Not Built to Rest

The night had held its silence.

No alarms, no calls for formation, no distant shouting of sailors sparring belowdecks. Just the slow creak of the Typhoon's hull breathing in the high wind, and the ghost-smooth drag of Nereiath's passage beneath. Arthur didn't doubt for a moment that the card game, simple, brief, irreverent, had helped. Letting the crew see him, Aleks, all of them, as something more familiar, less wrapped in myth and magic. Just enough to let the tension slip down from taut ropes to something more workable.

'Trust, no. But ease? A little.'

When morning came, it brought no sun. Just a smear of light behind cloud-veiled sky, grey as old steel, and the low, humid breath of the open air.

The Typhoon drifted forward with confidence, carried not by tide but by Nereiath's intent, a motion so smooth it might've fooled a man into thinking the sea itself was holding still.