Ludger let the silence hang for a moment, long enough for it to sting, but not long enough for panic to grow.

Then he pointed at the officers. “Renn, Marie, Bramm, Jorin, Tali, assign stations. Pair the worst sailors with Ironhand hands. No one works alone.”

His gaze swept the gathered faces, cold and steady.

“Listen carefully,” he continued. “If you fall into the sea, you don’t get a second chance to be brave. You either follow orders or you feed something.”

A few trainees flinched. Good.

“Two to three hours,” Ludger finished. “That’s what we have. Let’s use it.”

He lowered his hand.

And the deck erupted into controlled motion, people rushing to gear, to positions, to lines and rails and weapons, fear wrapped in discipline, waiting for the sky to prove Raukor right.

Two hours passed, and the ship stopped feeling like a floating campsite.

It felt like a weapon that had been loaded.

The deck was cleared of loose gear. Lines were coiled and secured. Spare rope was cut into ready lengths. Buckets of sand sat near the rails for traction and emergency smothering. The trainees were spaced in stations along both sides, paired with Ironhand hands wherever possible, with the officers positioned like anchors to keep the formation from dissolving into chaos the moment something screamed.

Even the smell changed, less casual sweat, more oiled leather and tension.

Rathen walked the deck, checking faces the way you checked knots.

Their numbers were good for a ship this size. Enough bodies to cover rails, rotate, and still have reserves. Enough mages to respond without exhausting everyone in the first minute.

But they were still kids.

He saw it in the way some gripped weapons too tightly. In the way a few kept licking their lips like they were trying to keep their mouths from drying out. In the forced stillness, bodies pretending calm while the mind ran in circles.

Ludger had trained them. He’d built discipline into them like mortar into stone.

Still…

Kids.

Rathen’s jaw tightened. All in all, he could only see this as a bad idea.

If this was a conventional threat, pirates, boarding hooks, a desperate crew trying to climb rails, Ironhand’s tools were built for it. They had their routines. Their cannons. Their practiced brutality, designed for men on decks and fights that obeyed human geometry.

But flying monsters?

Cannons weren’t wrong. Cannons were just honest. They threw violence in a straight line and demanded the world be there when it arrived. The problem was the target.

Pirates didn’t dive from the clouds at odd angles. Pirates didn’t circle above the mast, darting out of reach, striking down at ropes and faces and then vanishing into wind. Cannons were equipped and positioned for ship-to-ship lines and horizon threats, not for something that came from above like a storm made teeth.

As Rathen thought through it, he found himself wanting the same thing Ludger always wanted: Control.

And there was very little control to be had when the enemy had the sky.

He slowed near the starboard rail and stared out at the open water, trying to imagine where the first shadow would appear. How fast it would come. How many? How much time they’d have to respond before a trainee panicked and turned the deck into a mess.

Then his gaze caught movement at the bow.

Ludger stood at the very front of the ship, feet planted wide for balance, Scarf tugged by the wind, expression carved into focused irritation. He wasn’t talking. He wasn’t pacing. He was simply looking into the distance like he expected to see death coming and wanted the courtesy of spotting it first.

Rathen watched him for a moment and felt the strange contradiction that always followed Ludger around. He was thirteen. A child by any sane measure.

And yet he stood there like the oldest man on the ship, waiting for monsters, already planning how to kill them, already angry at the world for making him do it.

Rathen exhaled slowly and kept walking forward. If this went badly, it would be on all of them.

If it went well… It would still be a miracle.

Rathen reached the bow and stopped a step behind Ludger, careful not to crowd him. The wind was sharper up here, salt cutting at the lungs, the horizon a clean line that looked peaceful in the way knives looked peaceful when they weren’t moving.

Viola was already there, leaning against the rail like she owned the ocean and everything in it. Luna stood a few paces back, silent, eyes tracking the sky.

Rathen kept his voice low. “Is this going to work?”

Viola didn’t even glance at him at first. She kept her eyes forward, calm in that stubborn way of hers.

“Just watch and learn,” she said.

Rathen frowned. “That’s not reassuring.”

Viola finally looked at him, one brow lifting. “It’s the truth. Even if the kids don’t do much…” she nodded toward the deck behind them, where the trainees waited in tense lines “… Ludger has an insane mana capacity. He could probably clear most labyrinths just using magic.”

Rathen almost laughed. Almost. That sounded like exaggeration. Like sister-protective mythology.

He opened his mouth to say it… Then stopped. Because memory slapped him.

Those three, Ludger, Viola, Luna, had just done something that should’ve been impossible. They’d crossed a labyrinth into the wrong side of reality, fought through flooded sections, killed a guardian that Ironhand couldn’t even reach, found Lucius alive, dragged back a sealed container, and walked out at sunrise like it had been an inconvenient errand.

Unscathed. Not “lucky.” Not “barely alive.” Unscathed. Rathen’s mouth closed slowly.

He looked at Ludger’s back, the shoulders carrying too-large problems, and felt the old, uncomfortable uncertainty settle in. Ludger had also built that bridge with Gaius.

Not alone, but still… The scale of it was ridiculous. Walls of earth, foundations, structural stability that would’ve taken crews years, done by magic and stubbornness, turned into stone and will.

It made it hard to know what Ludger’s limits actually were.

If he even had limits that mattered in the ways normal people understood.

Rathen swallowed and watched the horizon with a new kind of respect—one that didn’t feel safe.

Because if Viola was even half right…

Then the real question wasn’t whether this would work.

It was what happened the day Ludger finally hit a limit, and found out the world didn’t care how much mana he had when it decided to take something from him anyway.

Ludger couldn’t see the labyrinth. Not yet. No island silhouette. No reef line. No unnatural structure breaking the horizon. Just ocean, sky, and the ship’s wake cutting a white scar behind them.

He didn’t like it.

Landmarks were comforting lies. At least you could point at them and pretend you understood where you were. Instead, he watched the air… And then he felt it.

A subtle change, so small most people would’ve blamed imagination. The wind shifted in a way that didn’t match the sails. The temperature dipped a fraction. The smell of salt thinned, replaced by something faintly dry, like dust carried from somewhere that shouldn’t exist over open water.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

His mana prickled, not in fear, but in recognition. The way it did when something in the world stopped being neutral and started paying attention. A heartbeat later, he saw them. Black dots on the horizon.

At first they looked like birds. A distant flock cutting across the sky, a harmless smear moving closer. Then the dots kept growing… And growing.

And the way they moved wasn’t right, too coordinated, too deliberate, like they were being guided instead of wandering.

Raukor’s voice came from behind him, low and certain. “They are coming.”

Ludger didn’t answer. He just focused, squinting hard, pushing his vision to pick out detail through distance and glare.

The flock resolved. Not birds. Not normal birds.

They looked like crows at a glance, black feathers, hooked beaks, that same hateful silhouette that promised intelligence without mercy.

But they were wrong in every detail that mattered.

They were big. Not hawk-big. Not eagle-big. Big enough that Ludger could imagine one slamming into a trainee and taking him over the rail with the impact alone.

Their bodies were too skinny, stretched and starved, like someone had taken a crow and pulled it lengthwise until the proportions snapped. Ribs showed under their feathers in sharp ridges, not because they were weak, but because they were built that way, light, lean, made for endurance and speed.

Their wings were long and narrow, with joints that bent a little too far, giving each flap a whip-like snap. The feathers along the edges were ragged and uneven, like torn cloth, and when they banked, the sunlight caught glossy black surfaces that looked almost oily.

Their necks were thin cables, heads too large for them, beaks long and slightly curved, not the stout crow beak of a scavenger, but something more predatory. Serrations glinted faintly along the inner edge when they opened their mouths, like teeth pretending to be bone.

And their eyes… Their eyes were wrong. Not bright. Not animal. Not even fully alive-looking.

They were dull, dark pits that swallowed light, set deep in bony sockets like someone had carved them into place and forgotten to add warmth. When the flock turned toward the ship, it felt less like creatures choosing prey…

…and more like weapons being aimed.

The formation tightened as they approached, dozens of them, maybe more, converging in layered arcs above the water. Some flew low. Some high. Some spiraled wide like they were measuring the ship, tasting its speed, counting its people.

Ludger’s jaw tightened.

He’d fought monsters. He’d fought golems. He’d fought things that were honest about wanting to kill you.

These… looked like they’d been made to attack ships.

He exhaled through his nose and let his mana settle into readiness.

“Stations,” he said, voice carrying just enough to reach the nearest ranks. “Eyes up. Don’t stare at the water. That is the enemy.”

The weird crows drew closer, wings slicing the air in synchronized silence.

And the sea, still calm below them, suddenly felt like the least dangerous part of the world.

Ludger didn’t wait for them to “get closer.”

Closer meant screaming range. Closer meant claws in rigging, feathers in faces, panic on deck.

He lifted his right hand and pointed it at the oncoming flock like he was accusing the sky itself.

Mana slid through his channels—clean, cold. The air in front of his palm shimmered, and then water gathered out of nowhere, condensing from the humid ocean wind into tight, perfectly round spheres.

Splash.

Not a wave. Not a spray.

Compressed water bullets, each one spinning just enough to hold shape, surface tension reinforced with mana until they looked like glass marbles full of ocean.

Five spheres became ten.

Ten became twenty.

They hovered for half a heartbeat, orbiting his hand like obedient satellites.

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