Then the third monster burst through the center of the ship, splitting it clean in half. My elite knights—men I trained, men who trusted me—fell into the raging water.
One by one, they vanished beneath the waves.
Until only two of us remained.
Me.
And Jin.
We clung to a floating section of the broken hull as the monsters roared triumphantly and vanished beneath the storm-torn sea. We drifted. Hours? Days? I couldn't tell anymore. The sky remained gray, the mist unending. My vision blurred. My hands were numb.
But eventually… land appeared. Or something pretending to be land.We washed ashore on a beach of black sand—cold, gritty, metallic. No footprints. No animals. No birds. The trees were twisted, pale, leafless things, like bones reaching for the sky.
The wind carried no smell. The silence felt… wrong.
Jin coughed, spitting seawater. "Sir… where are we?"
