“How is Windrest Keep’s cargo ending up in a cave like this?”
The cavern glowed with soft, steady mage-light. Thea’s voice bounced off wet stone as she stared at the sealed crate.
Rhine shrugged and tried for humor. “No idea. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t delivered here to be used as a table.”
Even as he joked, his eyes kept flicking to the quest progress ticking upward in the corner of his vision. Whatever was inside that crate mattered.
Two things sat on top of it.
A filthy, rainbow-knitted doll that looked like it had been dragged through mud. And a candle so wrong it made Rhine’s skin crawl—its flame didn’t flicker, didn’t breathe with the air, as if time had forgotten how to move around it.
Thea leaned closer. “That doll… it looks like trollwork.”
Trolls. The word came with a sour aftertaste. The Great Dragons had ruled them once, which meant Thea knew their crafts better than most.
A cool prickle rose behind Rhine’s forehead—the familiar trigger of his appraisal Talent. Information surfaced, sparse and unhelpful.
The doll was labeled a tattered voodoo effigy, of troll origin.
The candle was listed as something tied to souls.
“That’s it?” Rhine muttered. “Super informative.”
He didn’t like either of them. But he wanted the crate. So he moved carefully, keeping his weight balanced, and set both items on the cave floor.
Nothing hissed. Nothing whispered. The candle’s motionless flame simply stared.
Rhine peeled off the paper seal stamped with Windrest Keep’s crest. Thea hovered at his shoulder, tense enough to spring.
The lid creaked open.
Inside was not gold. Not relics. Not weapons.
It was stone—dozens of blue-gray “rocks,” each the size of a melon.
Thea blinked. “Rocks?”
Rhine’s stomach tightened as recognition clicked. He pointed to a sharp ear. The batlike contours. The snarling face frozen mid-scream.
“Not rocks,” he said. “Gargoyle heads.”
Thea went still.
Gargoyle heads were valuable as supernatural materials, but their uses were narrow. And nobody gathered this many by accident.
Rhine looked at her. “Your mother collected gargoyle heads too, didn’t she?”
Thea’s golden eyes shifted, quick and calculating. “Yes… she did.”
It hit her, and she snapped her gaze back to the crate. “Lostlands. Windrest Keep is planning something with the Sorrow Theater.”
The Black Dragon Queen had hunted for ancestral power hidden in Lostlands. The gargoyle heads had been part of that equation—keys, catalysts, anchors. Now those same heads were showing up again, packed and sealed like official cargo.
Rhine’s mind lined up the pieces. “When Panglos Fell wiped out the black dragons, he could’ve taken more than trophies. He could’ve taken your mother’s notes—her method.”
He spoke like it was theory, but the shape of it felt too clean to be coincidence.
If so, it explained why the governor acted publicly indifferent when the Sorrow Theater manifested in Windrest City. He wasn’t indifferent. He was ready.
Thea’s anger simmered into something sharper. “He stole our blood. Our history. And now he wants our ancestor’s power too.”
Rhine didn’t argue. He just moved.
He shifted the entire crate—wood, straw, and all—into the Dragon Pack with a practiced motion. Five cubic meters of storage made theft easy when the world stopped questioning physics.
When he looked down again, the voodoo doll and the frozen-flame candle still lay where he’d put them.
For a moment Rhine considered taking them. Then he pictured the kind of trouble “soul-related” items brought in a world that already liked to bite.
“No,” he decided. “Not worth it.”
Thea didn’t protest. She didn’t like them either.
They left the cave with the evening wind cooling their skin, and the island’s silence swallowing the last of the mage-light behind them.
Back aboard the Ambush, the smokestack coughed black plumes into the gold of sunset as the ship turned toward Storm Island.
“You’re saying something caused that storm on purpose?” Thea asked on deck, still unsettled.
“Just a guess,” Rhine said. He didn’t try to force a tidy answer. He already had eight Lightning Sea Eels frozen in his Dragon Pack—eight offerings, eight invitations waiting to happen.
Six more floors remained in the Sorrow Theater.
Six more guaranteed promotions.
He didn’t need new mysteries right now. He needed strength.
Without warning, the narrative shifted—like someone had cut the scene in a play.
A white porcelain plate hit a table with a sharp clack.
Windrest City’s hostel. Cold stone. Bad lighting. Worse attitudes.
A servant stood over two newly arrived archmages and the exhausted apprentice at their side, posture straight, chin lifted with practiced contempt.
“Our cook castrated himself last night,” the servant said flatly. “He’s in the church infirmary. So enjoy the bread.”
He walked away before anyone could answer, leaving nothing but cold rolls and colder silence.
“That was outrageous,” Archmage Quint sputtered, face reddening. “Outrageous!”
Across from him, a dwarf woman lifted a crystal goblet, sniffed, and found only water. No wine.
“Tragic,” she sighed, then laughed at her own misery. “Never thought the Violet Eye would live to see the day we’re the ones being shunned.”
Her name was Firebrandy—over forty, compact and powerful, a Weavecaster whose people came from the frigid isles in the northwest. Dwarves loved their drink, and they loved laughing at problems even more.
Quint jabbed a fork at the bread as if it had personally insulted him. “How can a so-called ‘Dragon-Slayer Governor’ allow his staff to behave like this?”
Firebrandy grinned. “If you could stop people from taking knives to themselves every night, I bet Governor Fell would send you cake.”
Perry Qi—known in town as “Perry”—kept his expression neutral. Internally, he wanted to applaud. Out loud, he just wanted results. Windrest City had been tearing itself apart at night, and the Violet Eye was supposed to fix it.
Quint slammed down his utensils. “I’m done eating. We’re checking on Orton.”
Perry hurried after him, relieved to see them finally move.
Two hours later, with the late sun slanting west, Perry very badly wanted a cigarette.
Quint and Firebrandy were both archmages—ranked well above most of the Sea’s so-called elites. And yet, even they couldn’t fully restore Orton and the other mentors after the Theater’s night-borne influence.
Firebrandy rubbed her chin, thinking aloud. “The Sorrow Theater has rules. This isn’t something you brute-force with purification and prayers.”
Perry agreed. He’d been thinking the same thing since day one.
Firebrandy said, “Your chief mentioned a man in Windrest City who can read Old Troll. We should have him dig through the archives again.”
“Trolls served dragons,” she added. “They recorded everything for dragon kings. Their chronicles won’t be missing the fine print.”
Perry’s hope flared… then died.
He’d tried. The day the madness began, he’d brought those very archives to Rhine—only to learn Rhine had gone to sea. And in the Endless Sea, distance was real. Without a specific relic, you couldn’t just call someone.
Perry explained, and Firebrandy’s shoulders sank.
“Then we’ll have to ask the Chief to step in,” she said. “Because tonight will be another sleepless one.”
Before she could even finish drafting the message, the hostel servant returned—this time with a middle-aged woman in plain but tidy dress.
“This is Perry,” the servant announced, pointing. Then, to Perry: “Mrs. John says she needs you.”
Perry didn’t recognize her. “Ma’am? How can I help?”
She glanced at the archmages, then back to Perry. “Do you know Mr. Rhine?”
Perry’s heart thumped. “Yes. He’s a friend.”
“Good. Then I didn’t come to the wrong place.”
She pulled a letter from her handbag. “Before he went to sea with my husband, he left this. He said if Windrest City started acting strange, I should give it to you.”
She hesitated. “People cutting themselves at night… does that count as strange?”
Perry took the letter with both hands.
Inside was a potion formula—copied cleanly, annotated in Rhine’s hand. Rhine had translated it from Violet Eye archives and, not knowing exactly what it meant at the time, left it as a lifeline in case the Theater’s influence spread.
Perry’s throat went tight. “It counts.”
He forced a smile for Mrs. John. “You came at exactly the right time.”
In his head, he added: Another day and this city would have run out of men.
They brewed the potion at once. Bonnie—giant-blooded, strong as a horse and twice as stubborn—handled the cauldrons. The formula worked.
Orton’s eyes cleared. His breathing steadied. The madness loosened its grip.
Quint and Firebrandy stared like they’d witnessed a miracle and hated the fact that it wasn’t theirs.
When Perry prepared to run out for more ingredients, Firebrandy called him back.
“Tell me,” she said, casual as a tavern patron. “When your friend Rhine returns… I’d like to meet him.”
Perry measured her tone. “For what purpose, Archmage?”
Firebrandy waved a hand. “Nothing sinister.”
She leaned in, voice dropping. “Our Chief divined that the Tidal Scepter was taken in the storm. A new ‘Tyrant’ has taken the seat. And the Sea Market is about to reopen.”
Perry’s stomach sank.
He’d heard rumors. The Sea Market—half myth, half nightmare. A place like a black market with teeth, where taboo knowledge and illegal relics changed hands under anonymity and protection.
And the one who ruled it was called the Tyrant… because the Tyrant held the Tidal Scepter, and the Market obeyed.
Firebrandy continued, “The Chief believes the new Tyrant may be a troll—one holding a tattered voodoo doll in one hand, and a spirit-luring candle in the other.”
Perry thought of Rhine’s letter. Thought of that island storm. Thought of how stories liked to fold back on themselves.
“We’ll need experts on trolls,” Firebrandy said. “Your Rhine seems to know more than he should. If he helps us, we’ll pay. Generously.”
Obscenely generously, if her smile meant anything.
And Perry, for the first time in days, felt the city’s doom tilt—just slightly—toward opportunity.