The sea tore itself apart.

Waves rose higher than fortresses, their crests collapsing with the sound of worlds ending. Lightning crawled across the sky like silver claws, illuminating an ocean gone wild. No ship should have survived this long, but the thing beneath the waves held it aloft, refusing to let it sink, or perhaps refusing to let you escape.

Synancei had felt it. His curse stretching. Your fragile, desperate attempt to break it, with his enemy, no less. The moment you tried to slip through his grasp, to set one foot upon the land, one step that would stop your heart. He had felt it in his marrow. The sea itself had convulsed in rage.

Now he rose, a storm given form.

Water streamed from his body like rivers from a mountain, scales glinting in the brief flashes of lightning. His hair were waterfalls whipped around his face, eyes black as the trenches of the deep. They burned with something between fury and fear. When his hand struck the deck, it cracked beneath him.

“You thought you could break it?” His voice rolled like an undertow, deep enough to drag the soul from its body. “You thought you could crawl out of my tides, onto your little strip of sand?”

The ship lurched violently, throwing you to your knees. Saltwater stung your lips, your hands sliding against the wet wood. Around you, the ocean screamed, wind and wave crashing in unison with his wrath, your comrades pleading for mercy.

“I felt it!” Synancei’s voice cracked like thunder. “I felt you tearing at what I bound. My curse. My claim.” He stalked closer, every movement heavy with power. “Do you know what that did to me? What panic feels like to a god?”

Lightning split the sky. He was close enough now that spray from his body struck your skin, cold and burning all at once.

“You’re mine!” His roar was louder than the sea. “I drowned you once, dragged you back, and you still tried to run. I’m keeping you, even if I have to drown you again. And again. And again until you remember who owns you, my love.”

The deck tilted violently. The mast groaned, sails ripping as the storm swallowed them whole. Yet Synancei only leaned down, his face inches from yours. The fury in his eyes was laced with something far more dangerous: terror.

“Don’t you understand?” he hissed, a mad smile joining his lips . “They will break you. Only I can hold you. Only I can keep you breathing, just like I always did. Even when protecting you meant you would be scared of me.”

He straightened, towering over you like a tidal wave about to break. “You think me a monster, but you forget the truth. I love you. So now, return to me,” he said. “And I won't fill their lungs with blood."

The storm coiled tighter around him, as though even the ocean feared his temper. And still his eyes never left you, dark and endless, as if you were the only soul left in the world.

“There's no point in fighting back, captain, our story will never end.”