She freaked out.
Not loud. Not frantic. But sharp and real. I saw it in the way her breath shortened. In how her eyes darted from the churning sea to the sinking deck, to the shattered remnants of the lifeboat. Her hands twitched like she was counting options. One. Two. None. She moved fast, searching for something—anything—that could float, steer, save.
The panic wasn't selfish. It wasn't just for her.
She was trying to save all of us.
I watched for a moment. Watched the way she moved, the way her mind worked behind those storm-colored eyes. And then I sighed. Quiet. Resigned.
This wasn't her burden.
I turned and walked back into the demon's cabin. It still reeked of rot and rust and secrets that refused to die. But I knew what I was looking for. He'd dragged it here before, proud of it, as if it were a trophy. My raft.
I waved to the merman and pointed. Signaled him to follow. He came without a sound—wounded, wary, but loyal in that quiet, tragic way of his. I pointed again. This time at the raft. Made a pulling motion with my arms.
The merman's expression changed—uncertain, then uneasy. He stepped forward, hesitated. Reached out. But the moment his fingers grazed the surface, the blood that had soaked into it twitched. Like it sensed him.
He yanked his hand back before the tendrils could latch on. They wanted him. Just like they wanted everything. Just like they wanted me.
I sighed again.
Figures.
Of course it had to be me.
I stepped forward and placed my hand on the raft. Not a casual touch—a full grip. Intentional. Anchored. There was no ceremony to it, but it still felt like a ritual.
The moment my skin met the raft's surface, the blood moved.
Not crawled. Not flowed. Jumped.
It lashed up my arm like a lover desperate to return home. Burrowed into my veins, into my bones, into whatever part of me still thought it was separate from this cursed world. The feeling wasn't pain. It was pressure. Heat. A low hum that built behind my ribs like a growing fire. I clenched my jaw and held still.
And I felt it.
The blood wasn't just entering me. It was _joining_ me. _Merging_ with what was already inside—the same blood that came from the brick, from the demon, from the first wound that changed everything.
I could feel the count grow. One after the next.
Four. Five. Ten. Twenty.
It climbed faster. Fifty. Seventy-eight.
Each number wasn't just healing. It was replacement. A full-body regeneration. Like my body was being rebuilt in advance, stored away in pieces. Bit by bit, I was being copied. Prepared. Saved. And the number kept growing.
Eighty-nine. One hundred. One fifty. One seventy.
One hundred and ninety-two.
That was the final number.
And I felt every damn one of them.
The potential of it burned inside me. I knew—knew—I could die 192 times and still walk away whole. But I also knew that's all they were. Not immortality. Not salvation.
Just lives. Stored in a bottle.
Each one meant pain. Each one meant breaking before the fix. And once they ran out? That was it. No more. No retries. No miracles.
And it wasn't a gift.
It was a chain.
Every drop of that blood was a debt I'd never finish paying.
I didn't like it. Not any of it. But it was necessary.
Because the girl couldn't carry this. Not her. Not the merman. They didn't deserve to have this thing inside them. To have their blood rewritten by something ancient and wrong. It had to be me. I was already ruined. Already changed.
Let me be the container. The curse-bearer.
I looked back at the raft. The blood-red stain was gone. The wood looked dry now. Like it had been untouched. Like the infection had burned itself out.
Only the thin, brittle crust of dried blood remained, and that—that—blew away with a single breath. Like dust. Like ash. Gone.
I touched it again. No twitch. No hunger. Just wood and rope and memory.
I turned to the merman and nodded once. Then gestured. Again. Pull it.
He hesitated. I saw the war in his eyes. The doubt. But he reached out anyway. Placed his hand on the edge. Waited.
Nothing.
No blood. No pull. No pain.
He looked at me—shocked. Then nodded, finally understanding. He began to pull. Slow at first, then faster. The raft moved across the floor like it had waited its whole life for this moment.
This was our way out.
I knew it.
Not just survival.
Escape.
There was something about this raft. Something in the way it was. I didn't know how I knew, but I did. This wasn't just a vehicle, a support in the sea. It was a threshold. Something meant to carry me from this nightmare into whatever came next.
Because part of me still wanted to sink with the ship. To go down with the girls and the blood and the brick. To be swallowed with the rest of it. To end it the way it began—in the water, broken and quiet.
But I couldn't.
Not yet.
There was still more to finish.
More to see.
More to suffer.
So I let the merman pull the raft toward the edge of the deck. The girl stood nearby, watching me like she wasn't sure if I was saving them or damning them. I didn't blame her. I wasn't sure either.
But I offered her my hand anyway.
We were leaving.
One way or another.
And whatever waited beyond the tide…
We'd face it with the blood still burning in my veins
and the memory of the dead whispering in our wake.