The wind didn't speak.It warned.
Each gust that swept over the cursed island seemed to carry something — a voice, a cry, a memory long drowned beneath the rising sea. No one else heard it. No one else seemed to notice how the waves moved like they had purpose.
But Kael always noticed.Because the sea whispered his name.
The village of Argenlay was silent that morning.Too silent.
Children played with half-smiles. Parents whispered of the tides. And deep in the old temple, the bells had stopped ringing — for the first time in years.
Kael stood near the edge of a cliff, barefoot, staring at the waterline far below. He didn't blink. His hand was wrapped in a cloth bandage, still red from training.
Behind him, Mikaho climbed the rocky path, holding two rice balls wrapped in leaf paper.
"You haven't eaten again," she said, not asking.
Kael didn't turn around.
"The water's closer than yesterday," he muttered."No one sees it move. But it moves."
Mikaho stepped beside him. Her dark eyes followed his gaze. Where others saw ocean, she saw grief — for her, it had always been that way. That sea had taken her father. Just as it had taken hundreds before.
"We leave tomorrow," she said quietly."The carriage to Ashfield arrives at dawn."
"Five years," Kael said. "That's how long we'll be gone."
"That's how long we need," she corrected. "To survive what's coming."
🔥 Flashback – One Year Ago
It was the night Kael nearly died.
He'd chased a dream into the woods — a woman's voice calling his name. And when he found her… she wasn't real.
She was water. Shaped like a woman.Eyes like his.She whispered one sentence before vanishing:
"You carry the fire of the first Wake."
Then came the demon.Huge. Made of bone and fog. No eyes, only a mouth — a maw that stretched too wide.
Kael would've died there if not for Mikaho.
She had followed him.She had stabbed the creature's eye with her father's blade.
And ever since then, the village whispered about them.About the cursed boy and the girl who wasn't afraid.
Back in the present, Mikaho gently unwrapped a rice ball and held it out to Kael.
"We'll survive Ashfield," she said.
"I'm not worried about surviving it," Kael replied."I'm worried about what they'll turn us into."
Mikaho didn't argue.She never did when he said things that were true.
🕯️ That Night
The village held a quiet send-off ceremony.Candles floated in the river. Songs were sung, but not out of joy — out of fear. The Academy took in strong children and gave back soldiers. Or corpses.
Kael sat near the temple steps, staring into the flame of a candle he hadn't lit.
"They said my father went to Ashfield too," he said aloud."But no one ever told me what happened after."
From the shadows, the old priest stepped out.His voice trembled, but not from age.
"Your father wasn't just a student," he said."He broke something that should never have been touched."
"What did he break?" Kael asked.
The priest stared at him, eyes cloudy.
"The barrier between man and demon."
That night, Kael dreamed of blood.And a woman crying under water.She looked like his mother… but her smile was wrong.
[End of Chapter 2]