The Drowned March of Kellen Vire

The tide hadn’t rolled in. Not truly. It sat like a breath held too long, hugging the black coastline of Tarren’s Rest with unnatural calm. Boats bobbed gently in the shallows, their rigging silent. Seabirds did not cry. Even the village dogs, prone to fighting over the left behind carcasses of the morning catch, remained curled beneath eaves and crates, their ears twitching.

Kellen Vire felt it the moment his boot met the dock. There was a hush, not in sound, but in the world itself. The weight of the net basket slung over his shoulder pulled the coarse rope tight around his hand. Blood stopping. Suppressed just like the tightness he felt in his chest. He made the walk to the skiff that bore the name Lorn Grace, scratched deep with a chisel into the prow. The paint had faded, and salt had warped her ribs, but she floated. That was enough. The gulls watched him from their cliffside nests like old sentries judging a deserter.

The villagers had stopped, long ago, asking him questions. He was once known as Gravemind. Not the real kind. No necromancer or whispering ghoul. This was a war-name. A title that he had earned. The weight of it still clung to him like the stubborn mussels that always called the bow of his skiff home. It was a battlefield name that was whispered with a mixture of reverence and unease. In Tarren’s Rest, where names meant things, he was just “Kellen” now. The man who lived alone at the edge of the bluff. The one who fished too far out and came back with strange things.

Sometimes it was bones.

Sometimes… it was worse.

The sea had become a place of quiet for Kellen. Not peace, exactly. Peace suggested resolution. Kellen hadn’t known resolution in decades. It was like a fleeting emotion that he was once familiar with. Now all he knew was the numb reality of trying to forget who he had been. It was here, with the rhythm of the tide, in the pull of the net against water and the weight of hours that passed without speech that he felt his mind stop. The sea never asked why he’d given up the sword. It never demanded that he relive the choice that cost him everything.

Yet, these waters, the places he hadn't yet pushed himself to go, were calling. Seeking something that had always been out of reach. Had always eluded him. Redemption. Today his mental net would come up empty, once again. The mythical creature he had been after for so long had left him scratching at the back of his head and pondering his choices. Hours had passed and it was time to bring the basket in. Pulling with the rhythm of a seasoned fisherman, Kellen felt a shift as the net seemed to be tangled around something.

Today, the sea gave him a mask. It was held, suspended before him in the murky waters, slick with algae and shadow. Obsidian coral, fused with something harder, rimmed in broken barnacle clusters. Not carved. Grown. The kind of artifact the old folk warned against bringing ashore. The kind that could take over your dreams. Taint the safety of your home.

Kellen knelt down in the Lorn Grace, staring at it. He did not move to touch it. His breath was frozen in his throat. Not with fear, but with memory. The grooves etched along the cheekbone. The hollowed eyes. The inner rim was laced with a sigil he hadn’t seen in a decade. A sigil that had been his nightmares for years. A sigil that dissolved away just as fast as it had been written. It was part of a past life, a day when who he had once served was made no more, names wiped, archives sealed by decree of the Luminous Conclave and the religious bigots that groveled for their scraps.

Yet, here it was.

Three broken spines encircling a central, downward eye. The mark of the Harrowed Veil.

Kellen didn’t bring it home. Instead, he dropped anchor and sat in silence, the mask half-submerged in a small pool as his knees soaked up a small amount of the saltwater. As the sun climbed higher, it cast light across the surface of the water. Looking away, he knew what to expect, and as his eyes slowly returned to the mask he saw the place beneath the mask, where the reflections refused to form.

He sat there for hours. Swaying in his own empty vessel. Lost in the sea of his mind. Drowning. The emotions swelling like a tempest within him. The wind finally returned. It came cold and wrong, carrying the scent of wet stone and deep places. The kind of scent he had spent a lifetime trying to forget. The sea had betrayed him. Finally. Here, kneeling in his skiff, he began to relive the ruins of the Breathless Hollow. The mission that shattered them. Closing his eyes he tried to push them back. Tried to regain control.

So much work was about to be thrown overboard. Lost to the depths if he didn’t get a grip on the wheel. He could hear them. Then he could see them. Each one of their faces like a portrait that had been left alone at home far too long. They were warped, stretched, scratched, moldy, and decayed. He felt them tugging at him. Pulling him back in. Below the surface. Towards the fate that he should have sealed himself with. A fate that he had cursed them with. It was the only way. The only way that he could save her. Save Lindorwin. Save the only thing that mattered more to him than the ones he called friends. He was given another name that day. When only he returned. He left one thing behind so that he could bear some of the curse.

He left behind his left hand. Severed at the middle point of his forearm. It was said to be a gift, in exchange for power that would see him survive. As he sacrificed a piece of himself, he would also have to sacrifice the ones he cared for, and in doing so would be given a new life. He didn’t realize how deep that sacrifice would cause him to go. A new life doesn’t always mean a good one. Kellen looked on. Through the sea of faces.

Kellen didn’t believe in ghosts.

But sometimes, he believed in debt.

And the tide had just called one in.

He looked down at the stub of his left arm. An ethereal, transparent hand lay there clutching the mask.

The Hollow Hand had awoken.

Stepping out of the skiff, leaving what grace he had found behind, Kellen Vire, the Hollow Hand, placed the mask upon his face, taking a deep breath, and releasing a decade of pain, torture, nightmares, trauma, and regrets. The tempest reached its climax and sent him spiraling below the surface as if being swallowed by his past. As he touched the bottom of the ocean floor he opened his mouth and nothing came out. It was here all along. At the bottom of the ocean, in the uncharted trenches of his mind, that he found her. He reached out and felt the warmth mixed with the coldness that was pressing in all around him. His hands ran across the broken frame. Redemption.

She had drowned them.

He had died that day.

But Kellen believed debts could be paid.

And today, Redemption returned.

He would now have his Retribution.