CHAPTER 12: THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD
The island wasn't just dark. It was wrong.
I felt it before I saw it clearly—a pressure behind my eyes, a crawling sensation at the base of my skull. Not the precognition warning. Something else. Something that made my vision blur at the edges, colors bleeding into shadows that shouldn't exist.
Jack gathered us at the helm as the Interceptor slowed.
"Right then. Here's how we do this." He spread a crude map on a barrel—more guesswork than cartography. "The cave entrance is on the eastern face. There's a passage inside that leads to the treasure chamber. Barbossa's crew will be there, counting their gold, waiting for someone's blood to free them."
"Elizabeth's blood," Will said tightly.
"Yes, well." Jack's expression flickered. "We might need to have a conversation about that. Later."
Because it's not her blood they need, I thought. It's his.
"Small team goes in," Jack continued. "Me, Mister Turner, and..." His eyes swept the crew. "One more. Any volunteers for almost certain death?"
"I'll go." The words left my mouth before I could consider them.
Heads turned. Jack's eyebrow rose.
"Eager. Interesting." He studied me with that calculating look I was becoming very familiar with. "Any particular reason you're volunteering for what amounts to a suicide mission?"
Because I need to stay close to you. Because if you die, I die. Because I know what's in that cave and someone needs to watch your back.
"Someone has to," I said. "Might as well be me."
Jack's lips curved. "Mister Balmond joins the suicide team. Anyone object?"
Silence. Then Anamaria stepped forward.
"A word. Private."
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the stern before I could respond. Her grip was iron.
"What are you doing?"
"Volunteering."
"For death." Her eyes searched my face. "You volunteer for death trips like you have nothing to lose. Do you?"
The question hit closer than she knew.
I have resurrection, I thought. I can't die permanently as long as Jack lives. I have less to lose than anyone on this ship.
But I couldn't tell her that.
"I have plenty to lose," I said instead. "But I'd rather face danger than hide from it."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
She held my gaze for a long moment. I could see her working through it—the strangeness I'd shown, the drowning story, the impossible reflexes. She didn't believe me. But she didn't have enough pieces to form a picture.
"You're hiding something," she said finally.
"Everyone's hiding something."
"This is different." Her voice softened, just slightly. "Whatever it is... be careful in there. I don't—" She stopped. Started again. "Come back."
Two words. More than she'd usually give.
"I'll try."
She released my arm and walked away without looking back. I watched her go, feeling the weight of secrets I couldn't share.
Nightfall found me in the longboat with Jack and Will.
The cave entrance loomed ahead—a wound in the rock face, swallowing light. The water lapped black against stone, carrying sounds from deep inside. Chanting, maybe. Or screaming. Hard to tell.
My knife was sharp. I'd spent the last hour honing it, the repetitive motion keeping my hands steady and my mind focused. The blade caught moonlight as I checked it one final time.
"Worried?" Jack asked.
"Prepared."
"Same thing, really." He pulled at the oars with surprising strength. "Worry is just preparation wearing a nervous mask."
Will sat rigid at the bow, every muscle tense with the need to find Elizabeth. He hadn't spoken since we left the Interceptor. Words were unnecessary when his purpose was so clear.
The cave swallowed us.
Inside, the darkness was absolute. Then, gradually, light—gold light, warm and flickering, from somewhere deeper. Treasure-light. The glow of cursed wealth beyond imagining.
This is where it happens, I thought. Barbossa. The undead crew. The ritual that won't work because Elizabeth isn't a Turner.
My vision blurred again. That pressure behind my eyes intensified, became almost painful. Colors bled at the edges—and then, suddenly, shifted.
I saw the gold differently.
Not just metal reflecting torchlight. Now it pulsed with something else. Threads, chains, connections I shouldn't be able to perceive. Each coin emanated lines of... energy? Magic? Something tying it to something else.
I blinked hard. The vision stayed.
Curse Sight, I realized. This is Curse Sight activating.
The gold wasn't just cursed—it was structured. A web of supernatural obligation, each coin linked to each victim, debts and prices and bonds that could only be paid in blood. I could see it now. Not clearly, not completely, but enough to understand that the curse was far more complex than a simple "touch gold, become undead."
My head throbbed. The vision flickered, stabilized, flickered again.
Too much, something inside me warned. You're not ready for this.
But I couldn't look away.
"Micke."
Jack's voice snapped me back. The golden sight faded, leaving only normal shadows and firelight.
"You all right? You looked like you were about to pass out."
"Fine." My voice came out rough. "Just... adjusting to the dark."
He didn't believe me. Of course he didn't. But there was no time for interrogation.
Ahead, the passage opened into a vast cavern. And there, in the center, surrounded by mountains of treasure and a crowd of men who looked like pirates but moved like corpses—
Elizabeth Swann, in a white dress stained with cave-dirt, standing before a stone chest.
Will made a sound—something between relief and fury—and started to rise.
Jack's hand clamped on his shoulder. "Not yet."
The chamber spread before us. Barbossa stood at the chest, theatrical and menacing, his crew arranged around him like an audience for damnation. The gold pulsed in my vision—that curse-sight flickering in and out—showing threads connecting each pirate to the treasure.
They're all bound, I realized. Every one of them. And they're about to try breaking the curse with the wrong blood.
Elizabeth's blood wouldn't work. The curse required a Turner's blood, and she wasn't a Turner. The ritual would fail.
But then what? What happened when Barbossa realized his prisoner was useless?
Nothing good.
I gripped my knife tighter and followed Jack and Will deeper into the shadows.
The longboat rocked gently in our wake. Behind us, the cave mouth was a distant suggestion of starlight. Ahead, cursed gold gleamed and dead men walked.
And my new sight showed me chains everywhere—binding the damned to their curse, binding fate to consequence, binding all of us to a destiny I could see but couldn't change.
The knife felt very small in my hand.
But then, I'd died before. If I had to die again to keep Jack alive—to keep myself alive through whatever this bond demanded—then so be it.
The boat touched stone. We climbed out, silent as shadows.
Whatever happened next, there was no going back.
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