I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1480: The Grey Mile

"Thirty-six."

Captain Ysolde Vaertia’s voice was barely a whisper. But in the sudden silence of the northern sea, it carried across the flagship’s main deck like a tolling bell.

The Storm Belt had not faded. It had not spent its fury slowly over a span of days. It had simply stopped. The freezing gales that had battered the Sixth Legion vanguard for weeks vanished in a single afternoon, and the fleet was left stranded in the deep ocean.

They called this stretch the Grey Mile.

The sky above was a flat, unbroken sheet of pale iron. The ocean below was a mirror of polished black glass, without a whitecap, a current, or a swell anywhere on it. There was no wind. The heavy canvas sails of the Imperial warships hung limp from the masts, dripping melted rime onto the pitch-sealed decks one slow drop at a time.

The fleet was not sailing. It was barely even drifting. It sat pinned in place between the sky and the abyss.

Rian stood near the port rail with his hands buried in the pockets of his frayed black coat.

He looked out at the motionless water. The death toll from the Grey Sickness had stopped at thirty-six. The storm had stopped battering the ship, but the dead calm was already proving far worse for the men.

During the storm, the legionaries had something to fight. They had freezing water to bail, lines to secure, and rogue waves to keep their minds occupied. Now there was nothing to do but listen to the creak of the hull and stare into the black mirror of the sea.

Rian didn’t need his Shingan to feel the tension winding tight across the flagship. He could read it in the rigid shoulders of the vanguard infantry. He could hear it in the shallow, quick breathing of the men sitting on the deck gratings.

But when he pushed his perception down, keeping the Third Eye locked safely behind his soul gates and relying on passive flow reading alone, he felt something else.

Deep below the surface, miles beneath the wooden hull of the flagship, the ocean was not dead.

Something colossal was moving.

It was a vast, rhythmic displacement of water, sweeping back and forth in a slow arc. It was following the fleet. It had been following them since the storm broke, keeping perfect pace beneath the center of the Imperial armada.

Rian kept his face still. He didn’t tighten his grip. He only watched the black water.

Bosun "Mother" Grael knew it was there.

The veteran sailor hadn’t survived seven crossings by ignoring the moods of the deep. The moment the wind died, Grael had climbed down from the helm with the colour gone from her scarred face. She didn’t spit her tobacco. She didn’t curse. She walked straight to Captain Ysolde and spoke to her in a harsh, urgent whisper.

The veterans’ protocol went into force at once.

The orders were passed quietly from ship to ship by signal flag, and the magically amplified voice horns were forbidden. The rules were absolute, and the penalty for breaking them was death on the spot.

No lights. No singing. No fishing.

When the grey daylight finally drained out of the sky, the true horror of the Grey Mile began.

The fleet sank into pitch blackness. Not a single lantern was lit. Not a single brazier was allowed to burn. The Imperial warships became floating tombs of silent, shivering men.

The Eleventh Squad took the darkness without complaint.

They were border veterans. They had survived the freezing mud of the northern valleys and the choking mist of the Forest Hunters, and they knew how to sit still. Han wrapped himself in a thick wool blanket, nursing his healing ribs in silence. Baletta sat cross-legged near the mainmast, cleaning her sword in the dark by touch alone. Doron let his shadow-soul fog bleed into the gloom until there was no telling where he ended. Iren stood at parade rest near the stairs and did not move.

Rian sat on a wooden crate near the rail, his dark eyes long since adjusted to the gloom.

He watched the regular vanguard infantry fall apart.

They were soldiers of the Empire, trained to march in formation and break cavalry charges with shield and spear. They were used to the noise of the barracks, the bright fires of a war camp, and the comfort of their numbers.

Out here, the silence was taking them apart piece by piece.

Days bled into one another. Three days of dead calm. Five days. Seven.

With nothing to see and nothing to hear, the men on the lower decks began hearing things anyway. Some claimed their mothers were whispering to them from the water. Others swore the wood of the hull was breathing. At night, the blackout forced the legionaries to sit shoulder to shoulder in the freezing dark, listening to the ragged breathing of the men beside them.

Captain Ysolde walked the upper deck like a ghost.

She enforced the silence by being there, her Ascendant aura pressing down on the ship and smothering any panic before it could rise. But she couldn’t be everywhere at once, and the vanguard cohort was stretched to its breaking point.

On the ninth night, it snapped.

The darkness was total. The moon was hidden behind a high, unbroken layer of cloud. The silence was so heavy it pressed against the eardrums.

Rian sat on his crate, tracking the slow sweep of the displacement miles below.

Near the forward hatches, Recruit Talen was on watch.

The young vanguard conscript had been shaking for three days. He was a boy from the Central Plains, used to endless yellow grass and a bright, open sky, and he had never seen the ocean before the expedition. Nine days of black silence had hollowed him out.

Talen knelt on the deck boards with his hands trembling.

He couldn’t see his own hands. He couldn’t see the deck. He felt as though he were floating in a featureless void, cut loose from the earth, and the dark sat on his chest like a crushing weight. He just needed to see something. He just needed one second of light to prove he still existed.

Rian heard the scrape of the steel striker.

It was a tiny, sharp sound, but in the dead silence of the Grey Mile, it rang out like a hammer striking an anvil.

Baletta stopped cleaning her sword. Iren shifted his weight.

Down by the hatch, Talen struck the flint against the steel a second time.

A shower of orange sparks lit the boy’s sweat-slicked face. He fumbled with a standard-issue brass lantern, his shaking fingers bringing the spark to the oil-soaked wick.

"Stop," Doron hissed from the shadows.

It was too late.

The wick caught, and a flare of yellow light burst open on the forward deck.

To eyes that had seen nothing but blackness for nine nights, the lantern was blinding. It threw long, jumping shadows across the masts and lit up the pale faces of the vanguard soldiers huddled near the railing.

Talen let out a ragged, sobbing breath and stared into the small flame as if it were a god.

Grael was moving before the light had even settled. The veteran bosun crossed the deck faster than anyone her age had a right to, her heavy sea-boots making no sound on the wood. She brought her two-fingered hand down on the lantern’s glass housing, shattering it and crushing the wick beneath her leather palm.

The light died.

The darkness slammed back down over the ship, heavier than before.

Talen whimpered and scrambled backward across the deck. Grael stood over him with her chest heaving, and the smell of burned leather and hot oil rose from her glove.

Rian sat quietly on his crate, his hands still in his pockets.

He looked at the spot where the light had been. He didn’t shake his head. He didn’t sigh.

’And humanity proves its consistency... again.’

The damage was already done.

Miles beneath the hull, the slow sweep of the displacement stopped.

Rian felt it at once. The passive flow of the water changed all around him. The presence in the abyss was no longer patrolling in a wide, level arc.

It had seen the flash of light through the dark glass of the sea. It had noticed the Imperial fleet.

The displacement turned vertical.

The pressure of the water beneath the flagship began to climb, a silent surge of momentum aimed straight upward. It was rising from the depths at an impossible speed, a mountain of meat and malice rushing toward the surface.

Rian stood up from the crate.

"Hold onto something," Rian said into the dark.

The Eleventh Squad didn’t ask questions. They grabbed the nearest iron cleats and the heavy hemp lines of the mainmast and braced themselves against the deck.

The sea was coming up to meet them.