A couple of hours later, Rathen called out again from the wheel.
“Second site!” he shouted. “This is where the next ship went down, same route, same current, same damned luck.”
The ship slowed into a wide circle, sails adjusting, hull cutting the water with cautious discipline. Sailors lined the rail again, eyes scanning the surface like they expected it to split open.
Ludger didn’t waste time. He didn’t gather everyone. Didn’t announce anything dramatic. He simply dropped his forearm guards and bracers onto the deck with the same quiet clack as before, rolled his shoulders once, and stepped to the rail.
Viola opened her mouth as if to complain. Kaela raised one brow like she was counting how many seconds it would take him to jump.
Maurien’s gaze sharpened, wind already stirring around him. Ludger glanced at them once, short, decisive.
“Same,” he said.
Then he jumped. The ocean swallowed him again, clean and cold, leaving only a splash and a ripple that quickly dissolved back into the sea’s innocent mask.
For a moment, everyone just watched the water. Not because they couldn’t move.
Because watching felt like the only thing that made sense when your leader dove willingly into the territory of something that broke ships in half. Valk, who had been quiet most of the day, finally spoke.
He stood near the mast, hands folded, eyes on the widening rings where Ludger had disappeared.
Then he looked at the others, Kaela, Renvar, Maurien, Viola, Luna, Shera, with a calm curiosity that somehow felt like judgment.
“Is this common,” Valk asked, “in the Empire?”
No one answered immediately. Valk continued, voice even.
“To let a child his age give orders to everyone,” he said, “and then allow him to jump into the ocean, where a beast that sinks ships is supposed to be lurking.”
Viola’s shoulders tensed like she wanted to say he’s not a child , then remembered he very much was. Kaela didn’t look offended. She looked… thoughtful. Renvar scratched the back of his neck, eyes still on the water.
Maurien didn’t look away from the ocean when he spoke, and his tone carried no pride, only blunt truth.
“It isn’t common,” Maurien said.
Valk’s gaze remained steady. “Then why?”
Maurien’s eyes narrowed slightly, like he was watching for something below the surface.
“Because Ludger earned enough merits,” Maurien said. “Enough results. Enough victories.” He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, “Plans like this don’t surprise people who’ve known him for long.”
Renvar huffed a quiet laugh. “Surprise isn’t the word I’d use.”
Kaela’s mouth twitched. “No. It’s more like… resignation.”
Viola glared at them. “You’re all acting like this is normal.”
Maurien’s voice stayed flat.
“It’s normal,” he said, “for him.”
Valk looked back to the water, expression unreadable. The ocean rolled on, bright and calm, as if it hadn’t just swallowed a thirteen-year-old boy with more authority than most lords.
Then the ripples where Ludger had vanished faded completely. And the deck held its breath again, waiting to see what truth he would pull from the deep this time.
Underwater, the world narrowed to pressure and intent.
Ludger’s wind sheath tightened around him the moment he sank past the sunlit skin of the sea. The air pocket at his face held steady, feeding him breath in controlled pulls while the water tried to press the life out of every soft part of him. His vision stayed clear, wind pushing away drifting grit, keeping the darkness honest instead of foggy.
He hit the seabed with a soft puff of sand and immediately sent Seismic Sense outward.
The ocean floor answered like a dull drum. Contours. Rock. Silt. Scattered debris. And then, there. A shape too straight to be natural, too long to be a boulder, too hollow to be a reef.
He found the wreck quickly. Before he moved, he signaled up.
He compressed water mana into his palm and released it in an upward burst, another undersea geyser that shot toward the surface. The water above him churned, forming a visible disturbance to mark his position for the ship circling overhead.
Then he turned and swam. The second wreck emerged from the gloom like a dead, elegant animal. It wasn’t Ironhand.
Ironhand ships were built like bruisers, thick hulls, reinforced ribs, practical shapes designed to survive storms and bad decisions. They wore their durability openly, like a blacksmith wore calluses.
This ship was different. Even split and broken, it had a kind of… refinement.
The hull planks were narrower, more precisely fitted, and banded with pale metal strips that caught what little light reached this depth. Decorative trim, still visible in places where the sea hadn’t ripped it away, ran along the edges in patterned lines that didn’t serve a structural purpose.
The remnants of its paint still clung stubbornly to the wood: deep navy and muted gold, smeared and scarred but unmistakably expensive. Not the kind of color a guild used for function.
The mast had snapped and fallen, pinned half-buried in sand, its rigging draped like dead vines. Sections of sailcloth lay tangled around it, heavy and sagging, threads swollen from the water like rotten skin.
There were runes too. Not the blunt utility marks Ironhand slapped onto everything that moved, but cleaner engraving, thin lines etched into metal plates along the inner ribs, meant to stabilize, ward, maybe even hide its signature.
Capital work. Capital money. Capital arrogance. Ludger felt his jaw tighten behind the air pocket. He drifted closer and began clearing the debris with wind. Short, controlled bursts.
A plank slid away. A knot of rope peeled back. A broken crate rolled, releasing a cloud of soggy paper that dissolved instantly into pulp and drifted away like algae.
He kept the motion minimal, careful not to kick up too much silt. Underwater, you didn’t get second chances for visibility. One careless thrash and you blinded yourself inside a grave. He reached the central break, the wound where the ship had been destroyedc.
This wreck wasn’t split as neatly as the first. The keel was damaged, yes, but the pattern was different. The hull had been caved in from below and slightly to the side, like something had rammed it with a massive shoulder and then twisted.
Wood ribs were buckled inward. Metal braces were bent like soft wire. The damage carried the same message as the first wreck:
You are small. I am not.
Ludger slid his hand over a bent brace and extended Mana Sense into the broken interior. He wasn’t looking for gold. He was looking for what didn’t belong.
What had weight. Density. Resonance. Anything that explained why the beast had chosen this ship.
He found signs immediately.
Inside the cracked belly of the ship were storage racks, custom-built slots for reinforced containers, the kind used for high-value cargo. Many were empty now, ripped free or broken open. The remaining frames were warped, as if something heavy had been yanked out violently.
He pushed deeper, careful.
A wind blast cleared a curtain of torn sailcloth that had wrapped around the interior like a shroud. It billowed away in slow motion, revealing more crates, thicker than merchant cargo, iron-banded, stamped with marks that were too clean to be local.
Rune seals. He couldn’t read them clearly through algae and corrosion, but he could recognize the intent: controlled, and meant to be traced back to power. Ludger’s eyes narrowed.
He moved crate by crate, shifting them with wind, checking beneath, behind, inside broken seams. His wind blades thinned to delicate pressure edges when needed, cutting cords without disturbing the entire mess.
He found scraps of packaging, heavy waxed cloth and lacquered wood splinters, materials used to protect delicate artifacts. He found metal clasps snapped open from the inside, as if a container had failed under pressure.
But the main cargo? Gone.
Taken by the sea. Taken by the beast. Taken by whoever survived long enough to drag something away. Ludger hovered there, cold and patient, and ran Seismic Sense again, tighter this time, focused on the immediate debris field, searching for any dense objects that had sunk into the sand.
There.
A cluster of heavy shapes half-buried near the ship’s stern, too compact to be wood, too uniform to be rock. He swam toward it.
The water grew darker around the stern, the ship’s shadow thickening like a bruise. Ludger blasted sand aside in a spiral, uncovering the first object.
A reinforced container, cracked. Then another. Both stamped with markings that screamed state property even without clean seals. The lids were torn, not opened. Something had pried them apart with force.
Ludger’s breath slowed. His wind sheath tightened. He cleared the last of the sand and peered into the broken container.
Empty.
But the interior surface held faint scratches, long, gouging marks that ran along the lacquered lining like something sharp had scraped inside while being removed.
Claws? Teeth? Or… hooks. Ludger’s eyes narrowed until the darkness seemed to sharpen.
This ship wasn’t carrying trade goods.
It was carrying something the capital cared about enough to risk the ocean.
And if the beast had attacked it… Then either the beast wanted that cargo… Or someone wanted the cargo lost in a place where no one asked questions.
Ludger hovered in the wreck’s shadow, wind and breath held tight, and kept searching, pushing debris aside with controlled blasts, because somewhere in this mess was the answer the Empire didn’t want him to find.
He kept working through the wreck with the same cold patience he used in labyrinths.
Wind pulses to clear silt. Seismic Sense to confirm weight and shape. Mana Sense to read what the eye couldn’t. That was how he found them.
A cluster of boxes wedged deep inside a collapsed section near the mid-hold, packed tight behind a bent rib and a curtain of tangled rope. They weren’t the crude iron-banded crates merchants used. These were smooth, reinforced chests with metal corners and thick lids, designed to survive impact.
And they were still sealed. Even underwater, their runes glowed. Not faint. Not dying. Clear lines of light traced around the lid seams, pulsing in a steady rhythm like a heartbeat that refused to drown. Whoever had sealed them hadn’t cut corners. The Empire didn’t trust the ocean, and apparently it trusted thieves even less.
The runes blurred my senses somehow…
Ludger hovered in front of the nearest chest, eyes narrowed. He didn’t know seal runes the way a proper runic mage did. He wasn’t one of those delicate scholars who could recite rune families and their historical variants.
But he knew something more important. He knew how to break things.
He’d dealt with runic golems, constructs built on stubborn, layered runes that did not forgive mistakes. He’d learned how to disrupt their flows, how to overload a channel, how to force mana to spill out of a pattern until the whole structure collapsed.
A seal was just a pattern with a purpose. Which meant it could be bullied.
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