“By the Goddess above…”
When Ralph brought Rhine to Bishop Frey and explained what they’d seen, the old man didn’t believe a word of it.
He ordered Rhine back to bed, insisted he rest, insisted he stop wasting strength on nonsense.
He checked the wound himself.
Once. Twice. Again, slower this time, fingers pressing along healed flesh that had no right to be whole.
Bishop Frey went very still.
“How…?” The question came out more like a prayer than a sentence. “I’ve lived nearly seventy years. I have never seen anything like this.”
He looked up at Rhine with a frown that was equal parts awe and alarm.
“This is impossible.”
Possibilities lined up in the Bishop’s mind like soldiers.
Was the young man a cultist? A pawn of a false god? A believer of something that crawled up from the deep and wore prayers like skin?
No.
If Rhine had been tied to an outer horror, the moment he stepped into the Violet Goldflower Church, the Goddess would have warned her servant.
Frey exhaled softly, setting the worst answer aside.
What?
A healing ability, newly awakened?
That didn’t fit either.
The marshal’s report said Rhine’s strength had been speed—reflex, movement, the kind of power that kept a blade alive.
And nine pirates, one of them awakened… that kind of fight spoke of physical enhancement, not gentle restoration.
Bishop Frey paced the room, the hem of his robe whispering over stone.
The more he denied each theory, the more one truth remained: Rhine’s recovery had happened here, under the Goddess’s roof.
Was that… a sign?
A dream from a year ago rose uninvited in his mind—a dream that had never let him sleep cleanly again.
At last, Frey stopped. His voice was calm, but his eyes weren’t.
“Wait here,” he told Ralph and Rhine. “Both of you.”
He turned and disappeared into the prayer chamber.
***
In the hush of the chapel, Bishop Frey sank to his knees before the statue of the Goddess of Wisdom and Life.
Stone hands. Stone gaze. A presence that felt far away—yet impossibly near.
“Perhaps I can… try,” he murmured.
He struck a match.
Fire flared with a sharp hiss.
He set a white candle alight.
The flame warmed the deep lines of his face, painting him in amber and shadow.
Frey folded his hands in prayer and stared into the heart of the fire, letting his mind drift to what he had once seen in a dream.
In that dream, the lilies bloomed across the pond—bright and innocent, as if beauty could stop a tide.
The sea brought a demon to Storm Island.
Shark faces tore out from between people’s ribs.
The Dock Ward and the Outer Ward drowned in blood.
He had never been certain if the vision was prophecy or fear wearing prophecy’s mask.
But as a Light-Seeker of the Goddess, he knew this much: fate did not always speak in words.
Sometimes it whispered in candlelight.
Frey asked the Goddess for clarity.
He asked to see the fate of the young man with the impossible wound—the one the city was already calling a hero.
But when he peered into the flame’s core… he saw nothing.
Nothing at all.
His breath stuttered.
How could that be?
Was the dream false? Was Rhine unrelated to it?
Even if so, Frey should have seen something—some thread, some turn, some shadow of a path.
“I cannot see his fate,” Frey thought, the words sharp inside his skull.
“Yet within the Goddess’s church, she allows him to mend in an instant.”
Protection.
Yes. That, at least, was undeniable.
But protection could also be a message.
Was the Goddess telling him to keep this young man close? To anchor him here, within the faith, before the sea could claim him again?
With no clearer revelation, Bishop Frey gathered the pieces of the puzzle the only way an old priest could: by reasoning forward and praying his reasoning was right.
He extinguished the candle, rose, and returned to the outer room.
***
“Forgive me,” Bishop Frey said at once, softer than before. “I kept you waiting.”
Rhine started to stand, but Frey waved him down and took the chair opposite him.
“I cannot fully explain what happened to you,” the Bishop admitted. “But I believe it is the Goddess’s will. She chose to shelter you.”
Ethan let a flash of surprise cross his face—just enough to sell the story, not enough to invite questions.
Faith made people fill in blanks. And this conclusion, convenient as it was, didn’t hurt him.
“If that’s true,” Rhine said, leaning into the moment, “then I don’t even know how to repay the Goddess for such mercy.”
It should have been nothing more than polite words.
But Bishop Frey’s gaze sharpened, as if he’d heard something else entirely.
“Do you have somewhere to stay on Storm Island?” he asked.
Ethan’s thoughts jumped.
Is he about to recruit me into the clergy?
“I was shipwrecked,” Rhine said carefully. “The crew of the Jellyfish pulled me out of the sea and brought me here.”
It was still strange to say it aloud, like it belonged to someone else.
“This is my first time on Storm Island. I don’t have anyone here.”
For a heartbeat, real anxiety surfaced.
If the church sent him away, he’d be back to sleeping under open sky with no one to answer to but the sea.
But Bishop Frey’s expression eased—almost relieved.
“Then perhaps you should remain here,” he said, and his sincerity was hard to fake. “You are a pre-awakened. The road ahead is long. There is much you must learn.”
“In this church, my clerics and I can help you.”
The offer was too smooth to be accidental. Ethan’s instincts flared—there was something behind it, something Frey wasn’t saying outright.
He let hesitation show. Just enough.
Bishop Frey pressed two fingers to his chest.
“By the Goddess of Wisdom and Life, I will not lie to you,” he said. “I cannot see your fate in the candlelight.”
“Yet the Goddess allowed you to heal beneath her roof.”
“I believe your arrival was arranged.”
His eyes were tired, honest, and frightened in the way people became when they stared too long at the ocean.
“Fate is difficult to explain. I do not know what comes next.”
“But I feel you should stay. Perhaps… that feeling is her will.”
Ethan almost laughed.
Standard priestly mysticism.
And yet—practical.
A bed. Safety. A legal identity. A roof backed by a faith.
And, if he played it right, access to knowledge.
He’d seen the church library while searching for the pond earlier.
Three stories tall.
A place built for clerics to learn—and in a world like this, no such library stayed free of the supernatural.
Alchemy texts. Records. Notes on Relics and Artifacts. Methods. Costs. Warnings.
And fishing.
The idea made Ethan’s pulse tick up.
Three floors of books as a medium. An entire library to cast into, one volume at a time.
If he stayed, his days would look like this:
Fish the pond to restore himself.
Fish the books to steal their secrets.
Occasionally pull up something rare enough to change his future.
Hide. Grow. Survive.
And perhaps most important of all, the problem he’d been worrying about outside—the lack of a guide—would solve itself.
Ethan made the decision with the kind of speed that came from hunger.
“I accept,” Rhine said.
While the mood was warm and the door was open, he added, “I’m interested in herbs and alchemy. If there are texts I can study—and materials I can practice with—I’d like to start as soon as possible.”
Bishop Frey’s face brightened.
“Good,” he said, pleased by the eagerness. “A mind that seeks knowledge is a mind the sea has trouble swallowing.”
He turned to Ralph.
“Help Mr. Rhine borrow introductory books from the library. And when you can, take him to the extraordinary materials market.”
“He will need to register as a member.”
Ralph lit up like he’d been handed a festival.
Guiding a famous shipwreck survivor—one who’d killed nine pirates—into the supernatural world was the kind of story a young cleric could dine out on for years.
By the time they left the room, all three men wore smiles.
Outside, summer wind moved through the courtyard, wrinkling the pond’s surface and rocking the pointed buds of the lilies.
Without anyone noticing, the season edged closer to its hottest days.