Black Bone

Inside the captain's cabin, the flame of the whale oil lamp flickered gently.

Ryan finally closed the heavy logbook. He rubbed his throbbing temples and looked to the side. Simon was already fast asleep, leaning back on a single-seater sofa with his notched cutlass clutched in his arms. Alvin sat by the window, his head nodding in a daze, unable to resist the heavy fatigue any longer before finally sinking into a deep slumber.

This was the first time they had obtained a true respite since stepping onto The Voyager.

Meanwhile, on the bridge.

First mate Evans stood alone by the helm, wrapped in a heavy wool overcoat. The weather-beaten old sailor held a dim kerosene lamp, his face shifting between light and shadow. It had been many years since he had encountered such bizarre and unpredictable weather.

The compass needle swayed slightly, but it remained pointed straight ahead.

East Port.

At their current speed, they would see the watchtower on the horizon by tomorrow noon at the latest.

Evans exhaled a breath of white mist and looked out at the open sea. The thick fog was still rolling, but it was much thinner than before, allowing him to faintly discern the silhouette of the horizon.

Everything was improving, at least on the surface.

...

Two in the morning.

Without any warning, the first pale bolt of lightning ripped through the night sky!

The rolling thunder seemed to explode deep within their eardrums as the ten-thousand-ton Voyager violently tilted to one side.

Ryan's eyes snapped open, his pupils shrinking. Almost at the exact same second, Simon and Alvin jolted awake from their sleep, instinctively grabbing onto nearby fixtures. The captain's cabin began to shake frantically; the inkwell on the desk shattered, and the thick glass windows groaned under the crushing force of the gale.

The storm outside had arrived.

No, it was not just a storm—it was a true natural disaster.

When the three of them braved the howling wind and rushed onto the deck, the sight before them instantly chilled them to the bone.

The sea had completely transformed. If the previous storm had merely been a natural meteorological shift, then at this moment, the entire ocean seemed to have turned into a living, rampaging beast.

Towering black waves, dozens of meters high, rose like moving walls of water, crashing down with colossal force. In the midst of this boundless ocean, The Voyager was as minuscule as a fallen leaf that could be crushed at any moment.

The sky was an absolute ink-black, devoid of moon or starlight, save for the pale flashes of lightning dancing wildly through the clouds. The wind was so fierce that even extraordinary beings could barely keep their footing. Ordinary sailors had to bind themselves tightly to the masts with seawater-soaked ropes, lest they be swept into the bottomless black sea the next second.

“Secure the mainsail!!”

“Hold the main cable! Don't let the bow drift!!”

First mate Evans's desperate, lung-bursting shouts were instantly torn to shreds by the gale. In the face of nature's majestic power, human voices were as faint as the buzzing of flies.

At this moment, there were no pirates, no extraordinary pathways, and no sequence Principles. Everyone faced the same pure and formidable enemy: nature.

Simon gripped a cable tightly, his palms already worn bloody by the coarse rope, yet he could not even feel the pain. The pride of an extraordinary being was utterly shattered before this vast ocean. For the first time, he realized his own insignificance so clearly.

Under a single crashing wave, he was no different from an ant. Everyone would die.

Alvin was equally pale. The roar of the engine room had been pushed to its absolute limit, yet this steel colossus—a triumph of industrial engineering—was still toyed with by the waves. Brass and machinery were as fragile as children's toys before the ancient, colossal power of the ocean.

Only Ryan stood atop the high poop deck, staring out at the sea through the torrential rain.

Then, the expression in his eyes completely froze.

“...What is that?”

His voice was soft, yet it eerily pierced through the wind and rain. Alvin and Simon turned their heads simultaneously, following Ryan's gaze into the distance.

It was the trough where the massive waves intersected.

A massive shadow was slowly emerging beneath the black seawater.

A white outline.

Then a second, a third... more and more, densely packed.

Lightning tore through the night sky once more, its pale light illuminating the sea as bright as day.

In that instant, all sound on the deck vanished.

Those were not crests of foam.

Those were bones.

They were hundreds of millions of human skeletons, far too many to count. Shipwrecked sailors, nameless sea beasts, fractured ribs, and dense clusters of skulls... They writhed and tangled frantically beneath the surface, as if forcibly dragged and gathered together by some invisible nest.

“Captain...” First mate Evans gripped the helm with a death grip, his voice trembling with an unprecedented terror. “What on earth is that...”

No one could answer him.

Because in the next second, the sea split open—literally.

The pitch-black seawater churned as if boiling, and billions of white bones roared in the currents. Emerging right after were shipwreck timbers that had decayed for centuries, rusted and broken anchors, and ancient keels covered in barnacles.

Countless shipwreck remains were forcibly pieced and stitched together by a force that did not belong to the mortal world. Finally, before The Voyager, a moving mountain of death rose from the water.

It was the manifestation of myth, the authority of death itself.

It had no head, no tail; it was a moving sea of skeletons, a continent made of shipwreck graves. The resentment and corpses accumulated over thousands of years in the deep sea clung to it. Countless hollow eye sockets now stared silently at The Voyager in unison.

The first mate's face lost all color. His withered lips trembled violently, finally uttering the name that existed only in the deepest nightmares of deep-sea sailors:

“Black Bone... Black Bone...”

In the next second, the mountain of white bones crashed toward them silently, carrying a deathly aura that could topple mountains and overturn seas.

Black Bone surged forward silently with the weight of an abyss. Upon impact, the teak walls of The Voyager's port side crumbled like parchment paper.

Amidst the ear-splitting screeches of tearing metal, the main steam pipe was instantly severed. Scalding white steam hissed violently.

“The keel is broken!!”

Alvin's eyes threatened to tear at the corners. As the Chief Engineer, he clearly heard the core cast-iron spine of The Voyager snap with a desperate crack under the irresistible, deathly force.

The entire ship snapped violently in half. The boiler, weighing over ten tons, broke free from its mounts and rolled wildly through the tilting cabins, crushing everything in its path.

“Ryan!!”

On the deck, Simon had no time to swing his blade before a massive wall of pitch-black water and shattered bones crashed down upon him.

The sea turned permanently black, and the tides reversed abnormally. Before the absolute ruler of this rift of the imaginary realm, no one could resist.

Everyone was instantly thrown into the sea.

The cold, salty seawater, heavy with the scent of death, instantly flooded all of Ryan's senses.

...