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urther north along the White Sea was a cursed isle, full of cursed things, where almost nothing gained life that was not then nurtured to take it away. Many monsters had come to claim this isle their home and polluted it with their very existence.

The occassi were the first of these monsters, having roamed and ruled the lands for thousands of years after being excreted like a toxin from a mountain’s molten core. For as long as they had been in existence they had been led by the House of Calantis—a dynasty who claimed direct descent from the demon god purported to have made them.

The black coach of Darius Calantis soared past the circumference of a tawny orange moon. Six hippogriffs kept the vehicle afloat—sleek black beasts with gnarled beaks and a perpetual sneer of jagged teeth. Darius sat facing the window where, beyond the tinted glass, the geometric towers of Gravissia leered with sharp edges; its penetrating spires; its dour effigies; the cramped cluster of matchstick bodies all buried beneath a noxious alchemical brume.

His coach was destined for the dismal seat of the royal family—sat in self-imposed elevation from the rest of the city that scrabbled at its ankles.

Malborg Citadel was a crumbling edifice of onion domed towers fretfully held together by buttressed bridges. It had the look of incompletion—as though someone in the middle of a jigsaw had discovered halfway through that several pieces were missing. From a distance, its thin spires seemed to be piercing into the spiralling clouds above, threatening to release a downpour from the heavens.

Before the courtyard stretched two large doors of burnished bronze where the souls of thieves and vagrants had been etched into figurines, like flies caught on a web. They strained against the waxed barrier of their prison, muscles taut, contorting into increasingly anguished positions that would bring them no escape.

They opened for Darius in greeting and the coach landed roughly onto the courtyard with a quake. Inside Darius was stone stillness, as though he’d come to expect it by now. His driver, an antlered ghoul known as Igor, opened the door for him and Darius stepped out into the obsidian spill of night, tightening the pink silk sash on his golden kaftan.

Awaiting him by the doors of the main building was another antlered corpse-servant who stepped out of the shadows like a spider to greet him.

“Good evening, sire,” the ghoul rasped, his skeletal visage waxing and waning in the candlelight. “May I interest you in some refreshment?”

“Perhaps later, Grigori,” Darius acknowledged, before he made his way towards the royal apartments.

He strolled through the Portrait Hall along his excursion. The varnished eyes of his ancestors followed him as he passed. The row of rexes spanned one wall while their reginas occupied the other, both depicted in the finest oil paint and framed in a prideful setting of enamelled bronze.

Occasionally, Darius would stop to look upon his father, dark-haired and dusky-skinned, with grey eyes that always looked on the verge of storm. With even less frequency would he turn to the one that lay opposite of the scarlet-haired occassella whose verdant green eyes matched his brother’s and not his.

He reached the stairs soon after and made his way down into the lower bowels where his quarters were. His rooms were positioned relative to his social class—a step above the servants but much lower still than anyone of royal stock. Only servants and spies ever really paid him visit.

He took off his sable-trimmed feryaz when he entered and draped it on the coat hanger. Then he approached the end table to lift the lid from the decanter of graviji wine and poured himself a tumbler. He took a brief sip of the golden liquor before turning to confront the hidden presence in his room. In the corner by his desk, there was a shadow that was not a shadow. For unlike the other silhouettes in his room, there was nothing solid to cast it.

“Step forward,” Darius commanded. He smoothed one of the sleek sibilant waves of his pomaded hair.

The spy unclipped his cape of concealment. “Evening, Prefect.”

“Balthus,” Darius greeted with a nod. “Silly mistake that. You should try concealing yourself within a larger shadow rather than pinning yourself in the corner and hoping someone won’t notice.”

Balthus made a noncommittal sound. “It’s served me well enough in the past.”

“Well, I suppose not everyone is ruminating on strange shadows as much as I,” Darius granted, lifting up the lid of the decanter once more, “can I interest you in a drink?”

“Not at all, Prefect,” Balthus replied, then he retrieved a scroll from within his leathers. “Just here to deliver a message.”

Darius took the scroll and unravelled it to find it had been penned from one of the watchtower wardens, detailing that a ship had been travelling their way across the White Sea. Darius touched his lips in thought, knowing what he would have to do. The same as he had always done to any vessel that had found themselves stumbling towards their shores.

“Well, another one bites the dust as they say,” Darius said as he dragged a hand down his face, then pulled out his desk chair to sit. A spymaster he may be, yet his father had him oftentimes feeling like a glorified gatekeeper. “You are dismissed.”

Balthus nodded and reclipped his concealing cape to escort himself out.

After his inferior had left Darius approached his cabinet of curiosities. Kept within the lacquered walnut doors carved with grotesques were rows upon rows of bottles containing the miniaturised essence of sea monsters. He’d captured them during his mandatory service in the naval force and kept them bottled as weapons to dispose of intruders. He caught his chin between his thumb and forefinger, debating which dire fate was to befall their latest interloper.

The blinking eyes of the trammelled souls followed the movement of his finger in anticipation, each one eager to stretch their gargantuan limbs past the bounds of their tight prison. Finally, Darius selected his agent of choice and brought out his cauldron from the bottom of the cabinet.

He first uncorked a vial of white seawater to fill the small cast iron pot. Then he added the shark-like teeth of his chosen beast and stuck a wooden spoon into the pot. As he stirred, the teeth swirled around the pot until they aligned themselves into a circular formation.

That was when Darius removed his spoon to observe the spiral of water grow stronger and more rapid, sealing the vessel’s fate.

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Dr Hariken sat in her cabin in the lower decks, preparing to send a letter to Dr Isuka via paper plane. She waited for the ink to dry on the missive before she began to fold it into its necessary shape and imbue it with the enchantment needed to make it airborne.

A low, reverberating moan soon followed.

“What on earth?” she whispered, unable to hide the tremble in her voice. She approached one of the portholes to investigate, seeing nothing but vast blackness.

It could be a whale of some sort, she reasoned to herself. She’d heard of ice whales back in the northern parts of Odaka. They were arctic creatures by nature and it wasn’t against the realm of possibility that one would pass them by.

She soothed herself with the assumption, returning to her seat. Then a rough collision against the hull of the ship sent shockwaves of turbulence throughout the room. It flung Dr Hariken carelessly into the nearby wall, robbing the air from her lungs.

Dr Hariken cried out, struggling to catch her grip on one of the nailed down pieces of furniture as the ship tilted upright. She lifted a hand to shield herself from the falling debris on her desk as it pelted her with a clatter.

A crackle sounded in the distance. Glass. Dr Hariken peered behind her arm to see what else had fallen. What she saw instead was the insidious growth of fissures on the portholes as the water pressure pushed and pushed until a jet of ice cold water erupted from each one.

Dr Hariken’s scream diluted into a gurgle as the sheer force of the stream pummelled her against the door. She palmed against it, desperate to jiggle the knob. Finally, she opened the door into the passageway.

The hall was cacophonous with shouts and rushing water, a discordant choir of fear. By now, the water was up to her calves and rising and she waded through what felt to be thousands of needles pricking hoar into her muscles.

Throughout this the ship did not stop turning, as the maw of the whirlpool softened its gullet to receive a new entry into its bowels.

Dr Hariken kept swimming through the rising water, eager to reach the stairs. If she could just reach the surface. If she could just surpass this level. Then she might once more narrowly avoid the scrape of the reaper’s scythe.

Dr Hariken kicked hard with her numbing legs, every encroaching millimetre bringing her that much closer to her victory. She had just about touched the first step before another swell from the sea came gushing in.

Then the water rose high enough to swallow her.

Her chest and head were too full of it to gesture for a breathing spell. She could only watch helplessly as those around her choked for their last pledge to life before it became only bubbles and foam.

Her mind went hazy and soft. Her lungs filled to bursting, and her limbs went stiff from the cold. But just before her tether to the living realm was severed by the reaper’s scythe—the blackness inside her unfurled, spreading upwards from her chest to her throat to her mind and polluting the dwindling light in her eyes to oil black.

There were others who escaped, of course. There were even those who fought back. Never let it be said that the human spirit was not one of fortitude in the face of insurmountable odds.

The pyromagi guarded valiantly against the monster, armed at the wrist with firedrakes that each spewed flaming breath. But this was not the land of sun and sand that the soldiers had so foolishly deserted. There would be no flame hot enough, no light bright enough, to fragment the crystallised carapace that a millennia of frost had given Mortos.

Thus, the soldiers were drowned. The ship was sunk. And the moment the hull was overturned on its side, it caused an additional surf to rise up and bury the lifeboats with it.

On one such boat Hana Oto paddled faster, trying in vain to swerve away from the incoming onslaught.

“Oh, gods, oh, gods, oh, gods—” were the assistant’s final words before the wave landed and the boat was submerged.

The ocean spat Hana out in disgust.

Hana returned the derisive gesture—emptying her lungs of burning saltwater onto the black sand shore as she wheezed. She circled her arms around herself, trembling pathetically. Then she raised herself up to her feet to look back towards the destruction, as the hull of the Great Northern disintegrated like sugar in the water.

Seeing her last hope of escape sink down into oblivion, she hugged her fur coat closer. The only thing she had left to call company. She was cold, wet and isolated, no combination could be more misery-inducing. Her eyes misted at the thought that Dr Hariken might be lost to the apathetic deep; a woman she’d greatly looked up to and admired. She didn’t understand how someone with so much knowledge and vigour could be stolen away from the world so quickly when they still had so much to offer.

She searched around the shore in the hopes she might detect something, someone, amidst the sweeping indifference of the wind. But there was nothing.

“Hello!” she called; her echo was her only response. “Is anybody out there?”

She walked forward on unsteady fawn legs, casting a temperature spell to generate warmth. Along the coastline were fragments of velvet ice blocks deposited by the sea. They glistened under the moonlight with the crystallised clarity of a diamond. So taken aback by this slither of natural beauty was Hana that for a moment she dried her eyes and allowed herself to step closer, studying it.

She saw the shadow of an assailant before she heard their heavy breaths.

Hana turned quickly, her mouth opening to cry out. Dr Hariken stood before her with blacked out eyes and veins bulging into unruly scrawls across her cheeks.

“Doctor—” Hana’s plea of fear was muted when Hariken’s hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed.

Hana’s throat hiccuped for air as she fought against her with all her featherweight strength, her tiny hands scraping red welts into Hariken’s ice-cold wrists. No matter how hard she squirmed, Dr Hariken’s hold on her throat did not yield. She squeezed harder until Hana’s throat was reduced to the eye of a needle, her face turning blue.

“Why?” Hana croaked before her hands fell limp at her sides.

“A death for a death,” Dr Hariken told her. Her voice was not her own. “Young blood must be spilled so that she remains.”

She dashed Hana’s head against the ice block. Her head cracked like an eggshell, spilling the yolk of her insides against the clouded veneer. Beneath the desaturated gloom of night, her blood was black as ink.

The doctor returned to her body the instant Hana’s soul left hers. Her hands shook upon confrontation with the gruesome scene; bile rising up in her throat as she acknowledged the broken form of her assistant.

The moon could not hide her from the graveness of her crime and she regarded her black-stained gloves with an anguished wail. “Oh gods, no. No. What have I done? What have I done to you? Oh gods, forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

Beneath her, the remnants of whatever life was left of Hana spilled their last before she went hopelessly stiff. Sensing that confirmation only made Hariken sob harder as she cradled the girl, still warm in her pink-cheeked youth.

“Hana? Hana, please. Don’t go. Don’t leave me here. I didn’t mean it, please,” Dr Hariken snivelled, her body quaking with full-bodied sobs.

She was still entangled around her when the occasso warden happened across her during his patrol across the sands.

“Well, well, well,” he exclaimed.

Dr Hariken quivered before him. She knew an occassi when she sensed one. Knew it right down to her bones. It was that ancestral yawp of warning every prey animal received in the presence of its predator.

She didn’t draw back when he neared her. His sneer was feral like a wolf’s. “What have we here?”

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Back in the Citadel, the ghouls prepared a table setting for two.

The grand oak table was dressed in crisp white linen. Then they laid silver stencilled with the royal seal, polished near to gleaming. A table runner of dried red roses perfumed the air with their sweet scent and a soft smoulder emanated from the lit flames of the silver candelabra.

The ghouls set down two cocktail glasses, filling them both to the brim with a concoction of polugar and vermouth. The first was garnished with two black cherries on a pick and the second with Hana Oto’s two brown eyes speared through the pupil. Set beside the pristine folded napkins were bone porcelain plates containing the main dish—two whole tongues, one lamb and one human, each seasoned with mushrooms and red chrain.

Darius picked up his napkin and opened it with a flick of his wrist. He tucked the starched fabric into his collar before reaching for his cocktail and taking a sip. He sampled the notes of juniper and bison grass with a satisfactory nod and then removed the pick to devour the eyes from it, chewing slowly to savour the texture and absorb the knowledge of every text it had read. Next, he cut a small portion of human tongue and, the moment he ingested it, he became infused with every nuance and sound of the languages it had spoken.

He ate with indulgence, sparing not even a single bite until the whole dish was consumed. When he was done he lifted his napkin to dab his mouth, tasting this strange new tongue he could now come to claim his own.

“So, why don’t you tell me all about who you are and where it is you came from?” he asked his guest in perfect Odakan.

Across the table from him Dr Hariken sobbed and whimpered, too far beyond the reach of any deity she called upon to answer.