August 18. The Endless Sea.
The sun sat directly overhead, turning the island air heavy and hot.
The ogres dragged Rhine—and the other nine crewmen—into a hidden camp deep in the vegetation.
Rhine kept his eyes half-lidded as he assessed the place.
It was an ogre base, no question.
With a grunt, the ogres tossed Captain Andrew and the sailors onto the ground.
The toxin still had them asleep.
The ogres didn’t bother tying anyone up. No ropes, no cages.
They just dumped the unconscious humans in a corner like firewood.
One ogre did notice Rhine blinking, though—”clever,” by ogre standards.
So they bound Rhine to a thick stone pillar.
That choice only made Rhine relax even more.
If you want a captive to stay put, you keep him unconscious.
The ogres didn’t know that.
In a supernatural world, they apparently believed rope solved everything.
It was almost funny.
Almost.
Rhine listened to their guttural chatter and let his paper doll servant keep watch from the brush.
His real focus, though, was on a different question:
Why keep humans alive at all?
Ogres didn’t run prisons out of compassion.
Something here needed living bodies.
A sacrifice?
A lure?
A feeding schedule?
He had no altar in sight.
No ritual markings.
And yet the Sea Tumor had been dragged into a safe route last night, as if the island were calling to the supernatural like a beacon.
The storm at sea brings opportunity, the diviner’s blade had promised.
Rhine was beginning to suspect the opportunity had teeth.
*
A commotion at the edge of camp drew his attention.
A group of ogres marched in from the direction of the shore—those were the ones who’d boarded the Ambush.
And between them, rope around her wrists, barefoot on scorched dirt—
Thea.
She was in human form.
She wore Rhine’s coat, and beneath it…
Rhine squinted.
That was a bedsheet. She’d tied it like a dress.
Up close, with less foliage blocking the view, Rhine finally understood what had happened.
The ogres hadn’t just seeded the beach.
They’d seeded the ship too.
They’d knocked out the men staying aboard.
And Thea—somehow—had ended up captured as well.
Which was the only part Rhine couldn’t quite buy.
At her strength, five ogres shouldn’t have been able to force anything.
Unless…
Unless she’d wanted to be here.
Rhine’s mouth twitched.
That would actually make his life easier.
But the sight of her bare feet and improvised “dress” also sparked a different realization.
No wonder she’d always been reluctant when he suggested she switch forms.
Cats didn’t wear clothes.
He’d half-assumed dragons had some magical “keep your outfit” trick.
Like a bad anime.
Reality, apparently, did not come with censorship-friendly transformation magic.
Under the blazing noon sun filtering through leaves, Thea spotted Rhine tied to the pillar.
Her eyes widened.
For a split second she looked genuinely shocked.
How could he get caught?
She saw the nine unconscious sailors beside him.
Ah.
He’d stayed because of the humans.
Thea’s frown sharpened into concern, and she reached out through the contract.
Are you hurt? What happened after you landed?
Rhine’s reply came back calm, almost amused.
Not lethal poison. I’m fine. But—why are you wearing my clothes?
Thea shot him a glare across the camp that could’ve cut stone.
He’s joking right now? I was worried.
Ogres filed in, dumping more stolen gear. Their camp wasn’t large; it didn’t take long for the last of them to arrive.
The ogres argued again—loudly, proudly, with the confidence of creatures too stupid to know fear.
Thea listened, then let her face smooth into innocence.
Apparently, the “lord” didn’t want women.
But their chieftain did.
So the ogres tied her with the rest.
Rhine waited until he felt the camp settle, until the ogres all gathered close enough that none would escape to warn whatever they served.
Thea’s voice slid into his mind, bright with sharp humor.
Do you think everyone’s here?
Rhine glanced around the camp, counted breaths, weighed distance to the jungle.
“Close enough,” he said.
Thea smiled.
She stepped back toward the bonfire at the camp’s center.
With two quick flicks of her wrists, the rope snapped like rotten twine.
Rhine had to bite back a laugh.
Supernatural world. Rope prisons.
Genius.
The chieftain—an ugly brute with two heads—was smarter than the rest.
He saw the movement, snarled, and swung a stone hammer at Thea.
He never got close.
A roar of flame detonated from Thea’s mouth.
Dragonfire.
Not the thin, human-made flame a Weaver might shape.
This was heat with a will of its own—ancient, violent, supernatural.
It poured over the ogre camp like a tide, swallowing tents, wood, bodies.
Ogres screamed once.
They turned to ash.
Rhine watched the conflagration and felt it in his bones:
Dragons were built different.
Thea was a Tier 2, Rank 1 Weaver.
But compared to a human of the same tier, her raw output was obscene—closer to what Rhine would expect from a human at Tier 2, Rank 5 or higher.
Dragons advanced slowly. If they advanced at human speed, the Endless Sea would still be dragon territory.
As the heat rolled off the scorched ground, Rhine’s thoughts drifted—unhelpfully—back to the Black Dragon Queen.
If the queen could steal the power buried in the Lost Lands—ancestral power strong enough to make a god—
Would she qualify for godhood herself?
And if the previous queen was dead, leaving only her daughter…
If Thea ever obtained all of that power…
Would she become something the gods had to look up at?
The dragonfire waned.
Under Thea’s control, it didn’t spread beyond the camp. It died down into scattered weak flames licking at blackened soil.
The ogres were gone.
Only charcoal silhouettes and brittle bones remained.
Barefoot, Thea walked across the scorched ground and crouched beside Rhine.
“You still able to move?” she asked, already untying the ropes around him.
“Yeah,” Rhine said, flexing his hands. “Nothing serious.”
Thea snorted. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you look this pathetic.”
Rhine laughed quietly. “Hey. You stole my moment. I was going to clean house.”
He shook out his limbs. The toxin still left a faint heaviness, but it wasn’t dangerous.
Thea eyed him. “If the mosquitoes are ogre-bred, there should be antidote in their tents. I’ll go—”
“No need,” Rhine cut in, catching her wrist. “I’m fine. They’ll wake up soon.”
He nodded at the twelve human sailors sprawled nearby.
With his poison knowledge, he could already tell the paralysis dose wasn’t meant to kill.
It was for capture.
Which made the deeper question burn hotter:
Capture… for what?
“The ogres didn’t kill us,” Rhine said. “They hauled us here. That means something around this camp matters. Let’s look.”
He recalled his paper doll servant and set it to watch the camp and the sleeping crew.
That was when Thea, who’d been casually interrogating ogres before she burned them, spoke up.
“I heard them say they caught another group of humans a few days ago,” she said. “Locked them in a cave behind the camp.”
“Storm survivors,” Rhine guessed at once. “The ones who fell overboard.”
“Probably.”
They moved.
The island vegetation was savage—thick vines, overlapping branches, a view that died ten steps in.
Finding a cave here was like finding a key in a green ocean.
If Thea shifted back into her dragon form and took to the air, she could spot it easily.
But Rhine remembered the wardrobe situation and decided not to torture her.
Instead, he sent his paper doll up a towering tree and borrowed its eyes.
From the treetop, the camp’s southeast showed a low mound covered in vines.
One side had been dug out, leaving a shallow cave mouth.
“South-east,” Rhine said. “Not far.”
He left the paper doll near the crew as insurance and headed out with Thea.
When they found the opening, Rhine produced a small magical light—just enough glow to cut the dark.
The light spilled into the cave like a cautious hand.
Voices drifted back.
Human voices.
Rhine’s gaze flicked to Thea.
If Andrew and John saw a black dragon walking around in human skin, questions would follow.
If the prisoners in the cave saw it, rumors would spread.
Thea understood instantly.
She slipped behind Rhine and shifted into a cat.
With a soft rustle, her coat and the bedsheet dropped in a heap.
Thea’s ears flattened. “Uh… please—store my clothes.”
Rhine bent down, scooped up his coat and the bedsheet, and tucked them into his Dragon Satchel.
Inside the cave, something moved.
Rhine and Thea waited at the mouth, tense, silent.
Shapes appeared.
One.
Two.
Three…
Seven figures, staggering and wary, shuffled out into the thin slice of daylight.