Ethan Vale regretted it—just for a heartbeat.
He never should’ve gotten involved with the hijacking of the Jellyfish.
Back when the pirates first boarded, he’d had options. He could’ve grabbed one of the ship’s small lifeboat-sails and slipped away. Sure, a dinghy would never outrun a steamship, but arriving at Storm Island a few days later wasn’t the end of the world. With his Talent—SSS-Rank Infinite Fishing—fresh water, food, and staying sane weren’t problems. And Thea knew this route. She wouldn’t have gotten him lost.
If he’d taken that road, he’d be miles away from the Jellyfish by now.
Miles away from the two Abyss-Faction Infiltrators currently turning the storeroom into a slaughterhouse.
The regret flashed and died. Ethan didn’t have time to spend on feelings that couldn’t change the next ten seconds.
The facts were simple:
Two Transcendents. Both Infiltrators—rare, ugly, and strong.
They were battered and bleeding, desperate enough to run a live sacrifice to patch themselves back together… but that didn’t make them weak. One was Tier 1, Fifth Seat. The other Tier 1, Third Seat.
Ethan was Tier 0. Pre-Awakened.
If this turned into a straight fight, he died.
So what did he have?
Thea. A blade. And whatever he could steal from fate in the next breath.
His mind snapped through inventory like a man flipping pages while the building burned. There was the Dragonblood Dagger… and there was that one thing he’d been too nervous to rely on.
A bottle. An alchemy brew he’d fished up from the dragon scale Thea had traded away.
The label—if you could call a smear of ink a label—had been painfully dramatic:
[ITEM] A Vial of Priceless Luck
Thea had told him dragons only shed a scale once a century. The scale itself was priceless. If this vial came from something that rare…
Maybe it really was luck in a bottle.
Ethan pulled it free, met Thea’s gaze, and kept his voice flat.
“Right now,” he said, “we need luck.”
He drank.
It tasted like cold metal and lightning.
And time snapped back into motion.
A beat ago, the last bearded pirate had kicked the storeroom door open. Ethan had followed, ended him with one clean cut, and caught Captain John’s gargled plea for help—because the captain was still half-alive on the altar, throat slick with blood.
The two Infiltrators had turned.
Now, the heavy door behind Ethan and Thea slammed shut with a boom that shook dust from the rafters.
Shadow thickened.
Mist crawled in from the corners like smoke with a mind of its own, swallowing the shelves, the barrels, the hanging hooks. The air went cold. The kind of cold that made your teeth ache.
Ethan shifted back until his spine kissed the wall, Dragonblood Dagger raised, breathing shallow.
A hiss of movement.
Something fast cut through the fog.
Ethan barely had time to duck—something grazed his cheek, a line of fire across skin.
Heat—real heat—punched through the darkness.
The “black cat” on Ethan’s shoulder unfurled into her true shape in a blur of shadow and gold.
Thea.
A young dragon, small but unmistakably royal. Her golden slit pupils burned with fury as she opened her jaws and exhaled.
Dragonflame.
The blaze didn’t just light the room. It erased the room’s lies. Fog peeled back. Shadow recoiled. The storeroom erupted into orange glare and screaming heat.
The two Infiltrators flinched like someone had yanked a curtain off them.
They’d expected a harmless cat.
They hadn’t expected a dragon.
Ethan didn’t waste the gift.
The closest Infiltrator was still blinking against the firelight, half-turned. Ethan launched forward.
He had no illusions. Even wounded, a Tier 1 Infiltrator would carve him open if given a clean opening. The storeroom was cluttered with junk—crates, broken planks, a fat wine barrel rolling on its side—and the floor was slick with spilled liquor.
His plan was simple and stupid: use the barrel as a springboard, come down hard, drive the dagger deep enough to matter.
He’d been willing to settle for seventy percent of the plan.
But the moment his boot hit the barrel… everything clicked.
The Infiltrator’s attention snapped to a stray tongue of fire at exactly the wrong instant.
The scattered planks didn’t slide under Ethan’s feet.
The barrel didn’t roll.
His weight landed on the perfect angle, the perfect point, like the world itself had tilted to help.
Ethan vaulted. His body moved like it knew the path already—Agility Boost humming in his muscles—and he came down like a guillotine.
The Dragonblood Dagger punched into the Infiltrator’s chest.
Fast. Clean. Deep.
The Infiltrator didn’t even understand he’d been hit until the blade was already inside him.
So this is what “priceless luck” feels like, Ethan thought.
He drove the dagger in another inch.
Steel tore through flesh. Bit bone.
The Infiltrator—Tier 1, Third Seat—was no lamb. His shock lasted a blink, then his instincts took over. Darkness surged around him, thick and hungry.
Ethan recognized it.
Shadow Traverse.
A Tier 1 Infiltrator’s escape trick—slide from one shadow to the next in the time it takes a man to breathe.
If he vanished now, Ethan would never get another clean chance. The bastard would bleed somewhere safe, heal, then come back for everyone on the Jellyfish.
Ethan’s grip tightened until his knuckles burned.
His hands went light.
The Infiltrator disappeared.
For a fraction of a second, Ethan saw nothing but the firelit mess of the storeroom… and the spreading stain where a man had been.
Too late.
Except—
A sheet of flame swept sideways.
Not aimed. Not timed. Just… there, as if the world had tossed Ethan another coin.
Thea’s dragonflame caught the fresh shadow as it tried to gather.
The darkness shrieked apart.
And the Infiltrator reappeared a meter in front of Ethan, half-formed, staggering—caught between shadows like a man yanked out of a doorframe.
Fear flickered across his face, pure and animal.
He clutched his shattered chest and ran.
He didn’t get far.
Ethan was already behind him, Dragonblood Dagger raised.