Night fell like a blade.
Qasr Al-Bahr, so vibrant in the daylight, had quieted into a city of flickering oil lamps and whispered warnings. Shadows lengthened across sandstone walls, and the alleys twisted like intestines through the guts of the city. Yusuf moved through them, a satchel slung over his shoulder, the repaired ship's wheel wrapped in cloth like a corpse.
He'd told no one where he was going. There was no one left to tell.
Down by the lower docks, the sea mist thickened, curling around him like smoke. Half the harbor had emptied. Fishermen knew when to stay ashore.
Yusuf found her waiting on a pier that no longer appeared on city maps.
Amina.
She stood with her back to him, hood up, cloak rustling faintly in the wind. Behind her, a ship floated in the fog like a dream—or a ghost. Its hull was dark as obsidian, no lanterns lit. Its sails moved with no wind.
Yusuf stopped a few feet away. "This is madness."
Amina turned. "You came."
"I want answers."
She gestured to the wheel. "You brought it. That's answer enough."
He set the wrapped artifact beside her, careful not to let it touch the salt-worn boards.
"That ship," he said, voice low. "That's the Reine des Mers, isn't it?"
Amina studied him. Her silence was a kind of answer.
"I thought it sank."
"It did," she said. "And now it sails again."
Yusuf stared past her at the ship. Its timbers groaned softly, not from age—but from strain. Something unnatural pulsed beneath its surface. Something alive.
"I don't want to be part of this."
"You already are."
He should have walked away. Should've turned and vanished into the city.
But something in him—some ancient, angry part—was drawn to it.
"Why bring it here?" he asked.
"Because it needed a tiller," she said simply. "And because you're the only one left who remembers how they were made."
Yusuf frowned. "You talk like—"
"Like I've been alive longer than I should?" Amina's smile was brief, tired. "Let's just say the Corsaires Noirs don't retire. They change shape."
Yusuf looked at the sea. Then at her. Then at the cloth-wrapped wheel.
"What does it steer?" he asked.
Amina's eyes darkened. "Not where. What."
Before he could question further, another voice cut the fog.
"You're late."
Yusuf turned, heart spiking. A man emerged from the mist—tall, pale, and cloaked in gray. His face was etched with old burn scars, and his right arm ended in a brass prosthetic fashioned like a claw.
Yusuf stepped back instinctively.
"Don't," Amina said, calm but sharp. "He's with us."
"'With us' is generous," the man sneered. "I don't sail with ghosts."
"Neither do I," Yusuf muttered.
The man laughed—a dry, brittle sound. "You will."
Amina stepped forward, placing the wheel into the man's outstretched claw. "Yusuf Hurnashi," she said, "meet Captain Rouen. Formerly of the Imperial Navy. Now captain of the Reine des Mers."
"You're not serious."
"We're all exiles," Rouen growled. "You build ships. I sink them. And she—" he glanced at Amina—"she brings them back from the dead."
Yusuf shook his head. "I'm done here."
"No," Amina said. "You're not. You saw the mark on that wheel. You know what it means."
"I know it means trouble."
"It means war," Rouen snapped. "And war is coming whether you build tillers or not."
They let the silence stretch.
A distant bell rang out across the harbor—one, two, three times.
A signal.
Amina's jaw tightened. "We need to go. The Eye has found us."
Yusuf looked between them, every instinct screaming to run. But something heavier rooted him there. Not duty. Not curiosity.
Anger.
His father had died at sea. His mother, broken by silence. And now the same shadow that haunted his past was taking shape before his eyes.
He stepped forward.
"I want to know who ordered the Reine sunk," he said.
Rouen raised a brow. "And if you find out?"
Yusuf's fingers curled into fists. "Then I'll break their wheel too."
The dead don't dock in Qasr Al-Bahr.
But that night, the Reine des Mers slipped away from the city's bones, its new tiller creaking under the weight of fates yet written.
And aboard her, Yusuf Hurnashi crossed a line no man returns from.
Not even the living.