After the miraculous escape from the first attack, the Dawn Wind took shelter in a forgotten cove far from the trade routes. The timber creaked and the main mast showed a crack that made Kael bite his tongue in pure rage.
That same night, the old sailor approached Kael with his pack on his shoulder and his eyes downcast.
"Captain, they hired me to teach you how to hunt sea monsters — not to die in a war that isn't mine," he said without softening it, gripping the strap of his bag. "What comes next isn't the sea. It's something else. And I'm too old for that kind of storm."
Kael looked at him in silence. Then he nodded once. He reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a leather pouch, setting it in the old man's hands with a weight that rang with coin.
"I understand, old man. You did more than I asked. This is for everything you taught us. Go in peace."
The sailor looked at the pouch, then at Kael, his eyes wet.
"It's too much, Captain."
"It's not," Kael replied. "Without you we'd all be at the bottom of the sea. Now go — before I change my mind."
The sailor stowed the pouch, reached out his hand, and Kael shook it firmly. The old man disappeared between the cliffs without looking back. The youngsters watched him go with a knot in their stomachs — it was the first time anyone had left the Dawn Wind, and the space he left behind weighed more than his presence.
"We need real supplies for these repairs — not patchwork," Kael said, studying the hull. "But if I set foot in the city, my head will be decorating the palace gates before nightfall."
Aeren, wiping sea-monster oil from his hands, stepped forward.
"I'll go. My companions and I know those alleyways better than anyone. We can gather intelligence on Roderick's movements and get whatever the Dawn Wind needs."
Kael studied him with skepticism, but had no better option.
"Go then, Aeren. But remember — you're a ghost. If they find you, the wager ends."
---
Winds of Change
Over the following days, Aeren slipped into the heart of the port. But something unexpected began to happen. Despite his worn clothes, his bearing and his steady gaze didn't go unnoticed by Kael's old allies.
The provisions dealer, Soren Kalt, and other merchants who had known Kael since his days as a great merchant watched Aeren move with a natural authority. They saw him organize the beggars to gather information, mediate in fights between dockhands, and help the families the King had left in misery.
But he wasn't just collecting allies. Every day in the port streets brought him fragments of a truth assembling piece by piece, like a shattered mosaic.
On the first day, while buying rope at a warehouse near the docks, he overheard two stevedores arguing in hushed voices.
"The Heir confiscated three ships from the southern merchant fleet," said one — a man with a broken nose and swollen hands. "Said it was for 'the defense of the kingdom,' but the owners never saw a penny. One of them went to the palace to complain and never walked out again."
Aeren paid for the rope without a word, but the detail lodged itself in his mind.
Two nights later, in a tavern where merchant sailors traded stories for drinks, he sat in a corner and listened. A trader from the northern coast grumbled under his breath.
"They doubled the taxes, but the money doesn't reach the King's coffers. It stays in the hands of the captains Roderick handpicked himself. Loyal to the Heir, not to the crown."
Aeren gripped his glass. Each rumor confirmed what he already suspected about his brother — but hearing it from ordinary people made it more real, and more urgent.
Near the end of his time undercover, on a night when he was making his way back through the port alleys, he passed a group of men sitting around a lantern. One of them — a thin man with tar-stained hands — was speaking in a tone the others barely caught.
"My brother-in-law works at the capital shipyards. Says things have been moving strangely there. Foreign blacksmiths have arrived — men no one's ever seen — and they've been locked in a workshop that nobody's allowed near. He says you can hear thunder from inside, but there are no storms."
"Thunder without storms..." repeated another with a nervous laugh. "They're probably building some new toy to frighten the pirates."
"It's not a toy," the thin man insisted, serious. "My brother-in-law saw them carrying out long metal tubes. Says he'd never seen anything like them."
Aeren paused a moment in the shadows, listening. But he dismissed the conversation almost immediately. Foreign blacksmiths, metal tubes, thunder... it sounded like the exaggerations of tired men. What he needed was political ammunition against Roderick — not details about some workshop's curiosities.
Back in the streets, word spread like fire among Kael's loyal circle.
"That boy..." the old provisions dealer murmured while weighing grain. "He moves like a king, but speaks like a brother."
When they saw Aeren working side by side with the Dawn Wind's crew, old acquaintances began to connect the pieces. He wasn't just a new recruit. He was the missing piece in the Captain's game.
"This is what Kael was waiting for," they whispered in the shadows of the taverns. "It all makes sense now. The Captain wasn't running — he was protecting the kingdom's future."
They felt a wind of change they hadn't breathed in decades. Aeren's presence, backed by the legend of the Mercenary Pirate, gave them back a hope they believed long dead.
---
The Impossible Decision
When Aeren returned to the Dawn Wind, he found Kael finishing up the sealing of a leak. The Captain looked exhausted, eyes fixed on the damaged timbers.
"I have news, Kael," Aeren said, with a gravity that was new. "Roderick isn't waiting. He's deployed the main fleet. They're coming here, and this time they're bringing the heavy cannons. They know we're here. And the people at the port are talking openly about his abuses: seizing ships, raising taxes that never reach the King's treasury, making people disappear if they push back. They hate him, Kael. That works in our favor."
"And is there anything else?" Kael asked, glancing at him sideways. "Anything we should fear from his fleet?"
Aeren waved a hand, brushing it off.
"There were rumors about something new they're building in the capital. Some foreign blacksmiths locked in a workshop, metal tubes... sailors' tall tales. What matters is that his fleet is moving and we have little time."
The hammer slipped from Kael's fingers and bounced off the wood with a metallic echo that faded into the cove. His eyes traveled the Dawn Wind from bow to stern — calculating distances, provisions, escape routes. Before Aeren finished speaking, his hands were already moving as if rearranging pieces on an invisible board.
"Then it's over. We can't win against the main fleet in this state. We'll fake our deaths. Burn an old wreck, leave debris in the water and disappear into the shadows. It's the only way they stop hunting us and we can get out of this kingdom for good."
"No," Aeren replied, taking a firm step toward him. "Kael, you can't run. Your old friends in the city don't believe that's something you'd do — they expect more from you. They have faith that change is coming. Some already suspect I'm the lost prince and believe you're on my side to make things right. You can't let this moment pass."
Kael stopped mid-step. The words hit him like a hand pressed against his chest. He stood still — one foot still raised — staring at Aeren as if the boy had just spoken to him in another language.
"They believe... that I'm doing this for the kingdom?"
"They believe in the legend you built yourself. If you run now, you don't just leave me behind — you leave behind the hope of everyone who believes the Pirate has a plan."
Kael was silent. He looked at his own scarred hands — hands that had fought a thousand battles for no one but himself. He remembered his own words to Marcus on the dock: "Building sandcastles at the water's edge... the sea always takes them."
He stared at the dark water of the cove, where the monsters lurked beneath the surface. He wondered if his whole life he had been wrong to try only to survive.
"But can the will of the sea bend before a king's destiny?" he whispered to himself — more doubt than conviction.
Kael exhaled deeply, rubbing the scar on his arm. A look crossed his face — somewhere between exhaustion and resignation.
"Damn it all... seems like those stubborn old men know me better than I know myself. If I stay, we'll probably all end up at the bottom of the ocean."
He got to his feet slowly, as if bones ached that hadn't before. But when he lifted his head, his eyes were no longer those of a man calculating how to flee. They were the eyes of someone who had just remembered who he used to be.
"All right, boy. No running. No false fires. If those old men believe I'm on your side to change this kingdom, I'm not the one who'll take that away from them. But we're not meeting that fleet head-on like fools — we'll use what the sea gives us."
Kael stepped to the navigation table and spread out a sea chart covered in the old sailor's notes. He pointed to a zone marked in red ink.
"This is where the monsters concentrate in this season. It's their hunting ground. We know how to move through it — we've hunted there for weeks and we know their patterns. Roderick and his fleet don't."
Aeren leaned in, understanding the plan before Kael finished.
"We pretend to go out hunting like always..."
"And we drag them straight into the heart of the hunting ground," Kael completed, with a wolfish smile. "The Dawn Wind is faster than anything in his fleet. We lure them into deep water and let the monsters do half the work. When the survivors are wounded and frightened, we finish it."
"And if it's not enough?" Marcus asked, crossing his arms.
"Then we fight with whatever's left," Kael answered without blinking. "But at least we'll have cut their numbers before the ballistae have to speak."