"Some nights the sea is a mirror, and I see a stranger staring back: a man hollowed by years, gaze rimmed in red, hunger gnawing where hope once lived. I wonder what he's searching for on that endless horizon, what loss weighs down his shoulders so.

There was a boy, once. His laughter still haunts the wind at dusk, though time has stripped the sound of all comfort. The world says hatred is a fire, but I have found it is only driftwood - fuel tossed into emptiness, burning bright but leaving nothing but smoke behind. I cling to my rage because it is the only thing that answers back when I call into the void.

I am uneasy in my own skin. There are moments, half-dreamed, when a warmth flickers at the edge of memory: a gentle hand, a voice in the darkness, the sense of a promise sworn beneath a dawning sky. These vanish if I look too close, slipping away like mist at sunrise. Some around me seem to see a ghost, an echo of another life, but their words are foreign to me. The more they speak, the further I recede.

Once, I thought myself part of something greater. There are scraps in my mind: images of light and gold, banners on high towers, the taste of hope on my tongue. Now, even the sun itself seems a wound, a reminder of what cannot be named. I press those visions deep beneath the surface, letting the tide wash over them, letting the salt sting blind me before memory can return.

War and vengeance are what remain. They fill the emptiness for a while, crowding out the ache, giving shape to the formless sorrow. But in the quiet hours, I feel the weight return. I fear there is rot beneath my fury, and that one day the storm will tear it all away, and leave me naked to the truth of what I have lost - though I cannot say what, or whom.

I do not pray. If I once did, the words are gone. I would offer supplication to the sea, if only to ask for silence in my sleep. If the Gods remember me, let them look away. I am no longer the man whose shadow dogs my steps; I am the space left behind, and the ache of memory never quite touched.

Let nothing find me gentle, if nothing else will."

~

As Blackgale sets aside his quill, his gaze lingers on the shackled Abbess, lost in uneasy slumber. A memory stirs: fractured and fleeting, belonging to another man, and of Another still. He chases its edges, yearning for something just beyond reach, but it unravels like mist before dawn, leaving only emptiness behind.

Frustration simmering, he ascends to the deck and looks west, where the enemy's catapults claw at the horizon, their silhouette a jagged promise of coming ruin. Jaw set, he raises his hand in silent command; across the water, his battered fleet surges into motion. Each wave carries him toward death, toward oblivion, and he greets the prospect with something like relief.

Tonight, the tale will find its end, one way or another. Whether swallowed by defeat or crowned in pyrrhic victory, Blackgale feels the old hunger rising: not for vengeance, but for meaning, however fleeting.

He draws a breath that tastes of salt and ash, and his voice is steady as he calls into the gathering dark:

"Come, Aroan. We will make an ending, you and I."

Penned by My hand on the 6th of Glacian, in the year 979 AF.