The forest was quiet and surprisingly uniform. There were no birds, no animals, and no changes in terrain. It was all just green and gray, the same few trees repeated endlessly like they had been copied over and over. The crew's boots made soft crunching sounds on the thin layer of dry needles and twigs that carpeted the path. No one said much. Tension crept in like a mist.

After an hour of walking, the path widened slightly and the trees fell away just enough to reveal what they were looking for.

A temple.

It was smaller than the last one, the temple they had discovered on the invisible island and claimed from Captain Steed. It was lower and broader, more like a bunker than a terraced spire. But the moment they saw it, they knew. It was made of the same black stone, and it just had a sense of oddness about it that nothing else had.

“That’s it,” Marco said. “No question.”

They approached cautiously, weapons at the ready if not actually drawn. There wasn't a door as such, but a sort of open slit that let them walk into the shadowed interior without touching anything.

Inside, the temple was dim and cold. The floor was dustless. The ceiling was low. The hall narrowed ahead into darkness until movement stopped them.

A man was sitting near the back wall.

He looked up, startled, blinking at the sudden light behind them.

The man was older, with a scraggly beard and clothes so dirty Marco doubted they could be be cleaned without destroying them in the process. His skin was sun-darkened and wrinkled, giving him a general appearance not unlike he would have had if he were made out of discarded belts. His eyes were sharp, though, and a bit of suspicion leaked out through the surprise.

“Well,” the man said. “Didn’t expect company.”

“We didn’t expect to be company,” Marco replied in kind. “We were just looking for something.”

“This temple, I’d guess.” The old man coughed into his hand, a long, unhealthy sort of hacking that made Marco wince in sympathy. “Gotta warn you I’ve already claimed it.”

“Oh. Huh.” Marco was used to being attacked on sight by most people. That was especially true of people who had things he wanted, which had been very convenient for him fighting back with everything he had in the past. This old man showing zero interest in taking his or his friend’s lives was throwing him off. “Well, that’s unfortunate, I guess. We’ve come a long way.”

“Figured.” The man spat on the ground by his side. “It’s far from everything. That’s the only way you could have come here, really.”

“How did you get here, old man?” Riv said. “I didn’t see a boat or anything outside.”

“You wouldn’t have. I floated in on some wreckage that broke off a ship.” The old man hacked again, a bit quieter this time. “I spent some time trying to build another one, but I didn’t have the tools. Cut down some trees and stripped them, trying to make a big raft. Never got much further than that. My rope all rotted away after long enough.”

“Rotted away?” Elisa lowered her eyebrows. “We saw logs floating out there that couldn’t have been in the brine longer than a month.”

“Not much to do on this island.” The old man stood. He was taller than Marco expected. He guessed that in better times, the old man would have cut an intimidating figure. Now he just looked broken, half-starved, and used up. “Gotta keep sane somehow. Not much different than whittling, in that way.”

“Old man, can we feed you?” Aethe said. Marco jolted a bit. It was the kind of thing he should have realized to offer right away. He didn’t like what it said about him that he hadn’t. “We have plenty.”

“I won’t turn it down,” the old man said. “Are you parked out by my logs?”

“Yes. It’s a bit far, though.”

“It is if you take the long way. Come on. I’ll show you a shorter one.”

The old man took off walking, and the crew followed. It was all suspicious, and a few covert glances at his friends showed Marco that everyone was on the same page on that note. Even so, it was clear that either the old man was an expert actor capable of mimicking bad health in an undoubtable way, or he posed no threat to them at all. He simply looked too frail and weak to fight, even when he wasn’t stopping by the side of the path to hack and cough.

He wasn’t fast, but he also wasn’t lying about knowing a quicker way back to the boat. It seemed the path they had come in by had spiraled around a good portion of the small island. The old man simply crashed between trees and through brush in the direction of the beach, cutting a straight line from the temple to their ship that took less than ten minutes to walk. Once they were there, he sat down on a log high on the beach and rested, a bit pale from the walk and obviously not doing very well.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Riv went straight to the ship, grabbed some gear and supplies, and began setting up for dinner. Within several minutes they had a fire going right there on the beach and began heating some of the fish left over from their breakfast in an open pot.

“Good enough,” the man said. "Should get me through."

"No, just sit tight. We can do better.

They added a few handfuls of dried vegetables to the pot from a mix that was mostly strips of red pepper, onion, and something that was probably squash. A scoop of grain from one of their barrels would add a bit of bulk, and they shook in some spices from a supply the old woman from the invisible island had given them.

As the stew simmered, the smell brought life back into the old man’s face. He shifted on the log, leaned forward a bit, and sniffed.

“That smells like food,” he said, almost reverently. "Real food."

“It is,” Riv grunted. “Not great food, but real food for sure. What have you been eating?”

“Roots. Every now and then a bird, but there aren't many that come to this island, and the meat on them isn't much good. That pot is more than I’ve had in a long time.”

When it was ready, they gave him the first bowl. The old man didn’t devour it right away like Marco was expecting. He held it like it was a treasure, inhaled again, and finally took a slow, measured sip.

“Damn,” he said. “That’s good.”

He ate slowly. Marco watched him control himself, exerting manners on the moment. It wasn't what Marco expected from someone who looked like the old man or someone who had spent as much time as he seemed to have spent on the island.

“You were going to tell us what happened.” Marco waited until he was through a bowl and then some before bothering the stranger. "How you got here."

The man nodded.

“Right. Right.” He set the bowl down, still half full. “I was on a cargo run, originally. Small ship. Big job. Some merchants wanted to run trade to the archipelago. We were to take enchanted tools and trinkets out to sea and sell them at various islands. Easy enough work once you get past the travel itself, since most of the isolated islands don't have craftsmen.”

He paused, breathing shallowly for a moment, then went on.

“We had decent luck early on. One or two sea monsters, nothing we couldn’t handle. This close to a settled area, the mean stuff doesn't usually come out. We made all our planned stops but we had only sold about half our cargo. It was enough to make a little, but we wanted to get rich. We decided to push just a little further. Captain thought there might be another island out that way, one not marked on any maps. You know how it is. You feel the current, feel the pull, and you chase it.”

Marco nodded. He did know. Sometimes, it felt like his ship was talking to him with the way it went along with certain currents.

“Chances were good we weren't going to find anything at all. But we did find something,” the old man said.

“What kind of something?” Elisa asked, her voice quiet.

The old man shook his head. “Still not sure. There was a fog. We couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction, but the water got choppy. Then we heard the bells.”

“Bells?” Aethe asked.

“Not from us. Not from anything natural or right, I think. We stopped moving. Captain tried to turn us around but something grabbed the keel. Lifted us like we were a toy. It cracked the ship in half like an egg."

He looked away.

“I think it was a kraken,” he said at last. “But if it was, it was smart one. It took the ship apart piece by piece to get to every person in it.”

“How’d you survive?” Marco asked.

“I didn’t,” the old man said, then gave a wheezing, dry laugh. “Or, I guess I did, but it wasn't any of my doing. I got flung off when the aft deck snapped. I couldn't do anything but watch as it ripped apart the ship, and then at some point that got too much for me. I woke up clinging to a plank and let myself drift."

“You washed up here?”

“Two days later. Burned half my skin off in the sun. Thought I’d die.” He looked at them again, his expression unreadable. “I didn’t. And now I’m here.”

He picked up the bowl of stew again, and finished it just as slowly as he had worked on the

“That was a long time ago. I stopped counting days. Could be months. Could be years. The temple hasn’t spoken to me since I claimed it, if you’re wondering. I sleep there because it’s dry.”

Elisa leaned forward. “You claimed it?”

The man nodded.

"I did. and I got a reward for doing it, but nothing that's useful to me here. Nothing I want, or can use," the man explained.

Marco frowned. “What did you get, then?”

The man’s face tightened. “That’s mine. I’m not trying to be rude, but it’s private. You all look strong and clever. You’ve got a ship that’s better than anything I’ve ever sailed on. I don’t think I could stop you if you wanted to force the issue, but I’d rather you didn’t ask. It's the only leverage I have.”

Marco caught that word, leverage. The old man said he couldn't use the reward from the temple himself, but leverage was only leverage if it could be used. If the old man couldn't use it, that meant he thought the team could. Or at least something like that. He decided not to push the issue just then.

Instead, Aethe picked up the conversation.

“Is there anything we should know?” she asked.

The old man's face dropped, his eyes looking only at the sand now.

“I’ve seen my ship,” he whispered.

“You said it was destroyed," Marco said.

“It was. But I’ve seen it anyway. Out on the water, just within the borders of what I can see. Not just once, either. I’ve seen it more than a few times now. It always looks just like the day we launched. Clean sails. Hull painted. No damage at all. Drifting.”

Elisa went still. “That’s not natural.”

“I know it’s not. That’s why I brought it up. I don’t know if it’s a trick, or some kind of sea madness, or if there’s some part of it still alive out there, but it’s not right. There's nothing right about it.”

“Ghost ship.”

“Yeah,” the old man said. “That’s what I’ve been calling it in my head. Ghost ship. I don’t know what it wants. Maybe nothing. But if there’s a chance that my crew is still tied to it somehow, that they can’t move on because it’s still out there? I'd want something done about that."

“You want to…” Marco left his suggestion unsaid in hopes that the man would fill in the blanks.

The old man looked back to the sea, voice lowering.

“I want it put down. For their sake.”