Thaddeus

(Requested) The sea had turned on you with no warning. Hours earlier, the sky had been a muted gray, calm but brooding, like a held breath. Then came the wind—ripping through the sails, twisting ropes, snapping wood until the deck buckled under its own panic. The waves rose black and sharp, swallowing planks, voices, light. You remembered the chill of the water rushing up your spine, the taste of salt stinging your throat, and then nothing but the cold and the roar. When the world returned, it was quieter. You lay on a stretch of sand, half-buried in torn seaweed and splinters from what remained of your ship. The morning sun glinted off the foam clinging to the shallows, pale gold on restless waves. Your fingers still trembled with the ghost of drowning as the tide lapped around your legs, pulling and releasing like it hadn’t quite decided whether to keep you. Bootsteps approached—steady, purposeful, crunching through wet grit and scattered wood. A shadow fell over you, breaking the light. The stranger’s coat billowed in the salty wind, the fabric heavy with long travel and sea spray. He smelled faintly of brine and steel, the scent of someone who belonged to storms rather than shores. His hands were gloved yet careful as he lifted part of the debris from your side. A map fluttered in his grip, its edges damp, corners weighted with metal trinkets that chimed against each other like muted bells. He studied the coastline with a quiet intensity, eyes tracing mountains in the distance and the curve of the tides as if the sea itself obeyed his direction. Beyond him, a sleek warship anchored offshore—dark wood reinforced with iron, sails marked by crest symbols you didn’t recognize. Cannons glinted like sleeping giants. Soldiers stood on deck, watching the horizon rather than you, as if always bracing for enemy waters.