The Zong docked just off the coast of Azure Peaks—a name given for the island's majestic blue mountains that rose like frozen waves, their summits swallowed by descending clouds. The view was absolutely breathtaking, almost otherworldly, but beauty meant nothing of consequence to the chained.
Lucian, along with the other slaves, were forced into smaller boats, and tasked with transporting heavy crates of cargo to the shore. The water shimmered a crystalline blue, but its serenity did nothing to ease the feeling that something even more dreadful awaited them. No sooner had their feet touched dry land, that a single shackle outside their right leg clicked into place; a stern reminder that freedom was still a distant dream.
Two long lines. Clanging iron chains. Large wooden beams slammed upon their shoulders like the yoke of an oxen. Huge heavy crates were stacked atop them, pressing flesh against wood, bone against stone. Lucian's bare feet scraped across sharp, jagged rocks, each step leaving a crimson print behind. With clenched teeth, a painful grimace creased his broad forehead, but he dared for fear of the taskmaster's whip finding lodging on his already wounded back.
"Captain Montague is approaching!" someone shouted from further behind.
An instant hush... The slaves stood firm, rigid as statues, all facing forward. Lucian was unable to turn his head or shift the beam on his back without risking collapse. But he didn't need to look to know who it was.
That unmistakable voice of terror—it slithered through the air like a venomous snake, praising his minions like the devil he was.
"Well, well, well... what do we have here?". His poisonous tongue hissed, sending forth mockery.
His shadow preceded him, stepping into view, pacing slowly, deliberately, hands folded behind his back until he stood directly beside Lucian. Not facing him. Just close enough for his voice to sting. It was the bearded man with the beads that Abigail conspired with.
"Oh my, the once mighty warrior of Port Royal, reduced to a common mule. How far the mighty have fallen! Ironic, isn't it?" he sneered, lips curling into a smirk. "Well, not really, " he mocked. The people of Fenrir were divinely chosen to rule. The rest of you? You exist to serve. To suffer. That's your purpose."
'Oh great... a heretic.'
Lucian concealed his fury. His face showed not an ounce of emotion as he gazed forward, almost stone-faced, as though lost in his thoughts. He uttered not a word. Silence was his only act of defiance. Montague dared not remove the chains, he knew better, for he and his goons were no match for an unleashed Lucian. But a day would come when all would be reckoned. How Lucian longed for that day.
Montague with a smug smile, turned to wave his hand to signal the next phase of their torment.
The march began. It was back to reality. The reality of enslavement and horror.
Through dense jungle, beneath trees that scraped the sky and thick fir, the line of slaves trudged cautiously onward. Wild beasts screamed ferociously from the foliage. Some sprang forth and attacked, while others growled cowering in the shadows. The chain would jolt, the screams of the fallen swallowed by the underbrush, as the wretched souls trudged forward pressed on every side by dangers seen and unseen. Never once did the cargo never get lighter—only heavier with each soul that death claimed as its victim.
Some time had passed, and they finally made it to a clearing, a few trees scattered between surrounded by an array of thick bushes. At last, the weary slaves were granted a brief respite. Their hands were unshackled and the ones at the ankle fastened around two trees with both lines of slaves facing each other.
Days had passed since their last meal, and it was finally time to eat. Their meal was nothing but a few scraps of meager moldy bread, a can of water that looked like it had been fetched from a sewage, and a dubious meat stew. Another taskmaster, dark-skinned, rugged looking, and marked by a red bandana grudgingly laid out the grub in front of each person. Lucian took his share with a brief hesitant glance; the look on his face mixed with both hunger and suspicion, for who knows what matter of filth these assholes had concocted to serve as stew. After all, their wickedness knew no bounds.
—
Lucian stared at the man before him, his gaunt face cold and unreadable. Not a flicker of empathy showed in his eyes.
His rigid jaws tightened, veins bulging in his neck like they were ready to burst from fury.
"Eat or starve, I couldn't care less," he spat.
"Don't forget this—you're not special. You're not irreplaceable. Struggle all you want, but mark my words: your only way out of those chains is as a corpse."
Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and stormed off, the sound of his boots thudding against the ground as he moved on to feed the others.
Lucian's fists clenched at his sides, his nostrils flaring. Rage coiled in his chest like a beast, hot and suffocating, dying to unleash. His bones felt like they were filled with fire, every inch of him trembling with the effort of keeping that fury contained. But he said nothing. Not yet.
---
'You worthless piece of shit! Try as you may I will not die a slave.' His thoughts seemed to echo through the wide clearing.
Lucian's eyes drifted slowly across the forest floor. Around him, the other slaves ate like starving beast-heads down, fingers clawing at their bowls, shoveling the disgusting meat stew into their mouths, with not a single breath between bites. They devoured the food like their lives depended on it….in fact their lives did.
'I'm suddenly not so hungry anymore.'
Though the tense twist in his gut told another story.
He tore a piece of the crusty mold-infested bread and dipped it into the murky stew, using it like a makeshift spoon. The smell hit him first—a sickly mix of rot and grease that made his nose crinkle, as he gasped and forced back the vomit lurking in his throat. He forced it into his mouth before his instincts had time to protest.
The moment the foul mixture touched his tongue, his body rebelled. Gagging, coughing, and clawing at his neck as an indescribable burning sensation rose from within. In that very moment, a voice clear and true whispered a string of words
[You have been cursed by David].
[You have been cursed by iris].
[You have been cursed by Simon, Silas, Aamon, Jet, and Ria].
Lucian's eyes darted around, eager to pinpoint the source of the voice that had whispered in his ear. The forest was riddled with sounds, and yet the voice had cut through clear and unnatural.
His head turned sharply to the ginger-haired man beside him on his left.
"Did you hear that?"
The young man blinked at him and frowned."Hear what ?"
He looked confused.
His gaze was brimmed with pity as he eyed Lucian thinking he was going mad.
'Poor lad, in the peak of his life, and already losing his mind.'
He shook his head sympathetically knowing that he had seen slaves lose it too many times.
Lucian didn't answer 'You pretentious bastard, staring at me as if I have gone mad. It wasn't just my imagination, I know what I heard.
At that very moment, everything came to a dead stop, a supernatural stillness. The kind that came if the wind had died and the sun stood still.Eerie.
Everything and everyone was frozen. One slave held a half-eaten scrap of bread to his lips. Another was turning his head, mouth open in mid-sentence. Not a breath, not a blink.
Time….had stopped.
"Why do strange things keep happening whenever i'm around?"
Lucian's breath caught in his throat. Instinctively he shot up to his feet but stumbled and fell back down due to the now-frozen iron chains binding his ankles. The clank of the metal echoed abnormally loud in a world that had fallen still.
A sound of many voices came rushing in, a familiar figure now suddenly stood before him
"Ancestor granny? How are you here? That's not important, can you get me out of these chains?"
Without a word, the old woman stepped forward, her presence heavy and ancient like a mountain that had watched the world age. Lucian stiffened, but she showed no concern for his unease.
"Listen, child, My time in this realm is short, so I'll be brief."
Her eyes glowed with a strange light, and Lucian could feel the weight of her words before they even left her mouth.
"You've somehow come into contact with the blood of your kin And in doing so, you've activated three blood oaths."
Lucian blinked in confusion. He scratched the back of his head, frowning. "That's not possible. How the hell would I come in contact with someone else's blood… unless—" His eyes widened. "Unless it was on the whips... but that was hours ago."
Ancestor Granny narrowed her eyes, placing a wrinkled bony hand beneath her chin as she considered this. "Did anything strange... or painful... happen to you between then and now?"
Lucian's mind spun, digging through memories like broken glass. Then it struck him. He looked up slowly, eyes filled with a dawning horror.
"I... I ate some shitty stew. And then... I felt this burning in my mouth like I swallowed lava or something."
Before another word could be spoken, the wooden bowl that once held the stew exploded in a crack of splinters. Lucian recoiled. He looked up—Ancestor Granny's face was twisted in fury, her eyes dark with a rage he didn't understand. She didn't speak and didn't need to. Lucian saw it in her silence, in the storm behind her eyes.
The blood had been in the food.
His stomach turned. Nausea gripped him, but he said nothing. Ancestor granny stepped away, her back to him, trying to collect herself. After a long moment, she cleared her throat.
"Our blood is unlike that of ordinary humans. Because of this, we were feared… hated, hunted. The Empire nearly drove us to extinction. But in time, they discovered that our blood—when used properly—opened up a world of possibilities."
She glanced over her shoulder, voice bitter.
"I believe it was mixed into that stew. Used to fuel those slaves… to make them perform feats beyond human endurance."
Lucian's breath caught. He remembered the rowers—skeletal, exhausted, yet somehow rowing day after day, without food, without water, without rest.
"It all makes sense now..." he whispered.
The Ancestor turned fully to him again, her face grim. "Lucian, my time is nearly up. So listen closely."
Her voice dropped, cold as winter.
"The curses you received... They can be a blessing if used creatively."
"[Heritage of Slumber].When the cursed one closes their eyes to rest, sleep offers no peace. Their dreams are haunted by the cries, whispers, and agony of countless predecessors. Within the cacophony, the cursed instinctively grasps the true nature of all blood curses, as though ancient knowledge seeps into their soul through the veil of nightmare."
"[Undying Hunger].Upon activation, this curse renders all food consumed for the next 24 hours into tasteless ash the moment it touches the cursed one's tongue. No nourishment shall pass their lips, no comfort shall ease their gut.
And yet—for a fleeting five minutes—they are liberated. Hunger ceases its gnawing. Exhaustion lifts like fog in sunlight. In those brief moments, they cannot die from hunger, no matter how starved they may be."
"[illFated deck]. A sinister curse that marks its bearer for a life of gambling with fate itself. When confronted with a blow that would bring certain death, the cursed soul is granted a sliver of hope—three chances to draw from the spectral deck of dominoes that hovers unseen in the ether.
Each draw presents a single domino tile: two ends, two numbers.
The larger number determines the chance to negate 96% of the fatal damage:
A blank (0) means doom—a 96% chance of taking the full brunt of death.
A 1 means there's only a 16% chance of surviving the blow.
A 6 means fate is merciful—96% chance of escaping the fatal wound.
The smaller number is the Pain Multiplier:
A 0 brings no pain—numb and cold as death itself.
A 6 multiplies the pain sixfold, amplifying even a brush with death into sheer agony.
The cursed may draw up to three times in a single fatal encounter, but once a tile is chosen, the others vanish, and the pain—no matter the outcome—is very real."
Just as Lucian opened his mouth to question what he'd just heard, the spectral presence of Ancestor Granny vanished as mysteriously as she'd appear. Time had started once more; in a continuum as though a supernatural pause had t just occurred.
The rhythmic beat of drums echoed through the humid air as a group of men emerged from the treeline. Their bodies were adorned in tribal garb, marked with swirling paint as though in technicolor, coupled with ornaments made from bone. They moved with purpose, their eyes scanning the encampment with a certain level of vigilance. Montague took a few strides forward; arms open in welcome —as if this was an expected meeting.
Lucian's frowned. And without even realizing it, words rolled off his tongue out loud.
"Who the hell are they?"
A voice answered him before anyone else could.
"They are the Drax tribe—natives of this island."
Lucian turned. Beside him sat a woman he hadn't noticed before. [How did he not notice the person walking in front of him all this time]. She was strikingly beautiful—shoulder-length blond hair streaked with black roots, icy blue eyes, and a smile that didn't quite reach them.
She smirked.
"I'm Anne. Anne the Bard," as if introducing herself on stage.
She tilted her head toward the newcomers. "They represent one-half of the native population. The other half? The Tomahawks. From the looks of it…" Her smile thinned. "Their days are numbered."
Lucian followed her gaze. The Drax weren't alone—they had prisoners. Men, women, even children were bound in ropes, their faces bruised, their spirits crushed. Tomahawk warriors, reduced to bargaining chips. They were being traded. Traded for the cargo Montague had brought.
Lucian drew a sharp breath; startled. There was no time to react.
Thwip.
The sharp whistle of something fast—then a wet crunch.
An arrow buried deep into the eye socket of a male slave sitting right next to the ginger haired dude . The man dropped like a stone.
Frantic screams erupted. Panic swept through the camp like wildfire.
Lucian spun around—eyes wide—just in time to see chaos ignite.
All hell had broken loose, and they were right in the middle of it.