They reached the coast by morning of the fourth day.

The Drowned Reaches were less a region and more a mistake of geography. A sprawling expanse of mudflats, jutting black rocks, and villages built on stilts above a tide that smelled inherently of rot.

But today, the smell was worse. Today, the water wasn't churning brown and white. It was flat black, like liquid obsidian, absorbing the pale light of the overcast sky.

"The Hollowing is affecting the ocean," Sera observed, her boots sinking ankle-deep into the mud as they approached the largest stilt-village, Oakhaven.

The town was deathly quiet. Boats knocked against wooden pylons, but there were no nets in the water. No gull cries.

As they walked up the wooden ramp into the village square, Kael felt the shard in his chest begin to thrum a violently fast rhythm. It was a heartbeat desperately trying to sync with another.

Resonance.

The second shard was close.

"Over there," Kael pointed to the village meeting hall, a large structure built out of the ribcage of an ancient whale. The doors were splintered.

They entered cautiously, weapons drawn. The inside of the hall was a slaughterhouse. Dozens of villagers lay dead, but there was no blood. Their bodies were desiccated, gray, their eyes wide open as if they had looked upon a terror too immense to comprehend.

In the center of the room stood a man in heavy merchant's robes. At least, he used to be a man.

His skin had turned a translucent, glowing gold. He hovered two feet off the ground, a jagged piece of star-metal embedded directly into his forehead. The air around him distorted with intense heat.

"He found it," Sera whispered in horror. "A civilian found the shard. It's too much power for an untethered soul. It's burning him out from the inside."

"Who are you?" Kael demanded, stepping forward.

The glowing man slowly turned his head. His eyes were blank, replaced by pure, blinding light.

"We are the Fifth," the man spoke, but it wasn't his voice. It was a harmonic, overlapping chorus of ancient voices. "We are the Tide-Breaker. The Throne demands unity. Surrender your fragment, false vessel."

The man raised a hand, and the black water from the bay below erupted up through the floorboards, forming into razor-sharp spears of pressurized liquid.

"He's not a man anymore," Sera yelled, diving behind a wooden pillar as a water-spear obliterated the spot she just stood on. "The shard has completely possessed his mind!"

Kael danced between the incoming blasts, bringing his shadow-magic to bear. He threw a wall of darkness up, catching three water-spears that hissed and boiled against the dark energy.

"I need to get close!" Kael shouted over the roar of the water. "If I can rip it out of his head—"

"It'll kill him!" Sera yelled back.

"He's already dead!"

Kael didn't wait for her agreement. He dropped his shadow wall and sprinted in a zig-zag across the hall. The possessed merchant screamed in synthetic rage, gathering a massive orb of black water over his head to crush Kael flat.

Kael didn't try to block it. He slid under the merchant's hovering form, kicked off a wooden pillar, and launched himself into the air. His broadsword was useless here; the magic would melt steel. He reached out with his left hand, wrapping his fingers entirely in the thickest, coldest shadows he could summon.

He slammed his hand into the merchant's forehead, gripping the shard.

The world went blinding white.

A hurricane of memories blasted into Kael's brain. He saw tidal waves crushing fleets. He saw an emperor drowning his own sons to appease a sea god. He felt the crushing, suffocating weight of the deep ocean.

Kael roared, pouring his own indomitable will—his twenty years of standing unmovable on a scaffold—into his grip.

With a sickening crunch, he tore the shard free.

The merchant collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the floor dead. The black water lost its shape, crashing down and soaking the hall.

Kael fell hard, landing on his shoulder. He rolled over, gasping, opening his hand.

Two shards of the Ashenmoor Throne rested in his palm. Like magnets, they snapped together, fusing perfectly into a larger, jagged blade of black star-metal.

The pulse in Kael's chest doubled in intensity. Without warning, the fused shard phased through his hand, melting into his skin, traveling up his arm and sinking directly into his chest to join the first.

He screamed as his ribs knit themselves back together forcefully, and a surge of terrifying, oceanic power flooded his veins.

"Kael!" Sera was beside him, hauling him up. "Are you—"

She stopped.

Kael opened his eyes. For a brief, terrifying second, his pupils weren't human. They were liquid gold.

He blinked, and the gold faded back to his normal dark brown. He breathed out, a breath that felt cold enough to freeze water.

"I'm fine," Kael said, though his voice sounded an octave deeper. "Two down. Five to go."