“What kind of spell was that?” Benjamin asked, staring at the ships through the spyglass. “An Infiltrator’s Wound Transfer? But how does it transfer onto a ship?”
No one answered him right away. Even for veterans of the supernatural, this was new.
Am’s voice came eventually, sandpaper-dry under the hood. “I feel blightcraft.”
Red Falcon’s gaze sharpened. “Intelligence said the two Infiltrator pirates were Abyss Thralls. Are demons already involved?”
Ethan understood why the captain was worried.
An Abyss Thrall wasn’t just someone who prayed to darkness. To become one, a non-player native had to inject demonic essence into their own body. The power came fast and cheap at first – shortcuts on the early road.
But the debt always arrived later.
At a high enough Tier, the real demons came looking. If they chose you, they could force more power into your flesh, twisting you into something that wasn’t human anymore.
Most failed. Some went mad. Some simply died.
But the ones who succeeded became a natural supernatural species – long-lived and hard to kill, like dragons in the flesh. With a high enough Tier, they edged toward demi-god territory.
In the Endless Sea’s history, that temptation had ruined more lives than war ever did.
If the two Infiltrator pirates had somehow drawn a demon’s attention early, today’s operation would turn from dangerous to suicidal.
Am spoke again, slow and certain. “Demons don’t watch Abyss Thralls below Tier Five.”
That confidence made Ethan glance at him. Am’s past was a locked door, and the key clearly wasn’t offered for free.
Candice stared at the Mist with a frown that didn’t look like flirting anymore. “That ship feels wrong.”
Ethan said the thought he’d been holding since the beginning. “What if the Wound Transfer didn’t come from the pirates? What if it came from the ship?”
Five pairs of eyes turned to him at once. Even Jane, who looked like she lived in some quiet corner of her own skull, rotated her head toward him without moving her pupils.
Ethan cleared his throat. “I’m guessing.”
Red Falcon’s expression stayed hard. “It’s not an impossible guess.”
He made the call Ethan respected most. “We need reinforcements.”
Before a single blade was drawn, Red Falcon signaled other Earth Ring teams in the surrounding waters.
The sky stayed bright. The sea stayed calm. The earlier fog was gone as if it had never existed.
The White Maple moved in to observe the three ships at closer range.
And that was when the real wrongness revealed itself.
On the Mist’s deck, and on both Windrest Keep ships, there wasn’t a single person in sight.
Not one soldier. Not one knight. Not a single body. Not a smear of blood.
A hundred men did not simply vanish without leaving footprints.
Red Falcon kept the spyglass trained on the decks until his knuckles went white.
“Jane,” he asked without looking away, “can you sense the soldiers?”
“They’re dead,” Jane said.
Ethan noticed her eyes: the green had vanished. Iris and sclera alike had turned into a seamless black.
“You saw their nightmares,” Red Falcon said.
“Yes.”
Red Falcon lowered the spyglass. For the first time that morning, he looked tired. “Any survivors?”
“No.”
Jane’s eyes slowly returned to normal. “I saw a hundred nightmares. Something they couldn’t see attacked them.”
She tilted her head toward the Mist. “It feels stronger.”
Silence sat on the deck like a weight.
Red Falcon checked once more that help was on the way, then made the choice he had to make. “We board.”
The Mist looked newly built. The deck was quiet. The rails were intact. Everything was calm.
Which only made it worse, because all six of them knew a hundred soldiers had just died here.
Ethan walked in the middle of the formation and ran a mental inventory.
Unlike everyone else, he carried a System inventory. It let him pack more than a normal coat ever should.
Since the Dock District blight first appeared, he’d been preparing in every spare hour: five vials of basic Luck Potion, a couple of basic Defense and Agility brews, and the last-resort tools he hoped not to use.
Dragonflame from Skye. And, most precious of all, an Invisibility Potion – five minutes in the Shadow Realm where eyes and teeth couldn’t reach him.
That bottle was why he had the guts to be here at all.
“Stay together,” Red Falcon ordered. “No exceptions.”
They swept the deck first. Clean as new. No scuffs. No rope marks. No signs of life.
When they found nothing, Red Falcon led them to the hatch into the lower decks and repeated himself. “No one breaks formation.”
The moment they stepped below, the air changed.
Light thinned. Cold gathered. The corridor felt like it was inhaling.
Benjamin shivered hard enough to rattle his teeth. “I don’t like this.”
He forced confidence into his voice and looked back at Candice, Am, and Ethan. “Stay close. Holy power counters that kind of cold.”
A soft, golden warmth bloomed around them as Benjamin cast a sacred ward. The edge of the chill retreated, and they moved deeper.
“Strange,” Benjamin muttered. “Still nothing.”
This was the lower deck. If the soldiers had boarded, they would have come here first.
Yet there were no boot prints. No dragged marks. No blood. Nothing.
They entered a room where tables and chairs sat arranged with almost obsessive neatness – a mess hall, maybe.
Am pointed to a corridor. “Crew quarters.”
“Good,” Benjamin said, relief sharp and desperate. “We’ll find signs of how the pirates lived in there.”
He hurried forward. Am and Ethan followed.
The quarters were worse than empty.
Beds made so tightly they looked unused. Tables wiped until they shone. A warmth that felt staged, like a model home left behind by ghosts.
They checked the first room. Then the next. Then the next. Nothing.
Benjamin looked back at the corridor and shook his head. “Keep going.”
A minute later they walked into a mess hall again.
Same neat chairs. Same clean floor. Same corridor.
Am pointed. “Crew quarters.”
Benjamin nodded. “We’ll find traces.”
They went. They checked every room. They found nothing.
They walked forward.
They were in the mess hall again.
At first, Ethan thought he was the one losing his grip.
He realized Benjamin was repeating his lines with the same cadence, like a clockwork toy rewound to the same point over and over.
By the fifth loop, the words felt less like speech and more like a spell.
Benjamin stepped toward the corridor and, suddenly, as if remembering something too late, he turned and said, “This place is too damn weird. Don’t fall behind.”
The sentence drifted into Ethan’s ears like a key sliding into a lock.
Something in his mind snapped.
Pain flared – sharp, bright, immediate – and then the fog in his head tore apart.
Ethan sucked in a breath and looked around.
Benjamin and Am stood ahead, about to enter the corridor again.
But Red Falcon, Jane, and Candice were gone.
“Wait!” Ethan shouted.
Benjamin and Am turned back.
The movement should have been ordinary. It wasn’t.
They moved like broken dolls, necks stiff, limbs a fraction behind the intent. Even their voices hitched.
“What’s wrong?” Benjamin asked, as if the world were perfectly normal.
Ethan had no elegant solution. He did the only thing he could: he told them, loudly, repeatedly, that they were missing half the team.
Red Falcon. Jane. Candice. Where were they? When had they vanished?
At first, Benjamin only stared at him with dull eyes.
Finally, something cleared. Benjamin’s gaze sharpened. His neck loosened. He pressed a hand to his forehead and leaned against the wall, face tightening with the same skull-splitting headache Ethan had felt.
Am, however, stayed wrong.
The hood tilted.
“I don’t know Red Falcon. I don’t know Jane or Candice,” Am rasped. His eyes found Ethan. “And I don’t know you.”
He looked between Ethan and Benjamin. “Who are you? Why am I with you?”
Ethan’s stomach sank. Not now.
Am’s gaze slid past them into empty space. His voice dropped into a monotone. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him…”
He began walking forward like a man sleepwalking into a cliff.
Benjamin moved without hesitation and drove a fist into the back of Am’s head.
Am collapsed.
Ethan’s hand went to Flint on instinct, finger tight on the trigger. For a second he expected the corridor to erupt.
It didn’t.
Benjamin lifted a palm toward Ethan. “He’s losing control,” he said. “Knocking him out helps.”
Ethan stared, then let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Benjamin lowered himself onto the floor, looking genuinely exhausted. “Soulreavers are powerful. The side effects are… obvious.”
“I don’t know what Am’s been through,” Benjamin continued, voice quieter. “Or who he thinks he needs to kill. But the captain taught me one thing: if he spirals, hit him. It usually works.”
Ethan looked down at Am’s still body and felt an unexpected flash of sympathy.
“So what now?” Ethan asked.
Half their team was missing, and none of them could even say when it happened. Ethan and Benjamin only had a hazy sense that they’d been in this neat mess hall before. How many times? Nobody knew.
Benjamin wiped sweat off his brow. “We get back to the deck.”
If Red Falcon and the others realized they’d gotten separated, they would do the same. And reinforcements should arrive soon.
This ship was too wrong to fight alone.
Ethan agreed instantly. “Yes.”
A groan came from the floor. Am sat up, one hand on the back of his head. “What happened?”
His voice was small under the rasp. “Did I lose control again?”
Ethan didn’t know what to say.
Benjamin only shrugged, a helpless, honest gesture. Sorry. Necessary.
Under the hood, Am’s head lowered. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I keep causing trouble.”
“You don’t,” Ethan said quickly, hauling him up. “We just need to move.”
Ethan explained what little they understood: the loops, the missing teammates, Benjamin’s plan to return topside.
Am nodded. “Agreed.”
They turned to retrace their steps.
And that was when they realized the ‘way back’ no longer existed.
The corridor they’d come through was gone, replaced by two passages leading into identical, spotless darkness.