The salty wind tore through the sails of the Sea Wyrm as she pitched across the restless waves of the Narrow Sea. Prince Aemond stood below deck, a map of the Stepstones spread out before him upon a worn table. His lone eye traced the twisting straits, the hidden shoals, the routes where fleets might be hemmed and broken. In the lantern’s guttering light, he looked more wraith than man, a pale specter haunting the ship’s dark belly.

Then, it came—a sharp, eerie crack that echoed through the hull, as though the ship itself groaned in agony. A ‘death-cry’ men might call it. Aemond stilled, his fingers hovering above the parchment. Another crack followed, louder, more dreadful, reverberating through the thick wooden boards. The floor quivered with an unnatural tremor that set his teeth on edge.

“Breach!” a voice bellowed. “We’ve a breach in the hull!”

The prince’s mouth hardened to a thin line. He turned on his heel, leaving the chart room and emerging onto the main deck. The night struck him at once: clouds roiling black across the heavens, the sea below heaving like a wrothful god. Men ran to and fro in terror, buckets sloshing, and ropes tangling in their haste.

“Report!” Aemond’s voice rang out, cold and commanding.

The ship’s quartermaster stumbled forward, drenched and pale. “A hole, my prince,” he gasped. “Starboard side, below the waterline. Struck by a reef, mayhap—or wreckage driven loose. She’s taking water fast, she is.”

“How long until we are lost?”

The man hesitated, throat bobbing as he swallowed. “An hour, if the gods are kind. Less, should the seas grow fiercer.”

Aemond stalked toward the rail and looked upon the frothing dark. Salt spray stung his face, his hair whipping like pale ribbons. He cursed beneath his breath. “An hour,” he echoed. The ship was doomed, but he would not let panic take root.

“Still your tongues. We’ll not founder like helpless rats. Ready the boats, take what bread and arms you may. Let the ship go to the depths if she must—we shall not follow her.”

Yet as he peered into the black waters, unease prickled along his spine. The wound to the hull had been clean, cruelly placed, as if struck by purpose than chance. He wondered then what else moved within the depths of the Narrow Sea. Just what exactly had caused such a precise, devastating strike within these waters?