The frame took forty minutes.
Jericho worked without rushing — the mercury flowing and setting and adjusting in response to adjustments only he could calculate in real time.
The vessel that emerged was low and wide. Not beautiful. Not designed to be. Designed to move through water without announcing itself, with a sealed interior large enough for five people to sit without touching and enough clearance from the waterline that a moderate swell wouldn't compromise it.
No mast. No visible oars. The mercury hull was its own propulsion — he had built the mechanism into the frame itself, a controlled directional flow that would move them forward without requiring surface movement that could be spotted from the air.
Alice walked around it twice without speaking.
She crouched beside it. Ran her hand along the hull. Pressed her palm flat against the surface and closed her eyes briefly.
Reading it.
"The curves here—" She indicated the lower third of the hull. "If the earth layer is uniform across the whole surface it'll add uneven weight distribution. The bottom needs a thinner coat than the sides."
"How thin?"
"Enough to convincingly break the water's surface pattern without dragging." She stood. "I'll graduate it. Heaviest at the waterline where it needs to look most natural. Lighter below."
Jericho looked at her.
"You've thought about this before," he said.
"I think about everything before," Alice said simply.
She drew her sword.
The blade caught the early morning light — ordinary steel, unremarkable to look at, carrying none of the presence that Erica's Satur carried. But Alice held it with the careful respect of someone who understood exactly what it could and couldn't do.
She placed her free hand against the hull.
"Soul Technique—" Her voice was steady and quiet. "— Terra Veil."
The earth responded.
Not explosively. Not dramatically. It rose from the ground beneath them in fine controlled layers, drawn upward and outward across the mercury frame with a precision that the technique alone couldn't fully account for — the rest was Alice herself, reading the surface beneath her palm and adjusting the flow in real time.
Fine grained stone settling over silver. Rough textured. Natural.
But her grip on the sword tightened slightly as the layering thickened.
Jericho noticed.
He said nothing. But he watched the blade carefully — the faint tremor in the steel that said the pressure building through it was approaching somewhere it didn't want to go.
Alice noticed him watching.
"I'm fine," she said quietly. Without looking up.
She eased back slightly on the flow — not stopping, just recalibrating. Finding the threshold and staying just below it with the practiced awareness of someone who had mapped that boundary through experience rather than instruction.
The layering continued.
Slower now. More deliberate.
The mercury disappeared beneath it gradually — grey brown stone replacing silver, the vessel transforming section by section into something the ocean wouldn't look at twice.
⸻
When she finally stepped back for the last time and released the technique her breathing was heavier than usual.
She lowered her sword slowly.
looked at the blade for a brief moment — checking it the way she always checked it after pushing close to the limit. No visible damage. This time.
Then she looked at the vessel.
Then at Jericho.
"It'll hold," she said.
Jericho studied it.
From where he stood it looked like a low flat section of rock sitting at the waterline. Nothing remarkable. Nothing worth a second look from anything scanning the surface from above.
"Interior?" he asked.
"Mercury," she said. "I left the inside untouched. No point coating what can't be seen."
He nodded slowly.
"Alice," Erica said from behind them.
Alice turned.
"That was exceptional," Erica said simply.
Alice accepted it with a small nod — not dismissive, just honest. She knew what she was capable of. Compliments landed differently when they came from someone who meant them without decoration.
William walked around the vessel one full time.
Stopped.
"I want to be clear," he said, "that I still think this is insane."
"You've established that," Erica said.
"I just want it noted. For the record." He looked at it again. "It's also genuinely impressive. I want that noted too."
Drako moved forward and crouched beside the hull, examining the earth layering with the focused attention of someone assessing a fortification.
He said nothing.
But he placed one hand briefly against the surface — a gesture so small it was almost nothing.
Almost.
Jericho saw it.
He said nothing either.
"Interior seats," Jericho said, turning back to the vessel. "Mercury. Fifteen minutes."
He moved to the entry point he had left in the frame and began the final stage.
⸻
By the time the village started waking — smoke rising from chimneys, the first fishermen moving toward the docks — the vessel was complete.
It sat at the waterline looking exactly like what it was designed to look like.
Nothing.
Just a flat section of rock that the ocean didn't particularly care about.
Jericho straightened and looked at the group.
"We leave before the village is fully awake," he said. "Less chance of anyone watching the water and noticing something moving that shouldn't be."
"How long is the crossing?" William asked.
Jericho looked toward the island.
"At the speed I can move it — two hours. Maybe slightly less."
"And the dragon?"
A pause.
"We stay low," Jericho said. "Slow enough that we don't create a wake pattern. The earth surface should break any reflection." He paused. "If it's sleeping we might cross without incident."
"And if it isn't sleeping?" William asked.
The group looked at him.
William looked back.
"I'm asking reasonable questions," he said.
"Then we deal with it," Erica said. "And besides, it is a huge island, what are the chances we run into the dragon of last days."
"Right," William said. "Deal with it. Sigh. I can't help but think you just jinx us all— Facing a dragon in a mercury boat covered in dirt in the middle of the ocean." He exhaled again. "Perfectly reasonable."
"Earth," Alice said.
William looked at her.
"It's earth," she said. "Not dirt."
"Alice."
"Accuracy matters."
Drako made a sound that might — in another person — have been a laugh.
Everyone looked at him.
His expression was exactly as it always was.
"Are we ready?" Jericho asked.
One by one they nodded.
They boarded quietly — the vessel settling slightly lower in the water with their combined weight but holding steady, the mercury interior adjusting automatically to distribute the load.
Jericho took position at the front.
The vessel eased away from the shoreline.
The village behind them was just beginning to stir — the first fisherman of the morning emerging from his door, squinting at the water the way fishermen squinted at water every morning of their lives.
He saw nothing unusual.
Just the ocean.
Just the light.
Just the ordinary unremarkable surface of the water doing what water always did.
He went back inside to eat his breakfast.
⸻
The vessel moved forward.
Quiet. Low. Invisible.
Ahead, the mist thickened around the island's peaks.
And somewhere within it — in territory that the world had long since decided to leave alone, in the ancient unhurried sleep of something that had existed before most of what surrounded it —
The Dragon of Last Days breathed.
The vessel moved in silence for the first few minutes.
Nobody spoke.
The village shoreline shrank behind them. The ocean opened up on all sides — vast and grey and indifferent, the early morning light sitting flat across its surface.
The mist around the island ahead hadn't thinned.
If anything it had thickened since dawn, the peaks completely invisible now, the whole landmass reduced to a dark suggestion rising from the water.
Jericho kept his focus forward, one hand resting against the mercury frame beneath the earth coating, the vessel responding to adjustments so subtle the others couldn't feel them.
William sat with his arms crossed and his jaw set.
He lasted four minutes.
"This is uncomfortable," he announced.
"You're sitting on a cushioned mercury seat," Erica said.
"I'm sitting inside a rock in the middle of the ocean."
"It's not a rock," Alice said quietly.
"It looks like a rock."
"That's the point," Alice said.
"The point," William said, "is that we are inside something that looks like a rock. In the ocean. Heading toward a dragon." He looked around at the others. "I want everyone to sit with that for a moment."
Nobody sat with it.
Erica was already looking at the water with the expression of someone genuinely enjoying themselves.
"It's beautiful out here," she said.
"You're describing our potential grave as beautiful," William said.
"The ocean is always beautiful," she replied. "The dragon is the problem. The ocean is just the ocean."
"The ocean is currently our floor."
"Technically the mercury is our floor," Alice offered.
William looked at her.
"Alice."
"I'm just being accurate."
"You and Alice," William muttered, looking at no one specifically.
Drako sat with his back straight and his eyes on the island ahead, occupying his space with the particular stillness that suggested he had decided the vessel's interior was simply the current version of wherever he happened to be, and that was sufficient.
William glanced at him.
Then looked away.
Then glanced back.
"You could have flown ahead," William said.
Drako looked at him slowly.
"I could have," he said.
"So why didn't you?"
"Lord Jericho is here, and I can't leave my king's side." Drako said simply. As though that answered everything.
Because for Drako, it did.
William stared at him for a moment.
"Right," he said flatly. "Of course."
He looked back at the water.
Erica caught Jericho's eye and made a small expression that said you see what you've done without using any words.
Jericho looked mildly pained.
⸻
Twenty minutes in, the village had completely disappeared behind them.
Nothing in any direction now except water and sky and the slowly growing shape of the island ahead.
Alice sat with her hands in her lap, her sword resting against her knee. She had been quiet since boarding — not unusually so for Alice, but there was a particular quality to her quietness that was different from her usual thoughtful silence.
She was watching the water.
Or appearing to watch the water.
Erica, sitting beside her, noticed the difference immediately.
She also noticed the way Alice's eyes moved to Jericho every thirty seconds or so — brief, careful, quickly redirected.
Erica looked at the water too.
Kept her expression completely neutral.
Stored it away.
"Alice," Jericho said, not turning from the front.
Alice sat up slightly. "Yes?"
"The earth coating — does it need maintenance during the crossing or will it hold passively?"
"It'll hold," she said. A brief pause. "The technique sustains itself once set unless something physically disrupts the surface." Another pause. "I'll recheck it when we're closer to the island. In case the water gets rougher."
"Good," Jericho said. "Thank you."
Alice looked back at the water.
The tips of her ears were slightly pink.
Erica watched this with the focused attention of someone cataloguing information for future use.
Then she smiled at the water.
Pleasantly.
⸻
"Can I ask something," William said, to nobody in particular.
"You're going to regardless," Erica said.
"The dragon," William said. "Teleftaia Mera." He said the name carefully, the way people said names they had only ever heard whispered. "What exactly do we know about it. Specifically."
A beat settled over the vessel.
"She," Alice said quietly.
William looked at her.
"The Dragon of Last Days is female," Alice said. "From what the historical accounts suggest."
William absorbed this.
"She," he corrected himself. "What do we know about her."
"She destroyed the Island Nation of Terys," Drako said. His voice carried a different quality than usual — not fear exactly, but the particular weight of someone speaking about something their entire civilization remembered. "Twenty years ago. Two nights. Nothing remained."
"The Black Day," Alice said softly.
"Yes," Drako said.
William was quiet for a moment.
"The entire nation," he said.
"Gone," Drako confirmed.
William looked at the island ahead.
"And we are going to her territory," he said.
"We need the Luxton Star," Jericho said from the front. "It's only found on that island."
"Right," William said. "Of course." He exhaled slowly. "And she's — what. Just there. On the island. A dragon that destroyed an entire nation in two nights."
"She hasn't been seen since the Black Day," Alice said. "Twenty years of silence."
"That's somehow less reassuring than if she had been active," William said.
"She's a Greater Dragon," Drako said. The way he said it carried the weight of an entire civilization's worth of respect and wariness compressed into two words. "One of only four on earth, Even the Drakziel continent — with everything we have — has never attempted to claim that island."
William looked at him.
It was one of the few times he had looked at Drako without the usual edge in his expression.
"Your people feared her," William said.
"Fear is the correct word," Drako said simply. Without shame. Without decoration.
That landed differently than anything else said on the crossing.
William turned back to the island.
The mist sat heavy and unmoving across its peaks.
"What the history books don't explain," Alice said after a moment, her voice quieter than usual, "is why she did it. The accounts of the Black Day describe the destruction but never a clear cause. A dragon of that power destroying an entire nation without provocation—" She paused. "It doesn't fit the behavioral patterns of Greater Dragons. They're territorial, not aggressive without reason."
Jericho said nothing.
But something in his posture shifted slightly.
"You think something caused it," Erica said to Alice.
"I think something or someone caused it," Alice said carefully. "Whether she acted of her own will—" She looked at the island. "I genuinely don't know."
A silence settled over the vessel.
Heavier than the ones before it.
"So we're heading into the territory of a dragon that may or may not have destroyed an entire nation against her own will," William said slowly. "Who hasn't been seen in twenty years. On an island that nobody has survived visiting." He looked around at the group. "And we need to find a rock."
"The Luxton Star," Alice said. "It's not a—"
"A rock, Alice," William said firmly. "For our purposes right now. A rock."
Alice considered arguing.
Decided against it.
"…A rock," she agreed quietly.
Drako's expression shifted — just slightly — toward something that in another person would have been a smile.
William caught it.
Looked away immediately.
"Let's just get there," he muttered.