funeral and a challenge. At the same time."
"Yeah," Raiyo said softly. "That's kind of the point."
He flopped onto the barrel again, legs swinging.
"Kyoji said every crew needs a song," he went on. "Something to carry them when their guts are falling out and the gods are laughing and there's no good choices left. A thing you can hold onto that isn't a blade."
Takeshi's gaze slid to the horizon.
"What's it called?" he asked.
Raiyo grinned. "Ghosts of the Endless Tide."
"…Dramatic."
"Look who's talking, Mister Three Swords and Tragic Backstory."
"Fair."
Raiyo hummed a few more bars under his breath. Something in his chest felt warmer. Like he'd anchored a piece of this journey, given it a shape.
The Hikari's Folly rocked on.
Hours passed.
The sun crawled across the sky. Raiyo practiced small flicks of light when his fingers stopped stinging. Takeshi trained, then actually stopped before his hands bled, scowling like self-restraint physically hurt him.
Raiyo did not mention it. That would've broken the spell.
He was mid-argument with a particularly stubborn knot when Takeshi's voice cut through the air.
"Raiyo."
There was a tone in it that made the hairs on Raiyo's neck stand up.
He glanced up. "What, did I tie the rope so badly it offended your ancestors?"
Takeshi stood near the bow, squinting at the horizon.
"Look."
Raiyo jogged over, shading his eyes with one hand.
At first, all he saw were waves. Then a darker smudge resolved ahead, wavering in the heat haze.
"Land?" he breathed.
"Island," Takeshi said.
As the Folly cut closer, the shape sharpened.
An island rose from the sea like a broken tooth—steep cliffs on one side, sloping forests on the other. Dense greenery choked the interior, pierced here and there by white stone—ruins, maybe, or buildings. A thin column of smoke curled up from somewhere near the middle.
Clouds ringed the island in a lazy spiral, thicker than they had any right to be. The air around it seemed… heavy. Charged.
"Got a bad feeling about that," Raiyo muttered. "Which means, obviously, we're going straight there."
He fished the compass from his pocket.
The needle, which had been pointing ahead the whole time, snapped to a razor-straight line, aiming directly at the heart of the island. The casing vibrated faintly in his palm.
"Okay," Raiyo said. "Yep. Great. Love that for us."
Takeshi glanced at the compass. "That's where it wants us."
"That's where it thinks it wants us," Raiyo corrected. "What if that's, like, a giant sea serpent nest or a vacation home for Hera?"
Takeshi didn't answer.
His silence was answer enough.
Raiyo sighed. "Yeah, yeah. 'Right choice,' not 'easy choice.' I get it."
He rolled his shoulders back and stomped up to the wheel.
"Island ahoy," he said, mostly to make himself sound cooler than he felt. "Try not to look too murdery when we land. We don't know if the locals stab first or ask questions first."
"With how you talk," Takeshi said, "they'll probably stab first."
"Rude. Accurate. Still rude."
As they drew closer, the details sharpened.
Jagged rocks jutted out around parts of the shore, like teeth waiting to chew ships into splinters. The waves churned oddly near them, as if something below was shifting. Raiyo steered them around the worst of it, tongue between his teeth in concentration.
"Easy," he muttered. "Don't hit the death rocks. I'm too pretty to drown."
A wave slammed the hull, sending him staggering. He grabbed the wheel, cursing.
A sudden shadow passed beneath the ship—massive, long, sinuous.
Raiyo froze. "Please tell me that was just a very fat, very friendly whale."
Something surfaced off the starboard bow.
A fish—a huge, ugly thing with too many teeth and one milky eye—launched out of the water, jaws gaping.
Raiyo yelped. "OH GODS—"
His power flared.
The fish got flashbanged mid-air, screeching in a horrible wet way before slamming into the mast and flopping onto the deck in a spray of blood and slime. Its skull was half-cracked, one eye ruptured.
Raiyo stared at it.
"Okay," he panted. "That's… uh… gross."
Blood oozed across the boards. The fish twitched once, then stopped.
Takeshi walked over, looked at the thing, then at Raiyo.
"Effective," he said.
"I didn't mean to," Raiyo protested. "It jumped at my face! That's a jump-scare! That's—That's entrapment."
He nudged the fish with his sandal. Its jaw sagged open, rows of serrated teeth gleaming.
"Ugh," he said. "Great. Now the ship smells like Poseidon's armpit."
Takeshi grabbed the corpse by its tail and heaved it back overboard. It hit the water with a wet splash and quickly vanished beneath the waves.
"Focus," he said. "We're almost there."
Raiyo wiped his hands on his pants like the slime had somehow transferred to him by proximity.
The Folly glided toward a small stretch of sandy shore nestled between two rocky outcrops. Palm-like trees bent over the beach, their leaves rattling softly. Strange, colorful birds flitted between branches. He could hear the crash of waves on the far cliffs, the distant cry of something that was definitely not a bird.
He guided the ship in as gently as he could, teeth gritted. The keel scraped sand, then settled.
"Anchor!" he called.
Takeshi had already tossed it overboard, chain rattling as it sank.
Raiyo took a breath.
Up close, the island's weirdness was worse.
The air had a charge to it, like the moment before lightning struck. The treeline seemed to bend inward, branches twisted in a way that was almost… watchful. Here and there, he saw carved stones half-swallowed by vines—columns with Greek letters etched into them. Old. Faded. Half-erased.
His skin prickled.
"Well," he said. "That doesn't scream 'ancient god nonsense' at all."
He jumped down onto the sand, boots sinking slightly. Heat radiated up from the ground. The smell of salt and plant life and something faintly metallic filled his nose.
Takeshi landed beside him with a soft thud, hand resting on one sword hilt.
Raiyo rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off the tension buzzing in his muscles.
He held up the compass.
The needle spun wildly for a second, then locked, pointing inland, straight toward the thickest part of the jungle.
"Of course," Raiyo muttered. "Not the nice beachy part. Nooo. Straight into monster central."
He glanced at Takeshi. "So. Odds that we don't get mauled in the first five minutes?"
"Low," Takeshi said.
Raiyo snorted. "Cool. Love the optimism."
He tucked the compass away, pulled his jacket tighter, and drew his katana an inch from its sheath. Light shimmered faintly around his fingers, eager and unsteady.
"Well, partner," he said, forcing a crooked grin, "welcome to our first proper detour into 'plot that isn't stolen from somebody else's adventure.' You ready?"
Takeshi looked at the jungle, then back at Raiyo.
"Bet we survive it," he said quietly.
Raiyo's heart jumped.
"Do not say that near me," he hissed. "You're going to jinx it."
But he was already stepping forward, up the sand and toward the shadowed treeline, each footfall carrying them deeper into whatever the compass—and the gods—had planned.
The Hikari's Folly rocked gently behind them, alone in the shallow bay.
Ahead, the island waited.