Chapter 1: Burning Embers Light Flames
Notes:
There is no chronological order for these scenes lol. Have fun!
Chapter Text
To Her Radiance, Monarch of Gilt Haven, Sovereign of the Sapphire Strait, the Gilded Empress, Golden Cheese Cookie,
It is with utmost urgency that we pen this letter. A threat of anomalous magnitude has emerged in the Southern Reaches. Entire squadrons of the Ancient Vanguard have been reduced to cinders in mere minutes. Survivors, what few remain, speak of a crimson-cloaked captain wreathed in flame, helming a relic-class vessel once thought lost to time.
The Captain bears no banner, yet commands storms. He flies no colors, yet leaves fleets crippled in his wake. Intelligence gathered indicates he is headed eastward—toward your waters.
We urge caution. Engage only if prepared for catastrophic retaliation. And if you have any knowledge of the Beast known in older archives as The Firebrand and The Destroyer , we request immediate correspondence, and so for the other rumors of seafarers such as he.
We must reiterate: Should you possess knowledge of this figure—and others, be it legend or truth—send word. For if he arrives, you will not have the luxury of time.
Make haste, Golden Cheese.
Signed,
Dark Cacao Cookie, King of the Fang of Dawn
Pure Vanilla Cookie, Keeper of the Sanctum Isles
Hollyberry Cookie, Queen Mother of the Red Line
White Lily Cookie, Scholar of Lost Currents
The sea was still smoking.
Ash clung to the waves like a second skin, drifting across the surface in slow, silken coils. Behind them, what was left of the Ancient’s outpost—stone, steel, and shattered pride—cracked and hissed as it sank, swallowed whole by the ocean it once ruled.
The Molten Wyrm carved her path across the obsidian sea, a galleon of myth and menace whose very silhouette struck fear into the hearts of merchant fleets and royal armadas alike. Her hull, reinforced with blacksteel salvaged from the wreckage of a hundred fallen ships, shone with a dull heat in the late sun—like a dragon’s scales turned to metal. Her sails, woven from stormcloth and stitched with golden thread, bloated with the wind like the lungs of a beast, billowing wide against the reddening sky. Every plank, every creak of the rigging, seemed alive with purpose as its vessel thirsted for plunder and retribution.
Any ship with a wit of sense would leave. It was if the devil itself was on their heels—and, in a sense, he did.
At her helm stood Captain Burning Spice, the Firebrand, Great Destroyer, sovereign of flame and salt. Cloaked in a blood-red coat trimmed in scorched gold, he cut a silhouette much like an open flame. His eyes, glowing like embers banked low in an ancient hearth, rarely blinked. Behind the narrow brim of his tricorne, they scanned the endless horizon—not for riches, nor for rival navies, but for something else. Something that gnawed at the corners of his mind like a storm at a cliff’s edge. A whisper, perhaps. A name he couldn’t quite remember.
He did not sleep often. When he did, it was shallow. Dreams of gilded laughter and ruined coastlines plagued him. Flames. Gold. A voice he could never place. And always, the feeling of something lost. Of something that had once belonged to him— or he to it.
There were whispers among the crew. That he had been touched by the Flame Below, or worse—blessed by the deep-sea beasts said to slumber in the Trench of Teeth. That he kept a scale from the Leviathan Giltheart beneath his coat, close to his skin. That his ship could outpace even the wind itself not because of clever sailwork, but because the air bent around him, afraid to deny him what he sought.
None dared ask what he truly searched for.
Below deck, amidst rows of stacked barrels and crates labeled with stolen insignias, Quartermaster Nutmeg Cookie made her rounds. Her boots rang sharply on the ironwood planks as she oversaw the operation with the exactitude of a naval commander. A former admiral in one of the Empire's western fleets, Nutmeg had long ago turned coat—not out of desperation, but because she believed no navy should kneel to thrones grown fat with a terrible, slow rot.
She respected hierarchy, but not blind loyalty. She believed in discipline, in efficiency, and above all else, in power—especially so in Captain Burning Spice.
They had not always agreed. But when Nutmeg first saw the Firebrand raze a fortress without firing a single cannon—using only a show of strength, trickery, and the spice that he left in his wake—she had bowed her head and offered her sword.
Nutmeg had no time for the romantic tales the crew spun in the galley. She did not believe in soul-mates or fate or half-remembered names whispered on stormwinds. But she did believe in results. And in the year she’d served aboard the Molten Wyrm , Burning Spice had never once failed to claim what he pursued.
The crew itself was a motley assembly, but skilled—each hand tested, broken, and reforged in the furnace of the Firebrand’s command. They sailed under no flag but that of a flaming crown devouring gold. Some of them were more than mortal. All of them were dangerous.
The Captain never truly invited them outright, they looked at him, his might, and for once, felt fear. Then they followed.
Their current course led them east by southeast, across waters marked as cursed on older charts—toward an island few dared name. Gilt Haven. It rose on the horizon like a mirage born from greed itself. A jagged crescent of obsidian cliffs and sun-soaked jungle, said to be home to the one who ruled the Untaxed Sea.
Golden Cheese. Pirate Queen. Treasure Mistress. The Golden Sovereign.
No one quite knew where she came from, or how she had amassed her fleet. Some said she was born in the hollowed-out hull or an egg of a merchant galley filled with cursed treasure. Others claimed she was once nobility, cast down for loving wealth more than blood.
Whatever her origin, the fact remained: she ruled Gilt Haven like a goddess of coin and cannon, her word law, her gaze lethal.
Burning Spice had never met her.
And yet, her name was carved into his memory like a relic he had once kissed in devotion. He didn’t know why the syllables set his teeth on edge or why he sometimes woke with the taste of gold on his tongue.
When he woke from his slumber, chained in the ocean floor, it was as if half of him was missing.
He remembered flashes. Gilded skin. A voice like breaking surf. A crown, half-melted in his palm.
Nothing more.
As the sun dipped behind stormclouds and the Molten Wyrm prowled into darker waters, Nutmeg approached the helm. “Three days out,” she said, eyeing the cloud-streaked horizon. “Winds holding. Scouts report no interference from the Empire.”
“Good,” said Burning Spice. His voice was deep—gravel smoothed by flame, hungry. “Keep the beasts submerged and lessen the trails of spice until we make port.”
Nutmeg tilted her head. “All of them?”
“All of them.” A pause. “Let the Golden Queen think we come with humble sails.”
Then he let out a guttural laugh, scaring the new cabin boy below.
Nutmeg nodded and didn’t press further. She didn’t need to.
Behind them, down in the ship’s underbelly, in the deep salt-flooded chambers where only a few dared venture, the Captain's beasts stirred. Creatures of ember and memory. Spiced corruption made flesh. Bound not by rope or chain, but by loyalty—to the fire-eyed man (ghost, creature, immortal) who had once freed them from eternal slumber.
In the dead of night, as stars wheeled above and stormclouds coiled on the horizon, Burning Spice stood alone at the prow of his ship, coat whipping in the saltwind. His hands, calloused and scarred, rested on the blacksteel rail. Below, the sea hissed. Above, lightning bloomed.
He left trails of spice and fire, lighting the ocean.
He did not know what he would find on Gilt Haven. An enemy. An ally. A ghost.
He only knew one thing: something— someone —was waiting there.
And he would burn down the whole damn ocean if that’s what it took to remember her face.
Far to the south, cradled by volcanic cliffs and caldera-forged reefs, Gilt Haven gleamed like a fever dream rendered in goldleaf and gunpowder. The harbor, once a holy port where pilgrims disembarked to kiss the relic-soaked stones, now pulsed with blue and gold sails and amassed with wealth. It was a city-state of indulgence and excess, rebuilt over centuries of blood and coin.
The forts were lined with gilded bronze culverins stolen from foreign navies. Drydocks bustled with corsair-engineered warships clad in baroque plating. Even the tide itself seemed complicit in Gilt Haven’s ambitions—dragging foreign wrecks ashore as offerings.
At its heart stood the Castle of the Dawn, long since desecrated, repurposed, and exalted anew as a palace for a monarch who wore no crown and accepted no counsel. Stone angels had been decapitated to make room for battlements. Stained glass mosaics were gutted and replaced with reinforced lancet arches, open to sea winds and cannon smoke. A ribbed vault of honey-hued marble rose overhead, its frescoes reimagined—no longer divine myths, but acts of naval conquest, of duels fought atop burning deck boards and treasure pulled from shipwreck tombs.
There, slouched across a throne welded from salvaged bowsprits, shattered anchors, and tempered sunstone, sat Her Radiance, Golden Cheese Cookie.
She was dressed like royalty who'd killed five other queens to earn her place. Brocade coat stitched with real coin, battle-sash of raw silk plundered from imperial caravans, a single shoulder pauldron crafted from a Leviathan scale. Gemstones, artifacts, and jagged heirlooms clung to her like barnacles. She glittered—and yet none of it outshone her eyes, sharp as a corvid’s and twice as hungry.
In one hand, she nursed a goblet of darkroot rum. In the other, her fingers lazily drummed the pommel of her cutlass—a brutal, sweeping hanger with a swept hilt carved from volcanic glass.
And she was terribly bored.
Terribly, terribly bored.
The Gilded Fate lay anchored in drydock. Not for repair—it was pristine, outfitted with reinforced gun decks and a reinforced keel that could ram straight through icebergs. No, it was boredom that kept it idle. There had been no worthy prey, no adversaries fit for chase, no fleets arrogant enough to provoke her in weeks.
Her people were happy, fed. They even had a festival nearing.
But still, oddly, she wanted to hunt. She had never felt such an urge before, this twisted desire.
But she felt….caged. And she hungered.
Not for plunder. Gold was her wallpaper now, as dull as drying paint. She wanted risk. Victory carved from desperation. Her hands itched for salt and powder, for the sea-slick chaos of a real battle. And when sleep came—uneasily—it brought not rest, but visions.
Lately, they bled together: dreams and memories she had no right to own.
They came with smoke on the air. The smell of burning pine and scorched parchment. War drums somewhere in the dark, and fire upon the water— always fire . In the center of it stood a man, crimson-cloaked, barefoot on burning timber. Not beautiful. Not cruel. Terrible.
His eyes, like molten garnet, followed her through the smoke. They seemed to recognize her. Like a story long forgotten mid-sentence. Like an oath that had outlived its maker.
A bird mid-flight, shot by a hunter. Put him in his place.
Who?
You will know.
Then—of course, she dismissed it all, of course. Dreams were the province of poets and broken men.
Until today.
Golden Cheese Cookie lounged in her throne—not slouched, never that—but reclined in the manner of someone who already knew the world would bow. Gold threads shimmered in her silks. Her crown sat askew with intent. The missive from the Ancients rested in her lap, creased only once—folded open like a challenge, a warning.
What mess did they have to clean up this time?
Before her, the table of state displayed a projection: the red-marked path of a ghost-ship , flickering with residual arcane interference. Each pulsing point of contact glowed like a cauterized wound on the map.
It bled into the map, an angry red.
“I’m assuming they wrote this with a straight face,” Her Radiance said at last, fingers tapping lightly against the hilt of her blade. “Do they expect tears? Or applause?”
“They expect fear, ” came the gruff answer.
Smoked Cheese stood at attention with arms folded and eyes sharp beneath a mane of dark curls, his uniform still ash-dusted from his morning drills. Smoke curled from the pipe in his teeth—a passing fancy—and the scent of it was calming in a way that felt more battlefield than court. “They’re running out of fleets. The Fang of Dawn limped back to port with half its deck scorched black. That ship wasn’t just burned, it was warped . ”
“They’re lucky they got it back at all,” said Mozzarella Cheese, perched at the table’s far end, swiping through holographs projected from a handheld relic. Her voice had the clipped tone of someone running diagnostics faster than most could think, but it was cheery as always. “Residual aura traces match pre-calamity fire curses. But here’s the problem—there shouldn’t be any curses like this left. The readings aren’t ancient. They’re recent. Fresh.”
“How fresh?” Golden Cheese asked.
Mozzarella hesitated. Then: “Forty-eight hours. The curse was cast , not awakened. It came from the source, I’d say.”
A murmur rippled through the chamber. Even Burnt Cheese, who rarely spoke unless required, shifted beside the doors, his gauntlet clicking against the marble pillar as he straightened.
“If it’s truly him,” Burnt said, voice like cracked obsidian, “he shouldn’t be walking the world again. Beasts were last seen millenia ago.”
“No,” Golden Cheese said, eyes sharpening like the edge of her namesake. “We agreed to forget them.”
You agreed to forget him.
The room fell still.
Silence, but for the low hum of the relic-map and the soft pop of incense. A cheesebird scattered about.
Golden Cheese stood, and when she did, the room tilted with the gravity of her presence. Her voice was smooth, deliberate—a blade drawn slowly from velvet.
“I know the name they’re afraid to say. I know the shape of that fire on the sea. And I know this: I do not run. I do not kneel. ”
Her gaze swept across them—her war general, her artificer, her keeper of gates.
“If he is coming, then let him come. I have not ruled this coast by cowering in towers. I faced down the Leviathans when they rose from the Western Trench. I shattered the Frost Armada at the Equinox Line. I burned an empire to salt for daring to lay claim on my kingdom, on my treasures. Let this Firebrand come. Let the other kingdoms quiver in their marble halls. But Gilt Haven? Gilt Haven remains. ”
Smoked Cheese gave a sharp nod. “I’ll triple the perimeter, Your Radience.”
“I’ll reinforce the palace grid,” Mozzarella added. “Double-relic redundancy, arcane dampeners at every entrance. No raw fire’s getting through.”
Burnt Cheese didn’t speak. He simply turned, cloak flaring as he left to inform the outer wards. His silence was assurance enough.
Her people were truly her best treasures, weren’t they?
And yet. Yet.
Golden Cheese remained at the head of it all, standing beneath stained glass that depicted her as a deity of sunlight and conquest. The gold in her crown caught the light as she looked out toward the sea—where smoke curled faintly against the horizon.
A memory stirred beneath her breastbone, unbidden.
Crimson eyes in a storm. A voice that cracked the world.
Hunter.
And a promise neither of them had kept.
Bird .
She smiled, slowly. “Tell the kitchens to prepare a guest wing,” she said. “And send word to the relic-forge. I want my sea armor polished.”
A pause.
“Bring me this captain,” she motioned to her subjects. Her pulse sped up.
Giddy. She felt unexplainably giddy .
“Alive.”
The next morning, the crew of the Molten Wyrm stirred with the sharp precision of a beast well-fed on violence. Sails trimmed. Ropes coiled. Cannons polished until the blackened brass caught the glint of sunrise like hungry eyes. Orders moved down the chain of command like lightning striking a fuse, and none of the crew dared falter. They knew better. A slow hand aboard this ship didn’t just earn rebuke—it invited the attention of the captain’s beasts.
Or worse, the Captain himself. In the past, he neither cared nor made a fuss about what any of the crew did. Long as they maintained the ship, or pillaged whatever they wanted.
But now he had been…oddly fixated. Sharp. Relentless and obsessive, focused on one person.
Nutmeg stood amidships, arms crossed, watching the deckhands swab and lash with practiced rhythm. She didn’t raise her voice often. She didn’t need to. Her presence was enough. Dressed in deep brown naval garb—tailored but weather-beaten—her coat bore the faded insignia of a long-dead empire she no longer honored; instead, she sewed in the remains of a beast to cover her from the sun.
From the quarterdeck, Burning Spice observed in silence. His hands gripped the railing. His stare burned holes in the sea mist.
Nutmeg climbed the steps, pausing beside her captain. “You didn’t sleep again, sir.”
Burning Spice didn’t look at her.
Nutmeg glanced at the horizon. “The Serpent Maw of Gilt Haven’s close. We should prepare the crew for contact.”
“Only the officers!” he shouged. “The rest will stay aboard.”
Nutmeg raised an eyebrow. “Planning something delicate?”
“I want no blood until I’ve spoken with her.”
The quartermaster gave him a long look, failing at the last second to hide her disbelief. “Do you believe she’ll parley?”
“I don’t believe anything,” said Burning Spice, laughing loudly. “I know something waits for me on that island. It has teeth. And it speaks with her voice!”
A gust of wind passed between them, carrying the distant cry of seabirds and the heavy scent of gold dust. The air itself was different the closer they sailed. Gilt Haven didn’t just shimmer on maps—it shimmered in the bones, towering.
“And with an ego as high as the bird herself!” He cackled.
He could still smell burnt cedar and lightning in the sails. Could still feel the hum of volatile ether running beneath the deck like arterial fire. The relic-class ship—their ship—was stitched from forgotten sciences and bound to the blood-oaths of long-dead kings; a ghost-ship, really, that worked against logic.
She had teeth, and claws, and something that could only be described as memory. She remembered the skies that tried to break her. She remembered drowning. And she had come back burning, crying, for a god.
Deep beneath Davy Jones’ Locker, he woke.
“Wind’s stalling,” Nutmeg muttered, eyes narrowing at the horizon. “Three degrees off the original arc. Still no pursuit.”
Burning Spice laughed: it was all the same. They’re too scared to follow. The other Ancient fleets, with their gilded prows and divine wards, had once considered themselves invincible. Now they drifted like smoke in his wake.
If they were anything like her….
From the crow’s nest, the barrelman called down. “Sails on the western ridge! Two schooners bearing the Gilded Mark!”
The crew snapped into action. Nutmeg issued orders with the precision of a metronome. Riggers dashed up the masts. Cannons were manned but not armed. The Molten Wyrm slowed her gait, a predator showing her flank, as if introducing a barely-tamed wild animal towards greener pastures.
The Gilt Haven vessels approached without hostility. Their hulls gleamed unnaturally, as though lacquered with molten gold. At the bow of the leading schooner stood a tall figure, armor glinting beneath a silk mantle dyed the color of sunstone.
“Hah,” Nutmeg muttered. “They sent one of the Vassals.”
Burning Spice’s lips curled—not into a smile, but something more like hunger.
The figure on the enemy ship raised a hand. “Permission to board and speak on behalf of the Golden Sovereign,” he called.
“Granted!” bellowed Burning Spice, his voice carrying across the waves, making it hiss like flint striking steel.
Minutes later, boots hit the deck.
He was tall—taller than most Cookies—and unmistakably regal. Pearl gold armor with a face hidden by a Jackal-shaped helm. Embossed seal of the Gilt Court. He carried no weapon, only a scroll case.
“I am Burnt Cheese,” the envoy said with a practiced bow. “Keeper of the Sovereign’s Gate and her tongue in foreign matters.”
“Then let your tongue speak fast,” said Nutmeg, stepping forward.
But Burnt Cheese turned only to Burning Spice. “The Golden Sovereign bids you welcome, Captain. She extends hospitality and requests a private audience at sunset.”
Burning Spice’s eyes narrowed. “Why wait until sunset?”
“She prefers the light of gold. When the world burns its brightest.”
Nutmeg muttered something under her breath, but her captain raised a hand. The Keeper held a firm stance, as if tensing. The Captain had a terrifying figure, cutting through the shape of the sun like a flame.
“I accept!” Burning Spice said, something like satisfaction burning in his voice. “Tell her I’m coming.”
As the envoy bowed and returned to his ship, Nutmeg watched him go with an uneasy look.
“Sunset?” She said. “That easily?”
“No,” said the Firebrand, eyes locked on the retreating schooner. “But neither am I.”
As the sun crawled toward the western sea, the Molten Wyrm anchored off Gilt Haven’s jagged shore. From this distance, the island seemed like a crown set atop a mountain of shipwrecks—dozens, maybe hundreds, half-submerged vessels gleaming with barnacles and rusted iron. A graveyard turned gate.
They rowed in with a skeleton crew: Burning Spice, Nutmeg, and two officers. The waters around the reef were quiet, too quiet, but no one commented.
The jungle bloomed before them. It wasn’t green. It was gold.
Trees with leaves like hammered brass. Vines dripping with luminous resin. Birds that sang like chimes. Everything shimmered under the canopy.
They must’ve made enough of a commotion, because a sharp sound echoed throughout the area, and out come Gilded Haven’s residents.
They were led by servants clad in silk and chainmail to a towering palace, almost cathedral-like, carved into the cliffside. It wasn’t built of stone—but with melted coins, fused relics, and treasure molded into architecture. A testament to their Ruler’s famed obsession.
Servants chirped, chattered, moving efficiently. The molten chandeliers—suspended from vaulted ceilings by chains made of old pirate manacles—flickered not with flame, but with liquid sunlight held in enchanted glass. The air was thick with the perfume of saffron, citrus, and power. Gold was in everything: the cushions, the steps, the leaves of the potted trees. It coated the tongue and curled beneath the fingernails like a gilded disease.
Burning Spice was not impressed, though he was settling in with familiarity.
He’d seen opulence before. He’d burned kingdoms trying to hide behind it. This was different. This was something older. Something earned. There was no desperation in this wealth, no gluttony. Only authority. It didn't beg to be seen—it expected it, claimed it.
Still so greedy.
And at its peak, waiting on a throne half-devoured by creeping vines of gold, sat Golden Cheese.
Her gaze found Burning Spice instantly.
Golden Cheese Cookie sat with her legs crossed, one arm draped across the lion-arm of her throne, the other cradling a goblet crafted from the skull of some extinct sea creature. Her eyes shimmered like doubloons under moonlight, sharp and heavy-lidded.
“Destroyer,” she said, voice smooth as honey over sharpened glass. “Let’s see if you live up to the price on your head.”
Burning Spice stepped forward, every instinct screaming with the memory of a voice just like that whispering to him in a different life.
But she didn’t remember.
Not quite yet, not as much.
And that made something inside him crack, something in him turned hungry. Rabid. Testy.
He smiled. Slow. Dangerous. “I’m not here for a bounty.”
“Then what do you want, Captain?”
He said nothing at first, grinning, a madman.
Because the answer lived in a part of him that still burned, and always would.
“Give me a fight, birdie!”
He sank.
Deeper than the hulls of sunken warships, deeper than coral tombs and forgotten gold, deeper still beyond the reach of sunlight, where the sea turned black and the water turned heavy, pressing down against his chest like the cold hand of a patient executioner.
Dragged far beneath the Duskgloom Sea, far past where mortal things could follow, the Beast of Fire — Captain Burning Spice — was claimed at last by the only jailer fit to hold him.
Davy Jones’ Locker.
And there, in the dark, he dreamed.
And dream he did.
The Sea, in all her cold, eternal grace, felt the weight of him even as his body slipped into the folds of her endless, lightless realm. Long before the waves had learned to roll, before the Moon had ever laid her pale face upon the waters, the Sea had been a creature of thought — an Elemental mind vast and wordless, moving slow as centuries.
It was said she had no love for mortal things, not truly. But in the quiet gloom of her deepest trench, as his broken frame hung suspended between life and the long hush of death, the Sea watched him in the times of daylight.
A captain. Once. A hero. Once. The carrier of a virtue so old and pure it could’ve set kingdoms alight. And yet, in this life, it seemed all he had left was hunger. Fire without purpose. A name spoken only in curses and nightmares; change was only ever so good in the beginning. It grew and grew and spiraled.
How strange, the Sea thought, in the wordless way old gods do, that this particular one refused to shatter cleanly.
He drifted in fragments, the pieces of himself scattered across the ocean floor like the debris of an ancient wreck. Names he had worn in past lives. Faces, laughter, battles. The heat of ambition, long before his bones had grown weary of it. The fire that had once lifted him from dough and spark to something more — something worthy of legend. Now only flickers.
And still the question hung there, coiled tight around his drowning mind:
What made a hero listless? What turned a hunter into prey? What difference, in the end, did this life hold from the ones before it? Or any of them?
The Sea waited.
But Burning Spice, in his dreaming, could not answer.
And somewhere, far away, beneath the endless folds of salt and silence, he began to laugh.
Because the real question was simpler, crueler, and sharp as a broken compass: What was the point? What had ever been the point?
But the Sea has long arms. She cradles, she crushes, she forgets — but not always.
Down in the black marrow of Davy Jones’ Locker, a single shape had stubbornly refused to dissolve; Gem Mermaids refused to touch it, for fear of burning, and even the cracks of the Fallen hiss at the sight. The Locker kept him trapped, tangled in endless half-lives stitched from old glories and false comforts, but the Sea still felt his weight. Like a splinter. Like a scar. Growing, familiar, alike to her own.
Time, in that place, had no meaning. Seasons came and went only as dreams — a new crew, a new ship, a new flag hoisted high on a mast he never remembered raising. And every time, the dream offered the same feast: the scent of powder smoke, the crackle of flame, the taste of gold on the tongue. Sweet, warm, numbing.
It should have kept him. It kept most.
But the Sea had started to notice the change.
The dreams were unraveling. The loops frayed, threads snapping under a pressure that didn’t belong in the world of the dead. Rage, bright and sharp, had begun to rise through the sleep like a ship breaking surface — old, gnawing hunger sharpening into something else. Memory, maybe. Will.
She remembered the first time he’d fallen into her depths. She remembered the body — still burning, even under the water, as if the fire couldn’t quite let go. The Empire had thought him lost then. The world had breathed easier, when these Beasts went down, one by one.
And yet.
The Sea had seen this before, in other ages, other names. Some souls do not drown quietly.
A single breath rattled out from the deep, dry and rasping, like lungs unused for centuries. It was faint. Small. The world would not hear it.
But the Sea did. And she knew, with an old and bitter certainty, that the Locker’s hold was breaking. The Beast was stirring. And he would not rise empty-handed.
One last time, of course, the Sea thought.
The waves did not roar that morning. They stilled. As if even the tides themselves held their breath.
From one lover to the next — she thought, heavy with something between sorrow and amusement. For you, Firebrand, Beast, you who had sailed her waters long before the world earned its names, before the Ancients carved their thrones and their kingdoms into her bones — you, whose heart burned hotter than her sunlit surface — you should not suffer the distance of the Moon and the Sea.
No.
Fate should be kinder.
The Locker splintered with a quiet, inevitable fracture of something long overdue, creaking, breaking, a heart with a maw. Like the thaw of old ice. Like the cracking of an old ship’s hull under weight it was never meant to carry.
The Beast moved. The fire beneath the waves flared. For the first time in centuries, his name — half-formed, all hunger — clawed its way back to the surface of his mind; gold flashed onto his mind over and over, and Witches did he crave .
He did not rise on wings of vengeance, nor march from the dark like a knight returned from a campaign. The Sea would not give him that grace, nor would it give him that cruelty.
Instead, the world would only feel his return in small ways. The smell of smoke on an unburnt wind. The tides, pulling sharper, as if urged by a hidden hand. Storms gathering on clear skies, faster, wilder, more desperate to greet him.
He would rise. In time. Find her , she bid. You were never meant to be dormant.
And across the sea, in her fortress of stone and gold, another dreamer would wake, sharp and restless, clutching at the embers of a vision.
Their story had not ended. It had only begun to circle back.
She stared at the stars, at the lovely sight of the Moon, and bid the Beast with whispered well-wishes.
The Sea was only ever so cruel to ones like herself.
Chapter Text
Golden Cheese’s throne room was beyond opulent. It had once been the largest Hall of the Cathedral's buildings, placed at the edge of the cliffside by hand and hubris, it had since been desecrated and reborn into a sanctuary of gold and power. There were no other goddesses like her.
Veils of imported silks hung where saints once stood. Cannons protruded from broken stained glass. Her throne itself was a monument to conquered glory—half iron, half fossilized, ancient coral of bleached and a vivid blue, mounted atop crates of tribute coin and broken sextants from enemy fleets. Sentient golden vines curved and decorated empty areas, her watchful eyes.
At her side stood her war court.
The throne room cleared in minutes, a whirl of velvet uniforms, gold-threaded insignias, and hasty bows. Only silence remained, thick with sea salt and incense smoke that curled from the mouths of carved braziers—lit not for warmth, but for what lay beneath.
Smoked Cheese Cookie did not kneel, nor did she ever expect him to. Wreathed in drifting plumes of gray-blue vapor, he stood like a statue carved out of war itself. His pauldrons bore gouges from the beaks of monsters dredged up from beneath the waves, and the edges of his cloak were burnt through from exposure to eldritch bile. But his mind—his voice—that remained sharp as ever.
“You speak of leaving the Firebrand alive ?” he rasped, smoke curling from his words like incense from a war priest’s censer. “Her Radiance, forgive me, but the Beasts were not known for their diplomacy.”
Golden Cheese Cookie didn’t turn to face him. Her crown caught the sun like a blade, and every fold of silk across her shoulders whispered wealth—dyed from pigments long outlawed, stitched with precision. Made by the hands of her tailors. She didn’t wear her splendor; she wielded it, owned it.
Diplomacy? Please.
“I’m not looking for diplomacy, ” Golden Cheese scoffed, chin rested on the hilt of her cutlass. “I’m looking for something more interesting than this endless lull of trade routes and pompous pirates pretending to be kings. And, regardless, he poses a threat to my court.”
Her head swam with visions, a distinct, peppery smell.
“Though I suppose I could have him as a vessel. It would be such a shame to off him immediately.”
Smoke thickened in the air as Smoked Cheese’s temper flared, barely restrained. “He slaughtered half the Ancient Vanguard’s fleet a few days ago. The salt hasn’t dried on their sails. He’s either possessed, mad, or both. Many other vagrants won’t even utter his name aloud.”
“Then I’ll have the pleasure of hearing it from his own lips,” she replied, a slow smile tugging at the edge of her mouth.
Someone coughed. Then someone left.
A sharp mechanical click announced the arrival of the court’s resident technomancer.
Mozzarella Cheese strode forward, a crystalline screen flickering to life above her gauntlet.
“I’ve intercepted chatter from the Eastern Archipelago,” she reported briskly. “A volcanic island—uninhabited until two weeks ago—now burns nonstop. Locals whisper of a man in red who walks through flame, which, ah, is a bit obvious in hindsight. The other Ancients seek for a meeting urgently, though, Your Radiance.”
Golden Cheese’s eyes lit with something dangerously close to joy.
Mozzarella continued, glancing toward Smoked Cheese. “And… multiple deep-sea species have been reported breaching the surface. Not fleeing. Following. Someone is calling the monsters again….”
And on and on the report went. Possible Beasts….plural. But, really, she only ever focused her eye on one.
“Ah, well, we already know who the culprit is—and draft a reply to their missives.” Golden Cheese said, rising from her throne with a sweep of golden cloth and sun-tempered steel. “Ready the Gilded Fate. Tell the navigators to plot a course through the Serpent’s Maw. We must do this before sunrise.”
“He’d forge through the Maw? That’s suicide, Your Grace.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s the perfect place.”
And somewhere in the castle, dreaming deeply in a storm-wracked sea, a red-coated figure stood at the prow of a ship aflame with cursed fire—watching. Waiting. His form flickered—warrior, hero, king, god.
Golden Cheese Cookie, Queen of Gilt Haven, Conqueror of the Gilted Coast and a million other names, would not let him remain unchallenged.
Nor, if fate had any humor left, untouched.
Beneath the throne room’s grandeur, in chambers lit by arcane flame and perfumed incense, Smoke Cheese Cookie paced like a beast in a gilded cage.
He hated being summoned immediately without reason—especially when the Queen was in one of her moods . He respected her power, of course. Revered it, even. But there were times he wondered if Golden Cheese saw the difference between devotion and duty. Smoke was not one to bend easily—not even to Her Radiance.
Still, he came.
He was a war general, an advisor, and the Kingdom’s monster-keeper. That last title was less ceremonial than it sounded. It was him they called when krakens breached the deep ports, when whispering sirens lured guards to madness, when creatures crawled out of broken relics and ancient doors. He’d tamed things most sailors had never seen and influenced minds that had long since lost coherence, using smoke drawn from sacred censors and laced with controlling chants known only to his line.
But even he could not control the Queen when her heart stirred with obsession.
He finally faced her. The Queen of Gilt Haven stood framed by the eerie glow of his realm, and for a second, she looked like a relic herself—something ancient and beautiful and made to outlast storms.
“Captain Burning Spice,” he continued. “They say he set ablaze the Ancients’ outposts. That he destroyed a storm-summoner’s fleet with nothing but his ship—a madman, really. That he sails with death itself stitched into his shadow. That he doesn’t sleep. That he doesn’t need to. In the few days I’ve garnered word…it was as if he never disappeared from Earthbread.”
Golden Cheese smiled thinly. “Must you reiterate? You do know I’ve seen worse.”
“Not recently,” Smoke replied. “And not this close.”
The silence between them thickened, until it clung like tar. Then, finally, she spoke, softer this time. “He’s different. A true hunter, if you will.”
Smoke narrowed his eyes. “You have never entertained such men. Why this, My Queen?”
Her silence was its own kind of answer.
“I cannot help but pry, Your Radiance. Tell me why.”
Golden Cheese stepped forward, her heels striking the etched floor with slow, deliberate clicks. “Because I dream of him. Every night now. Flames. War. His eyes. Like coals that remember. He looks at me like he knows me.”
And I, him.
“Plenty of madmen dream of queens.”
“And plenty of queens know when madness is prophecy,” she said sharply, then caught herself. Her next words came quieter. “I don’t believe in accidents, my General.”
Smoke inhaled deeply, the tendrils curling from his mouth forming shapes—wings, teeth, claws—that drifted and vanished. “If your instincts are right, and he’s not just a threat—but something worse, or something more —what would you do with him?”
Golden Cheese tilted her head, the gold threads in her hair catching the unnatural light. “My answer cannot change: I want him alive.”
A beat. Two.
Then a bitter laugh from Smoke. “Of course.”
He walked past her, running a gloved hand along one of the larger cages, where something inside slithered, watching. “You know what kind of contingency work that requires? Mental wards, beast-fog, spirit-binding threads. If he’s even half what they say, we’ll need artifacts that haven’t seen use since the Thousand-Year War.”
“Then use them,” she said. “Call in Mozzarella Cheese if you must. I don’t care how deep the vaults go. Get Burnt Cheese again from his posts if you have to shake the gates. I want no surprises.”
Smoke turned on her, wisening himself. “There will be surprises. He’s fire, my Queen. You don’t put fire in a cage—you burn with it. Or you burn from it.”
“I’ve burned before,” she said, and for a moment, her voice sounded far away. “What’s one more scar if it means knowing? What one more sacrifice for such…” For such treasure?
Smoke studied her then—not as a queen, not even as a friend, but as a woman standing at the edge of something ancient. She was rarely sentimental. Rarely curious. But this… this was not about curiosity. This was obsession tempered in gold, and forged into command, spiraling, spiraling, wanting.
And that scared him.
Because Golden Cheese Cookie did not pursue things she did not plan to keep.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll give you what you ask. And I’ll build what I must. But I will also prepare a box to bury this man in if he dares to stay in this kingdom with harm in his heart.”
Golden Cheese Cookie’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I trust you, General.”
Smoke turned back. “Of course, Your Radiance.”
The sky flared with dying color, streaks of rose-gold and blood-orange bleeding across the sea. From the highest terrace of Gilt Haven—a once-sacred lighthouse now turned observation deck and dueling perch—one could see the vastness of the queen’s dominion: sleek galleons in perfect formation, spires of gilded sandstone piercing the horizon, and the slow dance of sea serpents far in the shallows, tethered like war beasts.
Golden Cheese Cookie stood at the balustrade, draped in gauze-thin silks, her gold-threaded cape catching the wind like a sail. The metal edge of her pauldrons gleamed under the last light of the day, and at her hip, the hilt of her cutlass—etched with laurels, ivory inlay glinting—tapped softly against her side as if impatient.
She didn’t turn when the heavy footsteps echoed behind her.
“Your summons were rather theatrical,” she said, voice like old honey. “I wasn’t expecting fireworks.”
A laugh—loud, cracked, wild. Fireworks, hm?
Burning Spice stormed into view, half-armored, red coat torn and stitched in too many places to count, every inch of him smeared with soot and salt. His boots were burnt at the edges. His eyes glowed like dying embers. And he wore that grin—wide, toothy, unhinged—a madman’s joy wrapped in a soldier’s frame.
He stopped a few paces from her, shoulder rising and falling, grinning.
“Well,” he declared, “here we are! Sun bleeding out like a stabbed god! Perfect setting for a prelude, don’t you think?”
Golden Cheese finally turned. Her expression was unreadable, scrunched up. What in the Witches was he talking about??
“You call this a prelude?”
“Of course!” he said. “Tomorrow’s the fight. Tonight’s the foreplay!”
…
Seriously?
He stepped closer, boots clanking against the marble.
Golden Cheese turned her eyes to the horizon, yet keeping Burning Spice at the corner of her eyes. The last rays of light were slipping away. She snorted softly. “You think I’m going to fall for madness, Captain?”
“No!” he shouted gleefully. “I think you’re going to fight me! Because you’re just as mad, your Radiance, only dressed better!”
He leaned on the railing, flames flickering behind his eyes, breath steaming in the cooling air.
“You summoned me,” he said. “You wanted a conversation before the clashing of swords. Here I am! Say your piece, goldie.”
“I summoned you,” she said, voice measured, “because I don’t like killing strangers . It’s uncivil.”
Burning Spice’s eye twitched at the word.
“Ha! A courtesy before carnage! How regal!”
He stopped beside her, boots scraping stone. The two of them, cast in twilight, were opposites in every way—restrained, coiling, seizing the other up. Yet, and yet, something unspoken sparked between them, like flint near oil.
She tilted her head. “Why should I fight a madman?” What makes me want to seek you?
Golden Cheese studied him. His face was too intense to be handsome, too cracked to be calm. And yet—there was something behind the mania. Some echo of purpose. Something old. She didn’t like it, and hated that she felt warmth pooling at her gut at the thought of that sickening grin.
“That’s for you to find out, birdie!” And there it was–his face was edging close towards her, harsh breath hovering over. They stood in silence for a moment, edges apart. Memorizing the maps of the other’s face. Below, the waves crashed against the jagged cliffs of Gilt Haven, slow and heavy like a drumbeat.
“You’re late to the reminder,” she said, breaking his stare. “But fine, I suppose I could humor you.”
He grinned like a devil, his golden teeth crooked. Charming. Dangerous. “At dawn, then!”
“At dawn.”
They stood together, watching the sun drown beneath the sea, a silence stretching between them like a taut bowstring.
It would snap soon.
It started as a folk tale. Then a legend. A myth.
Long ago, when the oceans roared louder than the gods and the wind whispered of forgotten realms, there lived a hunter whose name was carried by the flame of the world. He was no mere mortal, but a man whose spirit burned with the fury of a thousand storms. His bow and his broadsword were crafted from the bones of ancient beasts, and his arrows were tipped with fire that could pierce the heavens themselves. His eyes saw the world not as it was, but as it could be—a land of endless conquest, where his name would echo through the ages.
And he was a terribly bored man.
Far above him, in the towering heights of a kingdom of gold and stone, there perched a bird—a creature of unrivaled beauty and power. Her feathers were woven from the rays of the sun itself, and her wings beat with the rhythm of the cosmos. She was the ruler of all that she saw, a queen whose talons could tear through mountains and whose eyes could see into the hearts of men. Her name was whispered in awe, but few dared speak it aloud, for to do so was to summon the wrath of the heavens.
The hunter saw her, from the farthest reaches of the earth, and his heart burned with the desire to capture her. He did not know why. Perhaps it was the challenge, the promise of victory over something so wild and free. Perhaps it was the gold that glittered around her, or the legend of her power that stirred something ancient within him. Whatever the reason, he set his sights on her, and no force in the world could deter him.
The bird, however, was no easy prize. She had watched the stars fall and rise, witnessed the rise and fall of kingdoms, and she knew the ways of men. She had seen hunters come and go, their bones scattered upon the winds, and she would not fall to one so eager to claim what was not his. She soared high, above the reach of his arrows, laughing as he sought her across the seas, through the storm, and into the depths of the earth.
But the hunter was relentless. Every battle, every storm only fueled his desire. He knew that he would either conquer the bird or die trying. There was no other path for him. So he chased her, day after day, his ship cutting through the waves like a blade, his crew as determined as their captain.
And then, when the world thought their story had ended—when the hunter was thought lost to the depths of Davy Jones’ Locker—he returned. Clawing his way back from the depths of the ocean, as if the sea itself could not hold him. He came not as a man, but as a beast reborn, with laughter in his chest and fire in his eyes. He was no longer just a hunter. He had become the storm itself.
And so, they met again.
The bird, now grown wise to the ways of the hunter, felt the old pull between them. She remembered the flames, the battles, the laughter that had once echoed in her heart. She, too, had been reborn—not through death, but through the endless cycles of time, each life bringing her closer to something she did not understand. Perhaps, she thought, he was the answer she had sought all along.
But even as they stood on the edge of the world, the hunter with his burning fury and the bird with her golden feathers, they both knew one thing: this story would never end well.
For their hearts had been entwined long ago, not in love or hate, but in something far more dangerous—destiny. And the hunter and the bird, locked in an eternal chase, would forever remain locked in a war neither could win.
Because, really,
How would you ever love something you were never meant to love?
…
The first shot wasn’t cannonfire.
It was the sea itself splitting open.
The Shatter Reef within Serpent’s Maw was not meant to be navigated. Not in the dead of night, not with a storm howling like the gods were screaming. Not with the moon buried behind clouds and the stars drowned in rain. The sky was black velvet torn by lightning, and the ocean below bucked and rolled like a beast unchained, its back lined with jagged rocks and the bones of sunken empires.
And still, the Molten Wyrm came.
She rose out of the mist like a legend—massive, firelit, crawling with glowing runes along her scorched hull. Her figurehead was a draconic beast, all fang and molten eye, roaring into the gale. Flames coiled in her wake, and smoke followed her like a wedding veil.
On the deck of The Gilded Fate , Golden Cheese watched her approach with unreadable eyes. She stood like a statue of war: armor gilded and worn from countless battles, a crown twisted into a jagged point atop her brow. Around her, her crew scrambled to battle stations, rain plastering their coats to their backs.
Her lips didn’t move. She only raised her hand.
And the cannons sang.
Twin broadsides lit the sea aflame. The roar of impact was like gods clashing in the deep. Wood cracked, metal screamed, and fire exploded across the night, illuminating the monster that followed the Wyrm —a thing dredged up from a fissure in the seabed, all teeth and steam and volcanic gore. It shrieked, and the waves recoiled .
The beast lunged.
Golden Cheese didn’t flinch. She gave a nod, and her ship’s figurehead—an eagle sculpted from gold and starlight—opened its beak and unleashed.
Light. Radiant and blinding. A beam not of fire but pure force, slamming into the monster’s face like the wrath of the sun. It screamed. It melted. The ocean boiled where it sank.
Then the ships collided.
The Molten Wyrm hit the Fate amidships, and the sound was apocalyptic—splintering wood, shrieking metal, the wail of men and monsters alike. Sails tangled. Ropes snapped. The rigging became a noose. A mast toppled into the sea like a falling titan. Fire poured from the gashes in both ships, licking up toward the storm, and still the crews fought, claws and blades and curses all clashing in the maelstrom.
He leapt through fire.
Burning Spice hurled himself from the flaming wreckage of his deck and landed with a crash on hers, boots cracking the boards beneath. Rain hissed off his body where fire met water. His coat hung in tatters, face streaked with blood and soot, a gash open on his temple. And in his hand, the broadsword—blackened, jagged, humming with fury.
She turned. Met him.
And the world narrowed.
"You," she said, not a question, not an accusation. Just a recognition . How many times have we done this?
He grinned—mad, bleeding, breath like smoke. "You never fail to make my damn blood boil."
Then they collided .
Their blades met in a scream of metal and magic, the force of it throwing sparks like fireworks. She struck first—clean, fast, ruthless. He countered with brute strength, swinging as if to break her sword in two. Every movement between them had the weight of memory. It wasn’t a duel. It was a recurrence, sweet and familiar.
A fight again and again—dog eats dog, the snake eating its tail. How do I, the other wanted to ask, burn like this forever?
They danced across the blood-slick deck, blades flashing with every heartbeat. She went low, slicing across his thigh. He spun, backhanded her with the flat of his blade. Her crown went flying. She didn’t stop. He bled from the mouth. He didn’t care.
Rain poured. Fire burned.
And behind every strike, ghosts clawed for the surface.
She saw him—not here, not now, but then. In a temple, shirtless and laughing, covered in the soot of a burned city they’d taken together. At her side on a throne made from stolen gold, their hands both resting on the same crown. In a cavern, chained, betrayed, cursing her name. In a river, dying. Her blade in his gut.
The bird claws the hunter’s eyes out, leaving him disgraced. It shoots her, leaving her unable to fly.
He saw her—not here, but in lifetimes. Weeping in battle. Drenched in wine and blood. Screaming his name as the sky fell. Smiling in the dark before she lit a kingdom ablaze.
Neither can live without the other.
He staggered. She pressed forward.
He caught her strike with his palm. Blood poured down his wrist, but he held it anyway, forcing her blade to a stop an inch from his face.
The bird croons a soft song that lulls the hunter’s insides.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” he asked, voice hoarse, face wet with blood and a terrible mix of hunger and desire.
She wrenched free, stepped back, shaking—not with fear, but with something far more dangerous.
Calm him. Love him. Chase him. Fight him.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she spat, and the words came easy to her, as smooth as silk. She was no madman. No fool. She hated this, loathed this building, awful vulnerability. Why would she chase a man she’s barely met? Her blade flashed. She went low and carved across the meat of his palm. His broadsword dropped with a clatter.
Easy, Witches , this was too fucking easy.
She knocked him down.
Make him bleed, bird.
And stood over him, sword at his throat, the rain washing blood into his collar.
Burning Spice only smiled. Gods, he looked mad —hair plastered to his face, steam rising off his skin where the rain touched his overheated body. He bore no armor, only scorched cloth and ritualistic scars glowing faintly beneath the rain, like cinders beneath ash.
His saber—or is it an axe? A broadsword? What did he hold when he ripped you apart—heavy, chipped, dulled by misuse and flame—was held in a low guard with a thumb-grip, allowing him to flick into rising cuts with power. It was a berserker’s blade, meant for hacking through wood and iron and whoever, not dancing with royalty.
But he danced with her anyway.
“You always cut from the left,” he rasped, teeth red, eyes gleaming. “You still do.”
“Then block it,” she snapped, and lunged forward, her cutlass arcing, aiming to split the collarbone from shoulder.
He caught it with a parry, the broadsword angled across his body, sparks shrieking as metal scraped metal. The impact rocked them both, and the deck cracked beneath their feet.
She twisted her hands, the cutlass sweeping in a tight arc to follow up with an upward diagonal from hip to shoulder. He ducked under it, but not fast enough—her edge grazed his cheek, splitting it open with surgical precision. Blood sprayed and steamed.
He laughed again. “That’s the feeling . That’s what I’ve been missing!”
She didn’t answer—she just pressed harder.
I’ll keep clawing your damn eyes, body, face, everything.
She drove him back with a flurry—short, snapping strikes designed to overwhelm his defenses. Each one struck at a joint or an artery—wrist, shoulder, thigh, ribs. Her cutlass moved like lightning, the edge curving into elegant arcs that disguised their lethality. Her technique was pure, devastating, furious—a scholar’s precision married to a pirate queen’s savagery, and curdled with anger, with fear.
Beast.
But he was not made to be bested by form alone.
Hunter.
Burning Spice met her assault with brute adaptability. He shifted into half-swording, gripping the flat of his broadsword with his off-hand to force grapples and disarms. She twisted out of a clinch with a well-timed pommel strike to his ribs—he barely grunted, eyes locked on hers, drinking in her fury like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
Must you rip my wings out?
“You’re so angry,” he muttered, grabbing her wrist for a heartbeat before she broke free with a snapping elbow to his throat. “Do you remember yet? How many empires we buried? How many gods we mocked ? The Witches that left your treasures to die?”
Golden Cheese wanted to close her eyes and ignore it. Ignore it all.
Hero.
She answered with silence, her eyes burning gold as her blade found the meat of his shoulder. Blood jetted from the wound.
Bird.
And still, he didn’t fall.
Queen.
Instead, he staggered back, laughing through a mouthful of red. “I knew you wouldn’t kill me clean.”
Why do you never flee?
She stalked toward him, cutlass low now, her breath ragged. “You really don’t shut up, do you?”
“I can’t. Not with you here!” He raised his blade, smiling terribly, beautifully.
She struck again, feinting high, then spinning, aiming for his knee. He dropped his weight, absorbing the blow and responding with a sweeping cut that forced her to jump back a pace. The edge missed her ribs by inches. It exhilarated her like nothing else, matching her blow for blow
Lightning cracked, illuminating the fury in both their faces.
She could see his Soul Jam—his heart, soul, whatever it was she needed to gnaw with her teeth—pulsing, and hers reaching.
Then came the bind.
Reaching.
Her cutlass met his broadsword, hilts grinding against each other. Their bodies were too close now, breaths mingling, blood dripping between them onto the deck. His strength was inhuman, but she held firm, shoulders taut with the force of resistance. Her face hovered inches from his—livid, golden, furious .
And yet… she didn’t break away.
“You’re slowing,” she whispered, voice low. “You’re dying on me, roach.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’d die smiling if you killed me!”
Madman! She hissed, wrenching her blade free, redirecting—and slammed the flat of her cutlass against the side of his head.
He dropped to one knee.
And she stood over him again, just like she had before, in another time, another war.
Must we…..
Her blade rose.
And paused.
“Do it!” he cackled, staring up at her. “Do it, birdie!”
The sea quieted. The sky parted, revealing stars smeared behind the cloudbreak. It was only then she realized her breath was shaking. She wanted to finish it—wanted to silence him, to end the madness, to win —
But her hand didn’t move.
Instead, she said, voice cold: “I should.”
And she didn’t.
Not then. Not yet.
Must I….
Not when the world might still remember them. Not when her mind was piecing itself together; remembering, remembering, remembering. Loving and hating in equal measure, turning in over itself as if to justify her thoughts.
She didn’t strike.
Their crews fought behind them, unaware or uncaring. Demons clashed with mercenaries. Sea serpents coiled through broken rigging. The storm screamed louder. But in that instant, there was only them.
Burning Spice stared up at her, throat bare, fire still burning in his eyes despite the blood pouring from his hand. He didn’t beg, gods, never.
And she didn’t move.
The blade trembled in her grip. Not from hesitation—but from memory. Horrid, beautiful memories.
A thousand lifetimes roared in her blood.
Then— crack . A mast fell. The storm broke for a heartbeat.
And the two of them stayed locked, not in battle, but in something stranger. Older. Where hate and lust blistered into something bruising and permanent.
The lull between them stretched like a taut rope over churning sea—one misstep, and it would snap. She still stood over him, golden hair plastered to her cheeks, soaked by storm and sweat and something far heavier. The edge of her cutlass hovered at the hollow of his throat. Her fingers ached from gripping it too tightly. One more inch, one slip of will, and it would be done.
And there he was, sprawled on the blood-slicked deck, smiling up at her like the devil he was.
The storm raged, winds carving salt into her skin, waves hammering the hull as if the sea itself demanded her to strike. To end it. To cut the thread that had tied them together across more lives than she could remember. The cutlass hovered at the hollow of his throat, an inch away from ending it all, from severing the cycle. Her fingers ached from the tightness of her grip, the strain making her arm numb, but the blade stayed suspended in place — neither rising nor falling.
And he did not flinch.
He grinned. That same maddening, wide, teeth-bared grin, split with blood and steam. His eyes, wild and bright and so terribly alive, drank her in like a man starved. There was no fear in him. No pleading. Only something crueler, older. Worship twisted into obsession. Longing folded over rage. And behind it all, a kind of knowing — the kind that burrowed deep beneath her ribs and refused to leave.
The storm raged, as it always had, behind them. His smile had never changed, always giving it to her as if it was meant for a lover or an executioner — and he looked at her as if, in his mind, she had always been both. The madness in his eyes wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even rage. It was hunger. Worship twisted into something obsessive, greedy .
“I bet you don’t even know why you’re like this!” he guffawed. “Or are you just afraid you’ll remember?”
Her grip faltered—half an inch. Half .
He chuckled, blood in his teeth. “Thought so!”
She kicked him.
Not a mercy blow. A raw, furious boot to the chest that sent him sprawling back against the deck with a bone-deep thud. She turned away before she could watch him hit the boards. Her blade shook in her hand.
“I don’t play into delusions,” she growled. “Least of all yours.”
“You always did,” he wheezed from behind her. “That’s what made it fun!”
She didn’t turn back. Couldn’t. Because the truth was, every time their blades met, something opened inside her. Some crack in her spine, some voice beneath the waves whispering yes, again, again, again . It scared her more than his sword ever could.
Every time their blades crossed, every time his voice tangled around her name, every time their eyes locked in that space between hate and something far crueler, something inside her cracked wider. As if her bones remembered better than her mind. As if her heart still answered his, despite the centuries that had carved them apart.
The storm had begun to ebb now. The clouds were splitting, letting moonlight thread through the dark like a needle pulling old wounds open. The sea, still restless, quieted just enough for her to hear the faint shudder of rigging, the exhausted groan of wood, the soft hitch of breath from the man she hadn’t killed. The Ancients would come, one day, she knew. They were reborn, like she and he had been. The Ancients. The Beasts. The Empire. No longer kings and queens of their own thrones, but monsters of the sea, of fire, of memory.
A familiar sound of boots, slow and limping, rose behind her. Nutmeg. Bandaged ribs, soaked through, blood still drying on her sleeves. She stepped onto the ruined deck, surveying the aftermath: splintered masts, coiled ropes like severed veins, her captain standing silent at the helm. Burning Spice, broken but grinning, sprawled where he'd fallen.
Golden Cheese finally sheathed her cutlass with a slow, deliberate motion. The sound of metal sliding into its scabbard echoed louder than any cannon blast. She walked away from him, past broken rigging, torn sails, and blood-stained deck boards that still vibrated faintly from the force of their duel.
Behind her, he stirred. Forced himself to sit up with a body that was not quite immortal.
“Don’t run when it’s getting good!” he rasped.
She paused at the top of the steps to the helm, her hand resting on the rail.
“I’m not running,” she said without turning. “You want a real fight? You’ll get it. Some other day.” Stay.
His laugh was low, hoarse. “Making me earn it. Ha! You got a deal, bird.”
She didn’t reply.
He laughed and laughed and laughed; it followed her as the sea began to quiet, that same cracked, unyielding sound, as bright as the blood steaming on his shoulder.
The fleets gathered behind them. Fire lit the horizon. A new era rising from the sea foam and ashes of their past.
Somewhere in the fragmented islands of Flatbread, the world remembered their names.
The burning red of the Wyrm’s trail dulled, scaring, healing.
The angry waves stop to a lull, calming.
For once, there is quiet.
To My Esteemed Ancients,
Subject: On the Continued Existence of The Beast, Burning Spice
My most cherished friends, I trust this letter finds you in a state more tolerable than I would expect, given our current circumstances. As the Supreme Ruler of Gilded Haven, I write to inform you of a matter of grave importance and undeniable consequence.
The Firebrand , that infernal captain of destruction and rue, Burning Spice, lives. Yes, lives . Contrary to your rather short-sighted desires for his demise, I have chosen a far more… pragmatic course of action. His continued existence serves a purpose—my purpose. I believe he has the potential far beyond mere destruction.
Do not mistake my words: the Witch Rulers and their Empire may cry foul, but I could not care less for their demands. He is mine now, as is the treasure that comes with him. Whether or not they covet his power, or whatever it is they seek, it is I who will wield it, and it is I who shall determine its fate. The power of the Soul Jams, his power, belongs to no one but me.
I have him and his crew secured here in Gilded Haven, as a captive, of a sorts, for the time being. The attempts to break his will have thus far been... less than fruitful, but in time, his loyalty will bend. That is, if the tender care of my hospitality does not convince him otherwise. He is far more than just a threat, he is a resource that will give us all the edge we so desperately crave.
I do not need to remind you of the Empires beyond our borders, nor of their fleeting, shallow hold over the Isles of Flatbread. I care little for the pettiness of the other kingdoms, their alliances or squabbles. What they fail to realize is that true power does not come from armies or fleets—but from the divine spark of the Soul Jams themselves. And Burning Spice is one of the keys to unlocking it all—that information I entrust upon you all, should you so seek to find it.
So, while I indulge in this—for now—consider this more than just a power play. Consider this an opportunity for all of us. His value transcends even our grasp. I trust you see this, as I will not allow this precious commodity to slip away into the hands of those who lack the vision to wield it properly.
I propose we continue to observe and, perhaps, cultivate his… cooperation. It would be foolish to waste such a potent tool. I trust you understand my reasoning.
Yours in unparalleled authority,
Golden Cheese,
Empress of the Golden Coast,
Mistress of Gilded Haven,
Sovereign of the Golden Cheese Kingdom
Notes:
Udon, ily, also, fuck you for getting me into this.
Aside from that! I am considering making this a series lol. I have a bunch of fics I'm writing rn, but I might post a short fic comp next month or so ^^
Thank you for reading!
(Also, also: my tumblr is atilla-brie-1010, if you'd like to see my crk art (and possible fic ideas ^^).
CoCottage._teop (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 17 Apr 2025 10:48AM UTC
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autorima on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Apr 2025 01:21AM UTC
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Firesnowpea on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Apr 2025 05:56AM UTC
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autorima on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Apr 2025 12:25PM UTC
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Lucymuz (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sat 19 Apr 2025 04:59PM UTC
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autorima on Chapter 1 Sun 20 Apr 2025 01:52AM UTC
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Firesnowpea on Chapter 2 Sun 20 Apr 2025 06:27AM UTC
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autorima on Chapter 2 Sun 20 Apr 2025 02:05PM UTC
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QuasarDeLuxe on Chapter 2 Mon 21 Apr 2025 02:39PM UTC
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autorima on Chapter 2 Tue 22 Apr 2025 08:43AM UTC
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