The descent was chaos wrapped in wind.
Rain lashed their faces, the roar of the ocean below rising to meet them. Jasmijn's arm snapped outward, the sigil of her Codex flaring a sharp teal beneath the stormlight. A violent gust of wind erupted from her palm—spiraling, forming a controlled vortex beneath them. The group clung to her, suspended in the air as the storm's wrath beat at their clothes and hair.
Chauncey's grip was iron-tight, his knuckles bone-white against her uniform. Zayn held firm, his cloak whipping violently around him. But Charolette—
Charolette clung to Jasmijn's waist with the desperation of someone half-sure she was about to die. The wind stung her cheeks, her throat tight with the urge to scream.
The air howled. Jasmijn grimaced, fighting to keep the current steady. A flash of lightning turned the world silver for a split second—and then, as if gravity itself yielded to her will, the four landed on the sand in a rush of displaced air and scattered spray.
They hit hard—but alive.
Charolette collapsed first, back pressed to the wet sand as her chest heaved, gasping for air.
Zayn was already upright, scanning the horizon. The dark curve of Valdyr's cliffs loomed behind them, its blackened peaks stabbing into the storm clouds. The wreckage of the Seraphim littered the beach miles away—splintered wood, torn cloth, fragments of what used to be home.
"Damn that Nora!" Chauncey snapped, kicking at a rock and immediately regretting it when his foot sank deep into wet sand. His voice cracked through the sound of crashing waves.
"Now our plans are even more delayed!"
"Well…"
Charolette began, breaking the moment of quiet.
"What do we do now? We haven't even been on the island for a day yet," Charolette muttered, pulling herself to sit up, hair plastered to her face, "and we're already fugitives."
Zayn said nothing for a moment, only staring out toward the horizon where the faintest hint of moonlight pierced the clouds. His voice was quiet when he spoke—but steady.
"We continue to get what we came for. We can't leave the island now. The Seraphim's gone."
Jasmijn nodded once, her eyes thoughtful. "He's right. But we can't walk back into the city as ourselves. We need some sort of disguise."
They all exchanged glances. The rain had softened to a mist. The only light came from the faintly glowing sigils still pulsing along Jasmijn's hand and the occasional flicker of distant lightning.
Without a word, Jasmijn crouched, picked up a smooth shard of stone, and began sharpening it on another. The sound—rough, scraping, rhythmic—cut through the soft crash of waves. It wasn't long before she'd fashioned a crude but workable knife. She handed it to Chauncey.
He didn't hesitate.
Snip.
Locks of sun-brown hair fell in wet clumps to the sand, each slice deliberate and unapologetic. He dragged the stone blade through once, twice—quick, decisive motions that left his hair jagged but strangely fitting. When he turned, the others stared. Even soaked and bruised, the new look gave him a rugged charm—like a man reborn from the storm itself.
"What?" he said, brushing loose strands from his forehead.
"It's just hair. It'll grow back."
Charolette hesitated. The knife trembled slightly in her hands as she looked at her own reflection in a puddle—then sighed, muttering something under her breath before slicing off a length of golden hair. The strands fell like threads of sunlight into the sand.
Jasmijn followed, less hesitant. She cut hers short, practical and clean. Then, when she handed the knife to Zayn, he froze.
He stared at it like it was something foreign, unsure. The thought of cutting the last thing he recognized of himself left him uneasy.
Jasmijn smiled faintly and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a single, sand-speckled hair tie—slightly frayed, but intact.
"Good thing they didn't confiscate this," she said softly, brushing it off. She stepped behind him, fingers deft as she gathered his hair and tied it into a loose, messy knot.
"There," she murmured, stepping back to inspect him. "This'll have to do for now."
Charolette's eyes lingered a moment longer than they should have. He didn't look half bad like that.
The silence that followed was broken by Chauncey.
"So… what do we do about our clothes?"
Jasmijn smirked. "Already have a plan for that."
What followed was a silent raid painted by moonlight and rain.
The four moved like shadows through a sleeping village nestled in the cliffs—lanterns burning low, waves crashing below. Clotheslines stretched between weathered homes, the garments swaying gently in the wind.
Charolette crept along the outer walls, plucking cloaks and tunics from lines while Zayn scanned for movement. Jasmijn signaled quietly, two fingers raised before gesturing toward a stall—supplies. Within minutes, they'd filled their new found clothing used as a temporary sack with dry rations, rope, and waterskins.
At one point, Chauncey slipped, knocking over a wooden crate. The sound echoed like thunder. They froze.
A window creaked open.
Jasmijn gestured sharply—down!
They pressed into the mud, barely breathing as a man's voice grumbled from above, muttering in Valdyrian before shutting the window again. When the coast cleared, Chauncey exhaled.
"Smooth," Zayn whispered. The Plugish man rolled his eyes.
By the time the first pale hints of dawn broke over the cliffs, they were back at the hidden shore. The world was caught between night and morning—a gray stillness broken only by the soft hiss of the waves and the faint crackle of fire. The sea breeze carried the smell of salt and ash.
Before the flames lay their old lives.
Zayn's cheap mercenary garb, still marked by torn seams and dried seawater, the ghost of Drenmarch sand clinging stubbornly to the fabric. Charolette's once-proud Plugish tunic, its fine stitching now dulled and frayed—a relic of a past she no longer wanted to wear. Jasmijn's Drenmarch commander's uniform, the crimson sash and silver trim smoldering slowest of all, as if refusing to die, as if the fabric itself remembered the discipline and weight of command.
And among them, Chauncey's clothes burned last.
His dark navy overcoat, lined with brass buttons that glowed dully in the firelight, collapsed inward as the flames devoured it. The red bandana—his only keepsake from home—curled into itself before turning to smoke. He said nothing, only stared, jaw clenched, as if burning it all was harder for him than he'd admit.
No one spoke for a long time. The fire did the talking.
The faint breeze toyed with the edges of their new Valdyrian garb—,They looked different now, less like fugitives from the sea and more like ghosts born from it.
Zayn watched the clothes blacken to ash, the flames reflecting in his eyes. It felt strange—how something so small, so practical, could carry so much of who they were.
They sat in silence, the firelight flickering against their newly disguised faces. The Valdyrian clothes were softer, lighter—woven from strange fabric dyed in deep ocean tones. It felt strange, like stepping into another life.
Zayn watched the flames dance, their reflection flickering in his eyes.
"Tomorrow," he said quietly, voice steady but heavy with purpose, "we find Nora."
The others nodded, the ocean's song filling the silence that followed.
For now, the storm had passed.
But Valdyr was just waking up.
….
Damp light slanted through a narrow slit of window, carving pale lines across the war chief's office. The room smelled of salt and tar and the smoked fish that hung on crooked hooks from the rafters. Maps — stitched leather and water-darkened parchment — were pinned to the wall with carved bone tacks; one showed the jagged outline of Valdyr, inked lines radiating from the island like a spider's web. A whale-bone spear, notched from use, leaned against the desk. Little details of a fortress carved from sea and stone: ropes coiled like sleeping serpents, a brass lamp steeling its tiny halo against the gloom, a shallow pool of rainwater shivering on the sill.
He sat behind a desk hewn from a single plank of driftwood, glasses perched improbably on the bridge of a warrior's nose. Up close they looked almost comical — too delicate for his face — but they steadied his eyes as he read: lists of names, sketches of boats, a column of seals stamped in indigo. His fingers — callused and scarred — tapped lightly on the paper, as if each tap measured time.
The desk before him was broad and scarred, cut from the heart of some ancient tree, its surface gouged by maps, seals, and blades. The creak of wooden oak against stone filled the silence as he leaned back, the chair complaining beneath his weight. Outside, wind howled through narrow slits in the walls, rattling the papers that lay stacked around him.
A knock.
"Enter," he said.
The door opened, and a soldier stepped in — soaked from the morning rain, his boots tracking mud across the stone floor. His hesitation spoke louder than his words. The war chief's gaze lifted from the papers, sharp and heavy, as though it might crush the young man where he stood.
"Well?"
The soldier swallowed, standing rigidly at attention. "Sir… there's been a breach."
The war chief set the papers down, slowly.
"A breach?" His tone was deceptively calm.
"Yes, sir. The 4 recently captured prisoners from the southern cells. They're gone. They…escaped during the night."
For a heartbeat, there was only silence — then the faint crack of his chair legs grinding against the stone as he rose.
The war chief was a man who had been carved by the island itself. The sound of the chair's wooden legs creaking was an odd, knotted rhythm, each movement revealing the breadth of him. He practically filled half of the room : six-foot-six, broad as a cliff, shoulders like a tossed coil of rope. His hair was pale and cropped close, the blonde almost white against the bruise-grey of the morning. His face carried a permanent downturned cast, as though the weather had set his features into a perpetual frown. But his blue eyes — cold and precise as blown glass — scanned the report and did not blink.
The soldier shifted on his feet, the soft scrape of leather against flagstone. Even the man's posture showed the weight of the news he carried. He spoke slowly, each syllable deliberate as he gave what he feared might be an insult.
"We… had four prisoners, Chief." He seemed to reiterate under sheer nervousness, voice stumbled over the words like a man afraid of breaking something fragile. "All captured from the wreck. We held them in the southern cells."
The chief's hand hovered over the paper, and for a sliver of a breath the room held its own breath.
"Escaped???" He said it once, and the word sounded less like surprise and more like a challenge flung into the wind.
"From my fortress!?!? Impossible. Five hundred guards. Four prisoners. They couldn't have—"
He stopped himself mid-sentence, the half-finished protest falling away.
The soldier's mouth tightened. He hated the idea of interrupting his chief, but the next line came out of him whether he wanted it to or not.
"Reports say they didn't fight like thieves, sir…upon examination, they all seem to bare strong spiritual potential…including one in particular. A dark haired boy. He looked like he was eastern."
The soldier hesitated as he cleared his throat, before continuing.
"And one of them already bears a Heart Codex."
The office chilled a degree. The chief's fingers stilled on the desk. The driftwood plank made a small sound under his palm — a dry, patient scrape like a blade being drawn from a sheath. For a heartbeat he said nothing; then the slow roll of his breath filled the space between them.
"Is that right?" he asked, and the three words were almost too calm — the kind of calm that comes before a hunter leans forward.
Recognition tightened his features into something harder. He set down the papers as if they had grown heavy. Through the glass of his spectacles his blue eyes snapped to the soldier, measuring, cataloguing. A codex—proof of a heart—changed everything. It was not merely escape; it was a wound to pride and a spark that could set half the island alight with rumor and fear.
He rose fully, articulating with the practiced grace of a man who'd learned to move with them as natural weight. He stepped closer to the table, voice low, each word a precise command.
"Send riders to the coves. Seal every path off the cliffs. Search every cave, every fishing hut, every hollow where fog hides a man." He let the list hang, then finished like a blade falling — "If they haven't left already, I want to see that for myself."
The soldier nodded, relief and new dread mingling on his face as he bowed and turned to run for the door. Outside, the fortress exhaled — the low murmur of men, the occasional clank of armor — and the war chief stared at the burning edge of the map where the Seraphim's wreck had been marked. In the reflection of his thin glasses, the island's coastline looked small and simple. He did not smile, but something like a promise hardened in the set of his jaw.
"Spread the word," he said to no one in particular as the door closed behind the soldier. "Valdyr keeps its secrets for a reason. Find them before they find us."