Time turned back five days.
Wrong Anchor Harbor.
This was a harbor born for the monsoons. Whenever the Month of Storms arrived, merchant ships traveling between the duchy's north and south flocked to this natural haven like migratory birds returning to their nests, stopping to rest and replenish their supplies.
At that moment, the Third Fleet, the pride of the Golden Sail Merchant Guild, lay quietly in its exclusive deepwater berths.
The flagship, the Strong Spirits, sat majestically at the center. Its figurehead was a roaring lion, inscribed by mages with the twin enchantments of Wavebreaker and Fortification, which kept the hull steady even in the roughest seas.
On the docks, sailors' shouts, the clanging from smithies, and hawkers' cries mingled into a raucous symphony unique to the harbor.
No one noticed a porter wearing an ordinary coarse linen shirt.
Unlike other days, he had not taken his usual route to work. With a sack over his shoulder, every step felt as though he were treading on cotton, and cold sweat soaked the coarse linen across his back.
For hidden at the bottom of his sack was an unremarkable earthenware jar.
The jar's surface was rough and unglazed. Its only unusual feature was its seal: a thick layer of gray beeswax closed its mouth tight.
The thought of the black-clad man who had given him the jar, and his daughter tucked beneath that man's arm, made the porter even more nervous.
I have to succeed, he told himself. It isn't even that difficult.
As he passed the Third Fleet's berths, just as he prepared to "slip by accident," a drunken sailor approached.
Bang!
The two collided head-on.
"Are you fucking blind?" The sailor shoved the porter in the chest. The porter lost his balance and fell, and the earthenware jar rolled out of his sack, about to smash against the paving stones.
Several people nearby turned to look.
The porter nearly died of fright. Scrambling on his hands and feet, he lunged forward and caught the jar just before it struck the ground.
Perhaps the movement looked too ridiculous, for it drew a few bursts of laughter.
"Ha! Your precious little treasure, is it? What fine liquor have you hidden in there? Let me have a look." The drunken sailor hiccupped as he teased him.
The porter clutched the jar, his face flushed crimson, his lips trembling too hard to speak.
Just then, a dock foreman came over and lashed the drunken sailor across the back with a whip. "Go sleep it off! Don't cause trouble here!"
Then he kicked the porter as well. "You! What are you dawdling for? Get to work!"
As though granted a pardon, the porter scrambled on all fours to the edge of the water channel. Without even looking, he threw the deadly jar into the water, then disappeared into the crowd and fled without looking back.
Beneath the seawater, it was cold and dark.
Eroded by the seawater, the jar's lead-and-wax seal began slowly dissolving. Tiny particles, almost impossible to distinguish with the naked eye, escaped through the gaps in the jar, mingled with the currents, and drifted silently toward the massive hulls.
They were larvae, magical creatures modified through imperial alchemy and biological magic-shipworms bred specifically to feed on high-grade magical timber.
They were called "Calamity."
In Wrong Anchor Harbor's most expensive seaside gallery, an exhibition titled "Azure Rhapsody" was underway.
Hector Ester stood there. Instead of the somber black formal attire he had worn at Eternal Night Fortress, he wore a well-tailored ivory silk suit, with a vivid crimson rose adorning his chest. His face, pale from a lack of sunlight, resembled an exquisite classical sculpture beneath the gallery's soft magical lighting.
He held a glass of champagne elegantly, surrounded by noblewomen in lavish gowns.
"Mr. Ester, what do you think of this 'Daughter of the Storm'? The painter said he depicted the Sea God's angry daughter." A beautiful countess asked, her eyes brimming with admiration.
Hector's gaze settled on the painting, which depicted a goddess struggling amid fierce winds and towering waves. He gave a gentle, refined smile and offered his practiced appraisal. "The technique is good, but the painter got one thing wrong. A true storm never roars."
"It merely changes the currents in silence, then quietly watches as ships that believe they can master the wind and waves shatter along the wrong course."
He was speaking of the painting, but also of Caroline, his lofty elder sister.
The ladies murmured their admiration, captivated by his distinctive insight.
Just then, a steward dressed as a waiter slipped behind him and whispered in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Master, intelligence from Stonebridge City."
Hector's fingers tightened slightly around his glass, and a thin layer of frost instantly formed on its surface.
"Speak." His smile remained unchanged, his voice as steady as ever.
"Caroline found a country herbalist who has temporarily suppressed the symptoms in the fish."
Again. Another of these "variations" crawling out of the gutter.
Just like Caroline herself-a woman who had never awakened her bloodline, yet disrupted his meticulous plans time and again with her uncanny intuition.
The feeling reminded him of his childhood. No matter how perfectly he completed his lessons or how well he practiced his swordsmanship, his father's gaze always rested on his legitimate eldest sibling, his elder sister, who did nothing but grin foolishly.
All because of "lineage."
What he hated most was the "unexpected": people who should never have appeared, turning up where they did not belong-even if he himself was that "second son who should never have existed."
"An insignificant interlude," Hector murmured to himself, as though judging a dull painting. Yet beneath that gentle, refined smile, a desire to crush everything beyond his control was rising in his heart.
He turned and raised his glass to the countess, a charming smile on his face. "My lady, please excuse me."
He strolled to the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, as though admiring his finest masterpiece. The fleets lay quietly at anchor, their densely packed masts resembling ancient legions of spearmen, magnificent and imposing.
But in his eyes, they were already exquisitely crafted corpses. He would use their destruction to "set things right."
"Caroline, celebrate those few fish of yours. Celebrate that lucky country bumpkin you found. Embrace every one of these 'surprises' that make you so pleased with yourself."
His gaze pierced the glass, his eyes filled with an obsession to crush every uncertainty.
"Soon, you'll understand that your little bit of talent and luck amount to nothing before true 'rules.' And I, Hector Ester, am the new rule, made expressly for 'anomalies' like you."
He drained the champagne in his glass.