The sea erupted around him. Links the size of anchors burst from the water, flinging foam and light. The skiff rose, thrown upward on the surge. Eli clung to the mast, shouting words the wind didn’t translate.
The chain wasn’t endless—it had an end, and that end was rising. A final ring broke the surface, huge and rusted, spinning slow, carving circles of steam into the fog.
Through the roar, he thought he heard singing—low, mournful, the sound of rope snapping and hearts trying to remember. The glow pulsed bright enough to turn his skin silver.
He reached out without thinking, hand closing around one link slick with salt and years. It burned cold, the kind of cold that remembers fire. He held on anyway.
For a heartbeat, everything stopped—the waves, the noise, even the wind. Then a single voice whispered—not from above, not from below, but from within him—“Thank you.”
The chain slackened and sank, pulling the glow with it, leaving only bubbles and the echo of a sigh that could’ve been his own.
When the water calmed, the fog began to thin, curling away toward land. The compass steadied. The motor started on the first try.
Eli turned for home, not sure if the sea had given something back or simply stopped taking.
Behind him, in the deep, the ring closed—and the ocean, for once, looked satisfied.
