Reckoning with the Past

The sea had turned to glass. Not the gentle, lapping calm of a harbor at dawn, but a dead, unnatural stillness that swallowed sound and held the ship in a grip of perfect silence. The *Revenant* drifted through a black expanse where the stars above were mirrored perfectly below, a dizzying infinity that made Barnaby feel as though he were suspended over an abyss. He gripped the rotting rail, his knuckles white, and tried to steady his breath.

It was here she had led him. The whispers from the crew, their spectral murmurings, had guided him to the prow, where the air grew cold enough to see his own breath plume in the moonlight. He had not been summoned; he had been drawn, a moth to a flame he knew would consume him.

And now she was there.