Where… am I?
Consciousness returned as a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed from somewhere deep in his skull, radiating outward through his jaw, his neck, the spaces behind his eyes. Ashan felt the weight of his eyelids, too heavy to lift, as if pressed shut by the same force that had dragged him down into the dark. The world announced itself through sound first: the cacophony of raucous laughter and loud, crude conversation hammered against his ears, each word a spike driven into the tender flesh of his thoughts.
"Hahah! This one'll fetch a good price at the marrow markets in Port Slee!"
"Yeah, check this blade! Quality steel, that is. Shame the little rat didn't have a coin purse on him."
"What are these papers? Scribbles all over."
"Dunno. This pendant's pretty, though."
"Lucky little bastard, surviving a chase from that. Must have a shark's own luck."
Ashan's brow furrowed against the weight of his exhaustion. Slowly—with the patience of something rising from the bottom of a very deep well—light and color seeped into the darkness behind his lids. His vision swam, blurred, then sharpened into a world too bright, too loud, too present.
He tried to move his hands. They were bound fast behind his back, the thick, tarred rope biting into his wrists, cutting off circulation, leaving his fingers numb and useless. He was propped upright, lashed to a heavy water barrel on the deck of a small, filthy cutter that smelled of fish and rot and the particular sourness of men who had not bathed in weeks.
Fuck.
He assessed his new environment through slitted eyes. Four men, middle‑aged and worn by salt and sun, clad in loose, stained robes that might once have been white and were now the color of old bone. Their faces were rough maps of hardship—lines etched deep, eyes wary, hands calloused and dirty. They pawed through his possessions: his blade, his remaining charm papers, the simple pendant from his initiation.
Damn these scavenging vultures.
"So, the little fish is finally awake!"
A voice boomed across the deck, thick with the guttural Angloth accent common to the western islanders. The speaker wore a moth‑eaten captain's tricorne perched at a jaunty angle and held a bottle of cheap, pungent booze. At his voice, the other four turned their leering gazes toward Ashan.
"Haha! Lookit him! Glaring like a drowned kitten with claws!" one jeered.
"Feisty for a bit of flotsam!" another laughed, the sound like grating stones.
"Where'd you float in from, boy?" The captain took a long swig, his eyes sharp and assessing. "You don't look like no fisherman's get."
Ashan remained silent, committing each face to memory, each voice to the catalog of sounds he would carry into the future.
Yaren said many pirates are just desperate men. Regular humans. But some brush against the deeper currents. Chance encounters with wrecked sadhaka, rogue Dharmic practitioners, stolen texts. There are always a few who spark.
He felt the deep, aching protest of his body—a symphony of bruises, cuts, and exhaustion. His urja reserves were a dry well, scraped hollow. Yet his inner senses, though strained, were not dead. He focused, filtering out the pain, reaching for the threads of power that still clung to the edges of his awareness.
There. Faint. Unrefined. A flicker of prana swirling in the captain's core. The man had potential, or had stolen a fragment of power.
"Hey! The Cap'n asked you a question!"
The brute with the broken nose stomped over, crouched, and pressed the edge of Ashan's own blade against his throat. "Cat got your tongue, or do we need to cut it out to check?"
"Hah! The little shit didn't even blink!" Broken‑Nose—Joric, Ashan filed the name away—laughed.
"Teach him some manners, Joric."
"Do as you please." The captain waved a dismissive hand, but his eyes never left Ashan's face. This kid… his eyes have seen death up close. And he escaped the Matriarch. Is he one of them? A spent spark? But I feel nothing from him now…
These fucking bottom‑feeders. Ashan kept his face slack, his eyes wide. I need time. Just a few minutes to pull a thread of urja back from the void.
He let his body go limp against the ropes, his shoulders slump, his chin drop. His face crumpled into the wide, terrified eyes of a child. His voice emerged as a hoarse, pitiful whimper.
"P-please… don't kill me. I'm just a boy! I can work! I can scrub decks, mend nets… please!"
Tears—real tears born of pain and fury—welled in his eyes and traced clean lines through the grime on his cheeks.
Joric threw his head back and roared. "Hear that? The little minnow wants to join the crew!" He pushed the blade just enough to break the skin, drawing a thin line of blood.
"Aw, you're scarin' him too much."
"Just take an eye. Payment for our trouble."
"Take both! A blind cabin boy is an obedient one!"
Joric sighed with mock sympathy. "See, kid? My friends… they have a taste for the dramatic." He moved the blade to hover a hair's breadth from Ashan's left eye. "Now, don't you fret. Just a quick pinch, then all the darkness in the world. Nice and peaceful."
Ashan trembled—a full‑body shudder of apparent terror. His breath hitched in pathetic sobs.
"R-really… just a pinch?"
"Really, really!" Joric's grin was a crooked, gap‑toothed display of malice.
"How's he gonna see it, you idiot?" The scar‑faced man cackled, and the group dissolved into laughter.
Ashan's trembling stopped. His hitched breaths evened out. The fear on his face was gone, replaced by something else—something that had been waiting behind his eyes since the moment he had opened them.
"I… I'd like to show you a firework, too."
"Oh?" Joric leaned closer. "You got a show for us? Go on then. We're a magnanimous lot. We'll grant a condemned boy his last wish."
"Aye, show us!"
All eyes fixed on him, gleaming with cruel anticipation.
A slow, cold smirk spread across Ashan's lips. It did not touch his eyes, which had gone flat and hard as sea‑ice.
"Look behind you."
Joric snorted. "What, you think—" He glanced over his shoulder. The others followed.
The captain, watching silently from the wheel, set his bottle down with a sharp clink. A cold knot of instinct tightened in his gut. "Joric, don't—"
It was too late.
The pirate holding the stack of Ashan's fireball charms yelped. A flicker of orange light danced at the corner of the parchment, then flared with violent intent.
WHOOMF.
The man was engulfed in a roaring column of flame. He screamed—a raw, animal sound of utter agony—as the magical fire clung to him, eating cloth, skin, hair, flesh.
"How is it?" Ashan's voice was a soft, chilling counterpoint. "Quite a firework, yes?"
Joric's head snapped back. "You little—!" He began to swing the blade.
Ashan's arms flexed. A single, concentrated thread of urja hardened around his wrists. The tarred ropes snapped. His freed hand shot up, catching Joric's wrist in a vice‑like grip. His other hand, fingers curled into a rigid point, drove upward in a savage jab under the man's jaw.
There was a wet crack. Ashan twisted, wrenching his own blade free, and in one fluid, brutal motion, reversed it and plunged it deep into Joric's chest. The pirate collapsed, his blood spreading across the deck.
"AAAGHHH! PUT ME OUT! PUT ME OUT!"
The human torch staggered, flailing, and crashed into his two remaining crewmates. The magical fire leaped onto them. In seconds, three screaming pillars of flame writhed on the deck, then stumbled over the rail and into the sea with a final, choked scream.
Ashan picked up his blade from Joric's corpse, wiping the blood on the man's robe. He let out a soft, tuneless whistle.
"Now that," he murmured, "is what you call friendly fire."
The captain stood alone, chest heaving, fear and fury warring in his gaze. "Who in the hells' depths are you?"
Ashan turned his cold, sea‑ice gaze fully upon the man. He took a step forward, fluid and predatory, despite his injuries.
"Just a boy." His voice was quiet, final. "Trying to survive."