"Elias. Wake up"
The voice was not gentle, more like an uncertain urgent command. Heat bloomed beneath the skin of his right arm, spreading like wildfire through frozen veins. The serpent tattoo pulsed, scales glowing beneath the water as though lit from within. Well, it sure did lit from within him.
"Elias! Wake UP!!"
Elias's body jerked. His lungs seized, trying to breathe but began to choke in the water. His lungs burn. The pain in his head sharpened to a single, blinding point—then snapped.
Something shifted inside his skull. Bone grated against metal. The dagger moved.
"What in the ...?" He muffled, choking out salt water and blood.
He felt it—impossible, but he felt it—slide backward out of his brain, inch by painful inch, as though unseen fingers gripped the hilt and pulled. Blood clouded the water around his head in a halo. The blade came free with a soundless pop, tumbling away into the depths.
He could hear it. The wound closing, healing in a non-human manner.
Flesh knitted. Bone reformed. Something hot like venom; serpent's venom burned through his blood, sealing what should have stayed broken. His heart, which had stuttered to silence, slammed once—hard—against his ribs.
Then again.
And again.
The sea spat him out into the empty morning.
He hit sand with a gasp that tore his throat raw. Waves rolled over him, retreated, rolled again, as if the ocean itself could not decide whether to keep him. Elias coughed, vomiting brine and blood onto the pale gray shore. Dawn was breaking somewhere beyond the storm clouds and for a moment, it was beautiful.
The purple sky, mirroring the waters as the sun rose. It took him almost immediately to realize he was far from Varyn's prison.
"Where am I?" He asked Zythos but was met with silence "What happened?"
He hoped since it could talk to him, maybe he could talk to it back.
Elias rolled onto his back. Breathing hard.
"First death," the Zythos whispered, almost amused. "There will be more. Each time you return stronger. Remember that"
Elias sat up fast. "What on earth do you mean?" He yelled looking in all directions.
Again, Zythos was silent.
"How is that happening? Do I have to die again?" He nearly broke down "Don't you dare ignore me!
His head ached, but there was no wound—only a ridge of raised scar tissue at the base of his skull, already fading. He reached back and touched it, fingers trembling.
He was alive. It doesn't feel like a miracle, it was obviously pure sorcery.
" Don't you..."
" Were you talking to me?" Zythos asked in a mocking tone.
There was a brief silence as Elias waited for what it would say more as he orientated himself.
"I am Zythos, Elias Thorn. You should learn to address me like that " it finally said.
He had died—he knew it with the certainty of a man who had felt his heart stop—and he was alive but yet! Yet what this voice in his head has cared about was being addressed as Zythos?!
The beach stretched empty in both directions, a narrow strip of sand and shale backed by jagged cliffs. Driftwood and broken crates lay scattered, remnants of ships that had met the same rocks. Far out, the island of Blackwave Keep was a fogged smudge against the horizon, its towers barely visible through the mist.
His mother was there. Dead. Beheaded by Kael Varyn's blade.
Grief hit him like a second wave, knocking the breath from his lungs again. He pressed his forehead to the wet sand, fists clenched until knuckles whitened. A sound escaped him—half sob, half roar—that scattered gulls from the rocks.
When it passed, he stood.
The wind cut through his soaked servant's rags. He was weaponless, coinless, nameless to the world beyond the keep. But the serpent coiled quietly under his skin, and for the first time in his memory, Elias Thorn felt something beyond exhaustion and fog.
He felt purpose. He felt rage. He felt power.
He turned inland, boots sinking in sand, and began to walk. The cliffs rose steep, but a narrow path zigzagged upward—smugglers' trail, perhaps, or shepherds' long ago. He followed it without thinking, driven by the need to put distance between himself and the sea that had both killed and saved him.
"We could get to know each other, you know," Zythos said.
But this time, it was Elias's turn to ignore it.
Hours passed. The sun was beginning to get warm. The path leveled into windswept grassland dotted with scrub pine. His legs burned, stomach hollow, but he kept moving until the sun was high and hot enough to burn his skin.
Then he saw the child.
A small figure sat on a fallen log beside the path, knees drawn to chest, watching him approach with huge, unblinking eyes. Boy or girl, Elias couldn't tell—thin, maybe ten years old, clothed in patched rags, blond hair matted with dirt and salt. The child's face was pale, expressionless, but those eyes held something he felt he needed to know.
Elias slowed. "Hello?"
No answer. The child only stared, head tilted slightly as if listening to voices Elias could not hear.
He took a cautious step closer. "Are you alone out here?"
Still nothing. Not fear, not curiosity—just that steady, unnerving gaze.
Elias crouched, bringing himself to the child's level. Up close, he saw faint bruises on thin arms, old scars on the neck. A survivor, like him.
"I won't hurt you," he said softly.
The child's eyes flicked to Elias's right arm—where the sleeve had torn away, revealing the lower coils of the serpent tattoo. For the first time, the small face showed reaction: not fear, but recognition. A slow nod, as if confirming something long expected.
Then the child pointed inland, toward a distant line of trees where smoke rose thin and gray.
Shelter. Food, maybe.
Elias straightened. "You want me to go there?"
Another nod.
He hesitated, then offered his hand. The child ignored it, sliding off the log and starting to walk. Elias followed.
Behind them, the sea whispered against the shore, carrying away the last echoes of Blackwave Keep.