After four months of wilderness, the port of Ostia was an assault. The empty plains and silent forests were gone, replaced by a roaring, chaotic storm of humanity.
For Asterion, the thousands of people were a new kind of trigger. His 29-year-old mind, accustomed to the paranoid silence of the road, found the sensory overload difficult to filter. The shouting of merchants in a dozen languages, the stench of the crowd, the constant, brushing contact of unwashed bodies—it was a chaotic surge that threatened a new kind of panic, a loss of the iron-clad control he had cultivated.
He, Kaelen, and Elian moved as a single, hard-edged unit. Kaelen was a black-armored mountain parting the sea of people, while Asterion and Elian were the cold, silent rocks in his wake.
They walked the "Divine Way," the main thoroughfare to the harbor. Asterion saw the temples up close, a physical map of the city's soul. The chapel of Hepestus was a small, soot-stained brick building, its pews holding only a few grim-faced smiths and city watchmen. It was dwarfed by its neighbors: the grand, white-marble temple of Ostenos, its steps slick with sea-water and offerings, where dozens of sailors prayed before a massive trident; and the golden-roofed shrine of Phobos, thronged with the city's elite, the air sharp with the smell of expensive incense and the jingle of coins.
It's all the same Faith, Asterion's mind cataloged, feeling the thrum of power. Just different brands. One for endurance, one for survival, one for prosperity. The source—human belief—is identical. They just channel it differently.
At the docks, The Iron Gull waited. It was a wide-bellied, two-masted merchant cog, its hull stained with rust and generations of salt. It was a grimy, working vessel, smelling of tar and old fish. The sailors on its deck were grizzled, with skin like old leather and eyes that had seen too much. They looked like they'd all seen at least seventy or eighty winters, common for men in a long-lived world.
They were met at the gangplank by the captain. She was a tough woman who looked a hard fifty, with a missing eye replaced by a scarred, puckered socket and a head of salt-bleached hair. Her one good eye held a deep, bottomless weariness that spoke of well over a century at sea.
"So you're Kaelen," she said, her voice like gravel. She nodded toward the ship's waist, where another group was already aboard. "I'm hauling two sets of 'holy men' this trip. You... and them."
Asterion followed her gaze. A second team stood apart, radiating a cold, different energy. A stern-looking priest, Father Varus, stood in robes the color of the deep ocean, his hand resting on a staff tipped with a trident. He was flanked by four attendant Knights, each clad in scaled, blue-tinted steel armor, carrying heavy shields marked with the same trident emblem. They were a separate, professional unit, and Asterion could sense the tell-tale weight of Liquid Faith in each of them. They were all advanced practitioners.
Captain Maeve turned back to Kaelen. "My rules. You stay out of my crew's way, and you stay out of theirs. On this ship, I am the will. Your god's hammer has no power out here. We sail by the grace of Ostenos... and by my leave. Understood?"
Kaelen simply nodded, the gesture as heavy and final as a dropped stone.
The ship left port, and the world shrank to a few dozen feet of wet, heaving wood. The journey would take sixty days.
Kaelen's new regimen was pure control. The first time a mild storm kicked up, he forced Asterion and Elian onto the open deck.
"The land was static," he roared over the wind and the crack of the sails. "The sea is chaos! Your 'weight' is useless if it sinks you. You will be fluid, or you will die. Anchor yourselves!"
It was a new form of meditation. They had to anchor themselves to the heaving deck, not by being heavy, but by being present. They learned to actively pool and shift their liquid Faith, constantly moving their center of mass to counteract the violent pitch and roll of the ship. It was an exercise in fluid control, not static resistance, and a refinement of their internal method.
Elian excelled at this. He found a cold, perfect harmony with the ocean's ruthless, powerful nature. He would stand for hours, his small body a perfect, unmoving counter-balance to the sea's chaos, his eyes closed. His control became fluid, and Asterion could sense the Faith inside him continuing to refine, growing even denser.
Asterion struggled. The vast, empty, black ocean was a psychological trigger. It was a perfect, living void, reminding him of the nothingness after his death, the white plain that stretched into infinity. It was the perfect backdrop for his "drowning" memories. His 19th birthday with Mishel. The smell of his mother's baking. His father's quiet, rare smile.
He had to fight to stay "anchored," his internal battle raging while the external one tried to sweep him from the deck.
It happened in the second month.
"Fog!" The cry came from the crow's nest, sharp with terror. "Black fog! By the gods, it's The Lament!"
It wasn't a normal fog. It was a rare and dreaded phenomenon, rolling over the black water in a thick, unnatural, "oily" bank. It didn't just obscure; it consumed.
"All hands!" Captain Maeve bellowed. "Battle-stations! Tainted!"
Where the fog touched the rigging, the thick ropes sizzled and turned black, dissolving into tarry slime. A sailor near the bow was too slow. A tendril of the fog washed over his face, and he screamed—a high, bubbling sound as his skin blistered and smoked, sloughing off the bone.
Father Varus and his four Knights sprang into action. "For the Lord of the Deeps! Form the Aegis!"
They formed a perfect square on the deck, raising their trident-marked shields. Varus slammed the butt of his staff onto the boards. "Channel! Now!"
A pulse of sea-green energy erupted from him. His four knights, also masters of Liquid Faith, slammed their own shields down, pouring their power into his. Their method was clear: External Projection. The five of them, working as one, projected their combined Faith outward, creating a shimmering, dome-like barrier over the deck. The corrosive fog hit it and hissed, held at bay. It was a perfect, practiced defense.
But the attack had only just begun.
The barrier held back the corrosion, but the whispers passed right through. It was a soundless, psychic wave of pure, concentrated despair.
The crew, who had no defense, stopped. They dropped their ropes. They fell to their knees. One by one, they began to weep, their faces crumbling as they were lost in their own darkest memories. Captain Maeve, her one good eye wide, slid down the mast, her body shaking with sobs.
The psychic wave then slammed into the holy warriors.
"Anchor yourselves!" Kaelen's roar was the only thing that cut through the weeping. "Inner Crucible! Now!"
Father Varus's Knights were hit first. Their bodies went rigid. They were forced to their knees, one by one, as if by a giant, unseen hand. Raw, animal-like keens of grief tore from their throats, but they did not drop their shields. Their formation was broken, their eyes squeezed shut in agony, but they held the line, channeling their Faith while completely paralyzed by the mental assault.
Father Varus himself was in agony. The whispers hammered at him. Tears streamed down his face, his knuckles white on his staff. The sea-green barrier flickered violently, dimming as his focus was torn between the shield and his own inner demons. But the barrier held. He was enduring, but just barely. He and his men were all still functional, but they were pinned, completely defensive and incapable of any other action.
The whispers hit Asterion. He heard Mishel's voice calling his name. He saw the farmhouse, the glint of the knife, the blood...
But this time, it was familiar. It was the same pain he felt every single night. It was the same horror he lived with every second of every day. The Tainted's attack was redundant.
While the Poseidon team was brought to its knees, paralyzed by the effort of fighting a new, invasive sorrow, Asterion was simply enduring his old one. His Curse had become a shield. He stood firm, tears streaming down his face from the sheer force of the memory, but his liquid Faith—his internal forge—was an unshakeable anchor. His mind, a fortress of scar tissue, held, and he remained perfectly combat-ready.
He glanced at Elian. The whispers hit the other boy and found nothing. Elian was a void, a place of such cold, absolute control that the Tainted's sorrow could find no purchase. The psychic attack seemed to recoil from him. He looked at the weeping, kneeling priest, then at Asterion's grim, tear-streaked-but-standing form, with pure, detached, clinical curiosity.
The fog of "The Lament" receded, its attack broken.
Kaelen, Elian, and a grimly-standing Asterion were the only three warriors left fully functional. The Poseidon team was still on its knees, gasping and shaking, slowly recovering.
Kaelen's theory was proven. All masters of Liquid Faith could endure. But only those with a forged internal anchor could endure and still fight.
The journey ended two weeks later. The fog was gone, but the world felt wrong.
The coast appeared through the dawn mist. The sky was a bruised, greenish-grey. The sea, which had been a dark blue, was now a flat, black, oily-looking sheet.
Ahead, jagged, black-stone cliffs rose from the water. They looked like they were "weeping" dark, wet streaks that stained the rock all theDway to the tide line. The Aether itself felt... sour and "frayed," like a torn string.
Kaelen pointed to the desolate, unwelcoming land.
"That is the Grieving Coast. For a thousand years, The Lament has kept ships away, making it a nest for the Tainted. Beyond it lies the Unexplored Zone."
He turned, his scarred face a mask of iron.
"We are not just holding a wall. We are the spearhead. We are carving the beachhead for the expansion."
The ship's anchor dropped with a rattling, final splash.
"Welcome to the Grieving Coast."