But he was not alone. The ghosts rose from the surf: every pirate who had ever found the Bay, their bones clad in rotting silks, their eyeless sockets fixed on the living.

Knaben had said nothing. He simply pulled a small, smooth stone from his pocket—a stone he had clutched since the wreck, a stone that hummed with an inner warmth no fire could explain. He pressed it into Dregs’ palm.

For three years, Knaben had scrubbed decks, tied knots, and learned to read the stars from a one-eyed navigator named Mags. He had grown wiry and quick, with hands scarred by rope burn and a heart hardened by salt spray. But he had never forgotten the tale that had drawn Saltbeard to him.

He crushed the stone in his fist.

“He stays,” Saltbeard had grunted. “He’s got the look of Pirates’ Bay in him.”