Shadow Slave

The ketch was thrown into the air by the powerful current, like it had been a thousand times already, and then plummeted down. Bruised and battered, Sunny gritted his teeth and prepared to endure the violent shock of the impact - just like he had endured a thousand of them already.

The seething water seemed as hard as stone when the bottom of the wooden boat hit it. He held on to the side of the ketch, feeling a grim sense of fatigue and hopelessness overwhelm his mind. The darkness was as oppressive as it had been before, the mist was as blinding as it had been before, and the fury of the storm was as chillingly dreadful as it had been before.

However, this impact was different from all the previous ones.

...Sunny failed to see the moment the wood split, but he heard it. Even through the howling of the hurricane wind and the roaring of the falling waves, the cracking sound seemed clear and deafening.

By the time he turned, Nephis was already falling. She hit the deck with a dull thump, leaving a streak of blood on it, and tumbled forward. A split second later, her back hit the protruding fittings of the dismantled mast, violently arresting her fall.

A stifled groan escaped from her lips.

'What... what happened?!'

It took Sunny a moment to notice a jagged piece of broken wood that she was gripping with both hands, still, her knuckles white. Then, he hurriedly glanced at the stern of the ketch.

His pupils narrowed.

The steering oar... was gone. There was only the piece Nephis was holding and a scattering of wet splinters on the deck. The rest of it had shattered, and was washed away by the raging current.

Sunny froze for a moment, both terrified and relieved - relieved because it was not the deck itself that had cracked, terrified because the ketch had become completely uncontrollable now.

with no one to steer the boat to face it directly, it was going to hit them from

immediately, there would be the next wave, and the next, and the next... and

a helmsman leading the ketch through the storm,

'Curse it!'

time to think, so

of the Crown of Twilight and the Bone Singer, Sunny called

of them were twisted and broken,

cacophony of the storm returned with a deafening vengeance, hitting Sunny like a

dark vastness of the raging mist. The deck tilted dangerously underneath him,

slid in their direction before grabbing

into the air and pulled into the water, the shadows surged forward. They flowed over

deck was closed completely,

that remained inside were wisps of swirling mist and the darkness,

tilting as it climbed higher and higher. Soon, it was going to crest the wave and

Ananke off the side of the boat and scaled the tilting deck, grabbing the fittings of the mast next to Nephis. A moment later, shadows wrapped themselves around the three of them

like a firm, but elastic harness that would prevent them from flying around the dark interior of the ketch when it

a few

pressing against the harness, then the familiar trauma of the crash. The cold water - what little of it remained after he had drained it with the help of the Crown of Twilight - flowed across

It protected the ketch from being turned into splinters, and them from being thrown overboard