Noon in Driftwood Village originally welcod them with the mundane: a breeze carrying the pungent tang of salted fish and the distant, lively chatter of children.
Rianor’s caravan arrived after several days of tracing the coastline. The clay road gradually thinned into coarse sand, flanked by green shrubbery on the left and an infinite expanse of sea-blue on the right. The sun was still searing when their carriage crossed the village boundary. There was no official gate—only two weathered wooden posts holding up a faded, carved plaque.
Driftwood. Nad after the dead logs that frequently washed onto its shores.
"Quite lively, isn’t it?" Roland comnted, poking his head out of the carriage window. His eyes scanned the hard-packed dirt road. shirtless fishern sat by the roadside, nding nets, while barefoot children chased a rattan ball. "At least this place has far more life than the last fishing hamlet we passed."
Rianor didn’t respond. He was too absorbed in his notebook, scribbling observations on the changing vegetation along their route, or perhaps calculating the atmospheric salinity from the sea breeze. Roland let out a sigh. He had run out of energy to ask questions; his stomach just wanted to be filled.
The Drifting Net stood firmly at the end of the main road. The two-story timber building sported a signboard painted with a fishnet—or rather, the flaking remnants of paint that had once resembled a net before being eroded by sea salt. Its owner, a middle-aged man with leathery, sun-bronzed skin and heavily calloused hands, was busy arranging nets on the front porch. His wife—a brown-haired woman with her hair tied loosely back—erged from within carrying a wooden bucket of fresh water, her young face carrying dark, heavy circles under her eyes.
"Can we rent a room?" Roland asked, leaping down from the carriage.
The man—rek—paused his work. His eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the luxury carriage, the muscular horses, and the four ard guards dismounting behind them. "A rchant caravan?"
"Just travelers," Roland replied with his signature diplomatic smile. "We’re on our way south. And frankly, our stomachs have been screaming for rcy since dawn."
rek gave a stiff nod, wiping his wet hands on his worn apron. "We have fish stew. Just made it this morning."
"Sounds perfect."
Inside, the inn felt rustic but well-maintained. The wooden tables were worn smooth but scrubbed clean. The pine floorboards glead from decades of heavy footsteps. The stone fireplace in the corner was unlit, yet it still offered the illusion of warmth. The savory aroma of rich broth mixed with sliced onions and local spices instantly commanded the full attention of their appetites.
They took a long table near the window. Dom, Naya, Orva, and Adul positioned themselves at the adjacent table, maintaining their defensive guard. Hesta, rek’s wife, erged from the kitchen carrying steaming clay bowls.
"Local fish stew," she said, placing a full bowl in front of Roland. "Caught from the first run this morning. The at is still very sweet."
Roland took a sip of the broth. "Incredible. A family recipe?"
"My late mother’s," Hesta replied. She smiled, but there was an underlying weariness in her eyes that her hospitality couldn’t quite mask. It was a ntal exhaustion that didn’t seem to stem from the routine of cooking.
"Where are you folks coming from?" rek asked, sitting at the next table to continue untangling his nets.
"Northreach," Roland answered casually.
"The edge of the world, then. rchant business this far south?"
"You could say that."
The conversation flowed easily. rek spoke of the village’s past—it used to be far busier, he said. Many young folk had migrated to the major port cities up north to work on rchant vessels. Now, mostly elders remained. Yet, it was still enough to keep the village’s pulse beating.
"Has the catch been good lately?" Roland asked, probing for information.
"Decent enough. Small fish are still easy to find. But..." rek hesitated, his hands halting on the netting. "Lately, things have been... strange."
"Strange how?"
rek shot a sharp glance at his wife. Hesta shook her head in a swift, microscopic motion—a warning that would have slipped past an ordinary observer. rek looked back down at his nets. "Ah, never mind. Just an old man’s feeling about the weather."
Rianor, who had been eating in silence, noted the exchange of looks with clinical precision. But he didn’t press them. Not yet.
After eating, Rianor stepped out of the inn.
The sun was dipping toward the western horizon, spilling deep orange hues across the thatched roofs and the unnaturally calm surface of the bay. He walked slowly along the clay road. Dom trailed a few paces behind—distant enough to grant his master space to think, yet close enough to draw steel in a heartbeat.
The village was indeed tiny, consisting of at most fifty wooden huts scattered along the curve of the bay. At the end of the path, an old wooden pier jutted into the water. Small boats with faded blue, red, and green hulls were moored there. A few fishern still sat leisurely on the edge of the pier, nding nets and swapping jokes.
Rianor stopped just before the pier, his eyes sweeping across the bay. The water was calm. Too calm for an open bay that usually rippled with currents.
"My Lord," Dom’s voice suddenly shattered his concentration. "Look over there."
Rianor followed Dom’s finger. At the far end of the bay, a small wooden boat drifted alone. It wasn’t moored to any stake. No silhouette of a man stood inside. The boat simply bobbed helplessly, far too deep in the bay to be reached without oars.
"Why hasn’t that boat been hauled to shore?" Rianor murmured.
Dom didn’t respond, his sharp eyes locked onto the drifting vessel without a single blink.
As dusk settled, turning the sky a deep indigo, Rianor witnessed an abrupt, chilling shift.
The fishern who had been sitting leisurely on the pier stood up in unison. They packed their gear with hurried, frantic movents. The children playing with the rattan ball were yanked away by their mothers, whose shrill voices calling their nas echoed along the path.
One by one, window shutters were slamd shut. Heavy wooden bars were locked across front doors. This was no relaxed end-of-day ritual; it was an efficient routine born of sheer panic and dark habit.
In less than half an hour, the village’s face transford entirely. From lively and open, it turned as silent and hollow as a graveyard.
"Intriguing," Rianor murmured, adjusting his spectacles. "They aren’t locking their doors out of fear of the night wind. They are locking them because they are hiding from sothing."
"Hiding from what?" Dom asked, expressionless.
"We’re about to find out."
Back at The Drifting Net, rek was hamring the final wooden bar over the front window.
His movents were highly practiced—lifting a heavy teak beam, sliding it into rusted iron brackets, and securing it with a wooden peg. It was a chore he had clearly perford for dozens of nights.
"Night is falling," rek said as Rianor and Dom entered. "You’d best stay inside until morning."
"Why is everyone in such a hurry to lock up?" Rianor demanded, cutting through the pleasantries.
rek didn’t answer imdiately. He ensured the final peg was hamred tight, then straightened and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
"You saw the small boat in the middle of the bay earlier?" he asked.
"Yes."
"That’s Lupus’s boat."
In the kitchen, the sound of splashing water ceased. Hesta’s hand, holding a dishcloth, froze in mid-air before slowly lowering, trembling.
"Who is Lupus?" Rianor pressed.
rek gestured for them to move deeper into the common room. Rianor and Dom followed, accompanied by Roland. The heavy front door was slamd shut and secured with double deadbolts from within. Clack!
"Sit," rek commanded in a low, gravelly voice. "This isn’t a story that sits well on a full stomach."
Lupus was a veteran fisherman. Sixty-three years old. His wife was paralyzed, spending her days in a wooden chair staring out the window at the sea. Their only daughter had married and settled in the north years ago, never returning to visit. Lupus had no one else to cast the nets for the rest of his days.
Last night, he made a desperate decision to go out to sea.
"His wife cried and begged him not to go," rek said, rubbing his weathered face. "She said those voices were an on of death. But Lupus... he was a stubborn man. He said—" rek stopped, staring blankly at the floorboards.
"He said what?" Roland prompted.
"’I’m an old man. Even if the sea swallows , there’s no great loss. But I will never let you starve in this house.’"
This morning, the blue boat was found.
A few young n from the village had braved a closer look—though they didn’t dare tow it back, they got close enough to inspect its contents. There was no trace of Lupus. No blood spatters. Only an empty vessel tossed about by the gentle waves.
But there were three anomalies that defied any fisherman’s logic.
"First," rek raised a finger, "the wooden hull was blistering hot. Not from the sun—it was far too early in the morning for that. It felt as if it had just been boiled in a colossal cauldron. Yet, when one of the fishern touched the seawater surrounding the boat, it was ice-cold."
"Second, the nets were completely lted. The hemp fibers were fused together. There were no scorch marks, no scent of smoke or fire. Just... lted. Exactly like glass heated to extre temperatures and suddenly doused in ice water."
"Third," Hesta chid in from the kitchen doorway, her voice far more fragile than her husband’s, "there was a fine black powder on the wooden oars. Very thin. But when one of our fishern accidentally touched it... the stain wouldn’t wash out. Scrubbed with sand, washed with lye—the color remained stamped on his skin like a curse."
Rianor swiftly opened his notebook. "An foreign residue?"
"Whatever you city folk call it, we don’t know."
"And the boat?"
"None of us dare tow it ashore. We’re afraid... whatever dragged Lupus down last night is still lurking right beneath that hull."
Night fell completely, swallowing the last of the light.
From his second-floor window, Rianor stared out at the bay, which had transford into a black void. A crescent moon hung low on the horizon, casting a pale silver shimr across the water. Lupus’s boat still drifted there—a lonely speck in the middle of a dark sea.
Roland sat cross-legged on his straw mattress. "Do you believe their superstitions?"
"I don’t believe in superstitions. I believe in data," Rianor answered coldly.
"Data we haven’t even laid eyes on ourselves."
"Tomorrow."
Then, the sound ca without warning.
At first, it wasn’t a noise, but a physical vibration. Rianor felt it hum up through the floorboards into the soles of his feet, resonating deep within his chest cavity—as if a colossal bass string had been plucked at the very bottom of a marine trench. Only then did the audio catch up. A low, deep, rhythmic thrumming that ebbed and flowed like a heavy breath.
It wasn’t a wail. It wasn’t the roar of a beast.
The tone sounded more like... the song of a machine. Yet it was impossible for any biological creature to produce such a sound.
Roland bolted from his mattress. "Is that the voice they talked about?!"
Rianor’s face was already pressed against the window pane. On the table behind him, the ancient mana compass began to vibrate violently. Its needle no longer pointed passively south; instead, it spun slowly, perfectly in sync with the rhythm of the thrumming outside.
"Resonance," Rianor murmured in awe. He snatched the compass, analyzing the rotational pattern. "This sound wave is extrely low-frequency. Infrasonic. Not all of it can be picked up by the naked ear, but the physical vibration pounds against surrounding matter."
The door flew open. Adul stood pale in the corridor, clutching a communication box with a frantically glitching screen. "Lord Rianor! I tried analyzing the frequency spectrum, but—"
"Any results?"
Adul shook his head in frustration. "It’s beyond my device’s radar threshold. The noise is jamming our transmitter signal. But..." Adul swallowed hard. "The wave pattern is far too stable to be a natural phenonon."
"Record everything."
They hurried down to the common room. rek and Hesta sat huddled before the blazing fireplace. Hesta clutched a silver Holy Maiden locket against her chest, her fingers desperately rolling the chain. rek sat frozen, staring blankly into the flas.
"You hear it for yourselves now," rek said hollowly, not even looking up.
"And this began exactly three months ago?" Rianor confird.
"Exactly three months. At first, it was just a faint hum, like wind trapped in a sea cave. We thought it was just the weather. But then... the first boat went missing. A fisherman who braved the night. The next morning, his boat floated empty."
"And the second?"
"Two n. A father and his son. They went out to find the first boy," rek shook his head slowly. "Neither ca ho."
"And Lupus was the third last night."
"Yes."
Rianor pulled up a wooden chair and sat down. "The temperature of the bay water—has it undergone any changes?"
rek frowned, confused. "What does warm water have to do with this devil’s song?"
"Just answer."
Hesta was the one who replied, her voice trembling. "Sotis... yes. Especially on terrible nights like this. The village kids used to play in the water at night because they said the sea felt like it had been heated. But we’ve forbidden them since the disappearances."
Rianor’s quill flew across his notebook:
Thermal Anomaly: Seawater warms periodically at night. Consistent with the previous southern coastal case.
Sound Characteristics: Infrasonic, repetitive, source vector = southern sea.
"You didn’t try requesting aid from the military outposts?" Roland intervened.
"We sent a runner to the port city. To the Baron. No one ca. They said... it’s out of their jurisdiction. Too far. Too strange. They only sent a ssage back: ’Don’t fish at night.’" rek let out a dry, humorless laugh. "As if we needed to be told."
Roland let out a sigh, asking no further questions.
The cosmic thrumming continued to broadcast, stretching long and heavy through the night. But as ti wore on, its volu began to decay. Slowly, it weakened... like a giant running out of breath, or a massive engine being powered down.
Rianor closed his book with a firm thud. "Tomorrow morning, I will inspect Lupus’s boat up close."
rek looked up, his eyes wide with horror. "Sir, by the Gods, don’t! Whatever is hiding down there... it doesn’t care how grand your title is."
"I am only going to look."
Roland, still leaning against the stone hearth pillar, offered a dry smirk that only his brother understood. "Trust , old man. My brother doesn’t have ’only looking’ in his vocabulary."
Rianor ignored him.
Upstairs, Dom still stood rigid beside the window of the guards’ quarters. For over an hour, he hadn’t uttered a single word. But when the mysterious thrumming finally died out completely, Dom murmured softly:
"That sound... it didn’t originate from any vocal cords of a living beast."
Naya paused her whetstone, looking up. "You’re that sure?"
"There was no breath pattern. No random variations in pitch. The beat was too precise." Dom searched for the right words. "Like... an engine. But not an engine we’ve ever seen in Iron Hearth."
Adul, still busy dismantling his communication box panel, chid in, "The frequency analysis is indeed too consistent. A static tone, a precise vibration. No biological distortion throughout its entire duration."
"So what kind of crazy thing is down there?" Naya asked, her expression tense.
No one in the room could offer an answer.
Dawn was still hesitant to break. Rianor remained awake at the wooden desk in his room, accompanied by a lting candle. His notebook stayed open, the mana compass resting beside it. Roland was fast asleep on his mattress, his breathing steady despite the furrow in his brow.
Rianor penned his final entries:
Audio Data: Low-frequency infrasonic, repetitive. Point source: Sub-aquatic southern sea. Observation duration: ~1 hour. Relic Response: Active resonance on the mana compass.
Case: Three unmanned vessels in three months. Latest scene (Lupus): Thermal anomaly (hyperthermal hull), material fusion (nets lted without oxidation/fire), and black residue (super-cold).
Correlation: Bay water warms at night (consistent with the gafauna carcass at the previous village).
Tomorrow’s Action Plan: Inspect Lupus’s hull. Extract residue sample. Test bay water thermodynamics. Track sound triangulation.
He closed his book. The mana compass on the desk had returned to normal—its needle passively pointing south. No more wild vibrations. Silent. As if the audio terror of the night had been nothing but a mass illusion.
But Rianor knew it was no illusion. Three months of anomalies. Three vanished fishern. A boat full of physical evidence impossible to explain with conventional science. And a chanical song from the deep.
Tomorrow morning, he would dissect this mystery to its very roots.
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