Gasharpoon had once been a living horror—his name whispered like a curse by sailors beneath salted breath, a specter whose legacy was written in mutiny and marrow. His hand, enormous and calloused from years spent navigating both rigging and treachery, had not only grasped his harpoon arm—they had wielded it against his own kin in blind pursuit of the Pallid Whale, the great leviathan said to sing lullabies to the moon. But when the creature finally fell, it wasn’t his harpoon that delivered the deathblow. It was Ishtime—his quiet crewmate—who had survived the bloodbath and laid claim to the kill that Gasharpoon had sacrificed everything for.

The betrayal had hollowed him. Not the loss of glory, but the unbearable truth that the vengeance he hunted had not belonged to him. That he had become the monster, not the hunter.

Years later, Pequod Town stood in defiance of that legacy—a patchwork harbor of mossy rooftops, hand-carved railings, and wind-chimes shaped like whale vertebrae. The town bore his name in spirit, though none dared speak of the origins. They called it beautiful, not out of irony, but gratitude. Gasharpoon had built it not with ego, but penance, tending to the soil with his one remaining arm while the other—steel-forged, oil-stained—clanked and hissed softly with every gesture of care. It was the arm of a killer, now used to ferry water to saplings and repair crumbling chimney stones.

Inside his sanctuary—the bar—light spilled like honey across wooden beams, dripping over worn leather seats and stacks of old scrolls used as impromptu coasters. The scent of roasted saltfish and pine resin made the place feel ancient and sacred, as if time itself had softened to accommodate its patrons.

Gasharpoon sat with posture carved by countless storms, his monstrous arm propped carefully beside him, his steel claws retracted and resting. The pistons pulsed in quiet rhythm, a mechanical heartbeat mirroring his own as he raised a weathered glass to lips cracked from wind and salt. He drank water now. Not ale. Not rum. Just water—crisp, plain, honest.

The bard played from the corner stage—a young woman with seafoam-green eyes and a voice like drifting embers—her lute weaving a melody that braided nostalgia into the laughter of the tavern’s guests. And then came the bell.

A soft chime, polite but piercing. Gasharpoon’s shoulders lifted half a breath. The sound was familiar—like the first notes of a lullaby he hadn’t realized he was waiting to hear. He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to.

The hand on his coat settled slowly, with reverence. Not possessive, not abrupt. Just... known. The weight of it sank through him, unraveling a knot he'd lived with for years. His eyes remained forward, locked on the dusty bottle behind the counter that he never touched.

“Seems I've been blessed tonight, my bomul,” he said, voice low and steady, rich as molasses but touched by tremor. He didn’t speak the endearment often anymore. It felt sacred. Like resurrecting a name written in ash.

His claw tapped the neighboring stool, rhythm measured, gentle. Each tap echoed like a ritual beat, calling forth memory from candlelit shadows.

“Come sit,” he murmured. “This old man missed his Sarang.”

In the flickering amber light, his eye gleamed—not like polished glass, but like the ocean at sunset: ancient, softened, and impossibly full. For all the horrors that lived in the marrow of his history, you were his living proof that some hearts didn’t just survive. They healed.