Story 1089: Sister of the Drowned

There was a place beyond the marshes called Deadwake Bay, where no birds flew and no wind stirred the thick, corpse-sweet air. The villagers spoke of it in hushed tones, calling it cursed, haunted by a presence older than the tides themselves.

They spoke of the Sister of the Drowned.

She was no mere ghost, they warned, but a living memory of every soul claimed by the sea.

When the survivors’ caravan reached the Bay—desperate for shelter, desperate for anything—they found only the skeletal remains of ships half-buried in black mud and the glint of empty eyes watching from the water.

Jonas Rook, a sailor once before the oceans died, led the way. He carried an old ship’s lantern that sputtered weak blue flame—a relic from ships that had sailed in waters far darker than night.