Jenker stepped back in—transformed. No more rags or broken armor.

  A dark navy coat hugged his frame, high collar crisp, seven silver bars marching in perfect order down the right side. Straight-legged pants carried a reflective purple stripe along each seam. Black boots gleamed (polished, but the thick soles screamed work, not parade).

  A short-brimmed cap sat square, the Havenite emblem centered: a silver octopus with a man’s face, eight tentacles curling like a crown.

  The beard was trimmed neat, hair combed under the cap. Copper bands circled his cuffs—comms gear, not jewelry. Mereque recognized the weight; he’d worn similar once.

  The coat hung heavy. Woven armor. Subtle, but there.

  A single pistol rode his hip in a leather holster worn soft from years of draw.

  The cage-rat was gone. In his place stood a captain.

  Mereque almost smiled.

  He knew the look. He’d worn it once. Not that long ago.

  The man who’d hidden his rank from Blanched eyes and ears, now wore it like a second skin. Smart. Captains made better hostages.

  Mereque leaned against the bulkhead, arms folded.

  Jenker caught the look, flashed a quick grin.

  “Figured it was time to stop playing prisoner.”

  Mereque grinned.

  “Looks better than the dirty rags you had.”

  Jenker waved him down as Mereque started to rise.

  “Sit, sit. No need for that between us.”

  Mereque eased back.

  The captain’s gratitude was real—no formality required.

  “If you want a shower, mine’s through there,” Jenker said, nodding at the hatch.

  Mereque shook his head.

  “Water’s fine for grime. My body handles the rest. Self-cleaning. “

  Jenker’s eyes widened.

  “You’re pulling my anchors.”

  Mereque kept his face stone. Deadpan.

  They both cracked. Laughter rolled out (rough, genuine, the kind earned in fire).

  The Blanched Land felt far away. Like a bad dream that should be easily forgotten.

  Mereque stood. His attention was rivetted in the present.

  “Still stink of salt and sweat.”

  He disappeared into the bath cabin.

  Mereque unfastened his helm (snap, hiss of pressure release).

  He studied himself in the wall mirror.

  Bald. Deep-set bright blue eyes, carrying too much weight.

  He ran warm water over his head, let the stream cleanse him (taking his time), toweled dry.

  Armor came off piece by piece. Ruined plates hit the corner with dull clangs. He scrubbed the good ones until they gleamed.

  Undergarments off. Fresh jumpsuit from the pack. He sanitized in the basin, pulled it on.

  What armor remained covered half his frame (buckled, strapped, makeshift). He looked like some ancient gladiator. Lighter. Faster. Vulnerable.

  He flexed. It would do.

  Sidearm cleaned (debris gone, oiled). Holstered at hip, helm under arm.

  He stepped back into the cabin.

  The Urchin Gull lurched, it was a gentle, deep rumble.

  They were diving. The motion felt like safety. Like the Cazues, before it burned.

  Jenker sat on a stool pulled from under the map table.

  Mereque chose the couch (it was safer for his bulk).

  Jenker looked up, earnest.

  “You really are from another world. How?”

  Mereque sat. He’d decided to trust this man hours ago. Time to pay the debt.

  “I didn’t come alone,” he said. “We were Zaxvoyan—military scholars, explorers. Modified for the void. On a ship we called the Cazues. We crossed stars to find Earth. To reestablish contact.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Jenker’s eyes widened.

  “Bloody Kraken’s crust.”

  Jenker stood, moved to a cabinet, pulled out a bottle and two cups. He poured a dark liquid with sharp scent into both. Offered one.

  Mereque tasted it. Spice exploded on his tongue (warm, complex, alive). His enzymes neutralized the alcohol instantly (fuel, not poison).

  He hadn’t drunk spirits in decades. Not since the program. He took another sip—sighed.

  Luxury earned.

  Jenker leaned forward (eager for more).

  “Go on.”

  Mereque did.

  “My home is a thousand light-years away,” Mereque said. “We froze ourselves—vacuum sleep. No aging. About twenty years ship-time.”

  He left out sub-wake slings. Too much. Too soon.

  Jenker savored the mouthful he took from his cup, before swallowing hard.

  “Mad. If I hadn’t seen you fight, I’d call you adrift. But your people came from Earth?”

  Mereque stood, moved to the map table. He traced a coastline with one finger.

  “The Earth in our records isn’t this one. Different land. Different sky. Different history.”

  He met Jenker’s eyes.

  “Nothing matches. Not yet.”

  Jenker’s gaze didn’t waver. Intense. Curious. Alive.

  Mereque felt the old mission stir again. There was opportunity here. Something he wouldn’t have thought possible (even a few hours earlier).

  Not dead. Just… changed.

  “So that’s why you asked if this was Earth.”

  Jenker’s eyes lit with understanding.

  Mereque nodded.

  “Exactly. I’ve been trying to confirm it since I hit dirt.”

  He leaned over the largest pinned map, hands braced.

  The geography was wrong (too few continents, too much ocean).

  He recorded it silently for later. Questions could wait.

  He straightened.

  “Our colony was the second of six. Planned over three centuries. Launched at the end of the twenty-ninth century by the World Federal Authority.”

  Jenker poured another drink, listening.

  “After strife, humanity looked to the stars. Poured everything into it. Leopold Seven—my world—is a thousand light-years out. Named for Doctor Francis Leopold. He died on the ninety-eight-year journey. His work got us there. Three years after arrival, contact with Earth vanished. That was nine thousand years before I was born.”

  Jenker whistled low.

  “Nine thousand years?”

  Mereque met his eyes.

  “And not one signal since.”

  The sub thrummed around them.

  Jenker set his cup down.

  “That’s a long silence.”

  Mereque nodded.

  “Too long.”

  Jenker stared, mouth open. He snapped back, downed the rest of his cup.

  “Nine thousand years? Twenty-ninth century? Sounds like a sailor’s yarn.”

  He poured another.

  “But I saw you fight. So I believe it.”

  Mereque leaned forward.

  “Then you’ll understand this: I couldn’t imagine knights that don’t die, fairies, dragons—until I landed here.”

  Jenker’s eyes softened.

  “Aye. We both got thrown into strange waters.”

  Mereque nodded.

  “It’s not just that. The Earth I was expecting, the one we studied from our archives, it didn’t have any of those things.”

  The captain gave him a look that said, ‘I hear you; it’s just hard for me to believe’.

  He needed this man to trust him. Trade. Contact. Survival. It might all depend on it.

  The mission wasn’t dead. It had just become… complicated.

  He continued. He had to.

  “We kept the records. Everything. Inherited the tech. Thrived, eventually. Five thousand years inside domes. Then we broke out. Cities. Ships. The system ours. Our technology grew again. And the old stories—the pull of Earth—never died.”

  Jenker refilled his cup, slower this time.

  “Adrift that long… I’d want home too.”

  Mereque met his eyes.

  “Well, we never knew what we didn’t have, but we inherited all the knowledge our forefathers carried with them. This isn’t the Earth we expected. But it is Earth. And I’m here.”

  Jenker raised his cup.

  “To finding home, star-kisser.”

  Mereque clinked his against it.

  “To finding it.”

  “Perhaps,” Mereque said. “We all have our reasons. Mine was duty. Joined the program at twenty-two. Two decades training. Then the Cazues left to find Earth.”

  Jenker waved a hand at Mereque’s frame.

  “Forty-two? You could eat a hundred prime men without sweating.”

  Mereque’s mouth twitched.

  “Technically sixty-one. Nineteen years ship-time.”

  Jenker slapped the table.

  “Hah! Stand corrected, old man!”

  Laughter rolled out (loud, free, tears in their eyes).

  When it faded, Mereque continued.

  “We freeze for the void. No aging. Refined since the time of our ancestors. Some live centuries.”

  Jenker raised his brow, cup halfway to his lips.

  “Centuries… as in hundreds? Handy trick. We’ve nothing like it.”

  He sipped, eyes shining.

  Mereque leaned back.

  The sub thrummed around them.

  For a moment, the weight he carried felt shared. Not gone. Just a bit lighter.

  “Don’t dismiss what you have here,” Mereque said. “All our tech started on Earth. I scanned one of your books—Forgotten Catastrophes. Too many facts match our records to be myth.”

  Ventrullis paused, his eyes lingering on the shelves as if the books themselves held the weight of lost worlds. He felt a rare crack in his armor—not from the wounds, but from the realization that this captain, this man from a wounded Earth, held keys to mysteries his people had chased for millennia.

  Jenker set his cup down, rubbing his beard before refilling it.

  “You’re saying my old bedtime stories are history?”

  Mereque nodded, voice softening.

  “More than that. They’re the bridge between my Earth and yours. The wars, the fallout—it matches what we know, but goes further. A third war we never heard of. It’s like finding a missing chapter in our own book.”

  Jenker leaned back, eyes distant.

  “I’ve sailed these seas my whole life, seen things that’d curdle milk. But this… you falling from the stars, saying our myths are real… it’s like the ocean turning upside down.”

  Mereque’s throat tightened.

  “I know. I landed expecting cities of glass. Got dragons and mad bleeding sand instead.”

  They shared a quiet look—two men from impossible distances, bound by the impossible.

  Jenker’s fingers drummed the cup.

  “Lost my first mate to the marms. Terrible things, like waterlogged fairies you could say. Watched him drown himself because of their songs. Thought I’d seen the worst the sea could give until then. Can’t ever say what life might toss our way. It’s fickle, like the old father of the sea.”

  He didn’t understand half of what he just heard, but he got the message. Jenker was trusting him with something private. Personal.

  Mereque’s voice dropped.

  “I lost my crew up there. Five hundred souls. One moment alive. Next… silence.”

  Jenker’s eyes softened, the captain’s mask slipping.

  “Kraken’s crust… Silence is the worst. Leaves you talking to ghosts.”

  Mereque nodded.

  “Every night.”

  The sub thrummed on, like a low heartbeat under their feet, bleeding through the steel.

  Jenker drank again, slower.

  “To ghosts, then.”

  Mereque raised his cup.

  “And to the living.”

  The drink burned warm in his throat.

  Jenker stood to stretch.

  “Feel free to anything on the shelves. What’s mine is yours. If you learn anything else, I’d like to know.”

  Mereque’s chest warmed.

  “Thank you.”

  Taking a long drink that drained his second cup, the Havenite answered with a touch of uncertainty laced within his words, “Of course. You saved my life. Again, this is a lot, even for an old sea skipper like me to swallow, even with all that I’ve seen now.”

  Mereque nodded.

  “I know.”

  The silence stretched.

  Jenker poured himself a third.

  Mereque watched the liquid swirl. He hadn’t shared a drink with anyone since the Cazues. Not like this. Not with someone who understood loss without words.

  “One thing nags me.”

  Mereque waited.

  “If your people were the second of six to leave Earth, however many bloody years ago,”

  He looked up, voice low.

  “What happened to the other five?”

  Mereque felt the room cool. The sub thrummed on. But the question hung between them.