A beard covered his once-smooth jaw, and the fire in his eyes burned fiercer than it had last year.
He stood by the window, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the rough frame.
The sea breeze swept in with its salty tang, stirring the strands of hair hanging over his forehead.
Memories always surfaced at the wrong moments.
The old man on the sickbed had clamped his withered fingers around another wrist like iron pincers, his breaths filled with fragmented words: "Go back... we must return to those waters..."
Many years later, the same scene played out again. The person lying in bed had changed, but the grip on his wrist was no weaker.
Nails dug into flesh, leaving crescent-shaped red marks. "Take back what belongs to us."
That voice rasped like sandpaper. "Carve our family's name into that land again."
He closed his eyes, then opened them.
Outside the window lay boundless blue, rolling waves, and sunlight shattered into countless flakes of gold across the water.
Such a vast world, yet there was not an inch where he could belong.
"Gather our people."
His voice was calm, as calm as the sea before a storm. "We'll take that deal."
Money was only the most superficial reason.
Deeper down lay something scalding, something that nearly burned through his chest.
He remembered those nights, the brightly lit office, the envoys conversing in low voices, the mountainous stacks of documents.
Everything had been progressing steadily until a certain figure appeared and crushed every plan to pieces.
That name rolled between his teeth again and again, carrying the taste of rust-Monkey D. Dragon.
Images of that battle still occasionally invaded his dreams: the devastating power, the utterly unstoppable attacks, and, in those final moments, the tremors as the ground beneath his feet broke apart.
It