Captain Carrisius.
That was the name he had given himself. The name of a pirate. Not the one he was born with—the one tied to gold-plated ceilings, carefully folded napkins, and an unbreathable world of silver forks and powdered wigs.
He had claimed it the day he ran away from home, a mansion too large and a family too proper, followed by the only people who had ever truly seen him. His friends. His comrades. They had once played pretend pirates in the garden, sticks for swords and dreams for ships. At age twelve, they made it real.
Carrisius was born into the upper crust, the kind of family whose shoes never touched dirt, whose sons were shaped into diplomats and heirs. He was forced to study etiquette, politics, philosophy. He memorized lineages, tea temperatures, and the weight of silverware. And yet—perhaps because of it—he unlocked the Clarion of Vision. A divine fragment. An ability granted to those who had seen the "truth" of the world. Or so they said.
But Carrisius had seen enough. "This isn't truth," he once whispered to the mirror, "it's a porcelain lie."
To him, what the rich called pristine felt like suffocation. The elegance, the rehearsed civility, the sterile politeness—it choked him. Every time he saw the news about pirates raiding some coastal town, a strange envy stirred within him.
"They look free," he had said one night, hunched beside his friend Lenat on the rooftop. "They're not pretending. They don't sit with their backs straight just to eat soup."
His friends, from lower-class families, had understood. His parents had not. "They are thieves, degenerates," they had said. "Keep away from those rats."
But he didn't listen. He left. With those very "rats." He never came back.
---
The early days were rough.
They had no ship, no food, only the thrill of rebellion and half a map. But within months, Carrisius had done the unthinkable. He stole a docked ship right under the noses of the local guards. No blood, just wit and timing. It was his first taste of victory. The sea greeted him like an old friend.
It was everything he imagined—fishing for real fish, sleeping beneath the stars, looting tiny villages. He never killed. He didn't need to. People surrendered the moment they saw him—especially when he activated the Clarion of Vision. "They see the inevitable," he'd say, smirking.
But reality came for him with the sound of steel.
It happened on the island of Daerun. Another pirate crew had ambushed them. They wanted the ship. His friends were cornered.
"I don't want to kill you," Carrisius had said, hand shaking as he held the blade. The enemy didn't listen.
Steel met flesh.
It was over in seconds, but something inside him broke.
"They say a man who kills is never the same," he muttered afterward, staring at the body. "That's true."
After that, the idea of killing no longer felt foreign. It became... a solution. If something got in the way, he could cut it down. Clean. Final.
"It's like patching a leak," he once told Lenat. "You plug it, or it drowns you."
He climbed higher. Through plunder, cunning, and power. He acquired the Horizon Splitter, a Leviathan-tier artifact, capable creating and reducing distance, basically manipulating space to his will. And then he became something else entirely.
A Tempest of the Sea.
One of the seven who ruled the oceans. And among them, Carrisius stood as the storm incarnate. Grand ambitions stirred in his chest.
"Why stop at the sea?" he said, standing atop the crow's nest, wind howling around him. "The continent... the whole damned continent could be mine."
He rallied two more Tempests to his cause. They marched toward conquest.
But a single man stopped them.
Honurad Decimus.
He came alone. They laughed at first. But the battle lasted three days.
Honurad's Clarion of Touch decayed cells with every blow. Carrisius felt his flesh rot with each strike, his skin cracking, muscles faltering.
"You call that a fight?" Carrisius grinned through the pain.
Honurad didn't answer. He just kept fighting, a silence louder than any war cry.
In the end, Honurad stood while Carrisius collapsed. Two Tempests dead. The third defeated. But it had cost too much. Cities burned. Civilians died. And though Honurad saved the continent, they hated him for the destruction his battle caused.
"You saved them," Carrisius had spat, bleeding and broken, "and they still hate you. What a joke."
Honurad vanished afterward, a hero buried in guilt and whispers.
---
Carrisius survived, but he was no longer the same.
A man with the mindset of a ruler but no strength to back it? That was no man at all.
Thirty-two years passed.
He grew old. His power waned. Among the surviving Tempests, he was now the weakest. And yet, the ambition never left him.
He needed influence. And influence meant nobles. Nobles who could be controlled. Bought. Broken.
So he used a long-forgotten artifact—one that drew expensive vessels toward him, like moths to flame. Slowly, discreetly, he gathered them. Lords, heirs, rich brats with no clue what the sea could do to men like them.
And now, the moment had come.
Today, Captain Carrisius would begin again.
But why was it that Carrisius felt fear—
The fear he hadn't even felt when facing Honurad Decimus.
Was it because he was old?
No.
It was because Honurad Decimus was kind.
The reason the other two Tempests had died wasn't because Honurad wanted to kill them—
It was because their arrogance forced his hand.
Even as they fell, his blade trembled with hesitation.
And yet—
The man standing before Carrisius now had neither sword nor magic.
Nothing but a revolver and wits sharpened by desperation.
Carrisius couldn't explain it.
As the fight dragged on, the fear didn't fade.
It grew—tightening around his lungs, coiling in his gut.
Every calculated move felt heavier, every parry slower.
Despite every effort to remain composed, something in his body screamed:
If I don't end this fast—
I will die.