“How about… no,” Van Dijk replied, his smile growing only wider as he casually leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other. His eyes shimmered with a kind of amused defiance, the kind of glint found only in those who had long stopped fearing consequence. He carved another sliver of steak with unsettling calm, the metallic scrape of knife against porcelain ringing louder than it should have in the silence that followed.
The cardinal’s brow furrowed, the muscles in his face tightening with confusion and growing annoyance.
“What do you mean, no?” he asked, each word pressed out between clenched teeth. He wasn’t used to refusals, certainly not from prisoners, and especially not from one who was supposed to be long broken by now. His voice held the kind of cold patience that frayed easily.
Van Dijk chewed slowly, eyes still on his plate, as if the conversation were secondary to the flavor. “Like I said,” he spoke again after swallowing, “No. Not interested. Don’t wanna.” He punctuated the last two words with a pointed stab of his fork into the next cut of meat, lifting it to his mouth with exaggerated grace.
“You’re insufferable,” the cardinal muttered, a flicker of red touching the tips of his ears. “Don’t you want to walk out of here? A few days of breathing real air? Sunlight? A warm breeze that doesn’t reek of old stone and iron?” He motioned vaguely around the cell, disgust and disbelief in his tone. “Anyone else would give anything for that, instead of rotting down here.”
Van Dijk leaned back further in his chair. His expression didn’t change—still relaxed, still utterly unconcerned. “But I’m not anyone,” he said. “I’m Van Dijk. And a few days, a few years, even a few decades in a place like this?” He waved his hand dismissively toward the catacomb walls. “It’s nothing. A nap. A blink. I’ve slept in worse places, Cardinal. I’ve died in worse places.”
He tilted his head slightly, gaze narrowing just a bit. “Besides,” he added, lowering his voice in mock confidentiality, “the boy’s deity already told me I should stay here. And I take that kind of advice seriously. I wouldn’t want to be… what’s the word you people use?” His smile returned, sharper than before. “Ah yes. Blasphemous. That would be rather unbecoming, don’t you think? You of all people should understand that.”
The cardinal’s lips parted slightly, but no words came out. For a brief second, he seemed suspended in place, caught between outrage and something resembling uncertainty. His fingers curled at his sides, and then, slowly, he released the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“Fine,” he said, voice low and tight. “So be it. Stay in your cage. Rot with your pride intact.” He straightened his robes and turned, but then hesitated again. “We’ll raze it to the ground then. As we move in.”
Van Dijk didn’t react right away. He simply reached for his wine glass and took a measured sip. Only once the stem was back on the table did he glance up again, that same eerie calm never leaving his expression.
“I gave you too much credit, I see. I had hoped you’d help us, like last time.”
“And what did that get me?” His voice hardened then—not loud, but deeper, heavier. “Branded a cultist. Hunted down like a dog. For nearly a century. All because I stayed your hand. All because I tried to be… helpful.”
“We didn’t know—” the cardinal began, but Van Dijk cut him off.
“That’s the thing,” he snapped, his smile gone now. “You never know. You people always raze first. Always. You light the pyres, you draw your blades, you burn what you don’t understand and then—then you ask questions.”
He leaned forward slowly, placing his elbows on the table as his eyes bore into the cardinal’s.
“Go on, then. Try it your way. Try cleaning up that mess yourselves. See how far your righteousness carries you when the moon splits open like a festering wound.”
His voice dropped lower, just above a whisper.
“Time is ticking, Clement. And once that moon fully opens…” He let the words hang, heavy with implication. “I doubt your casualties will be minimal.”
***
The sailors surrounding Ludwig had started out wary. Their eyes lingered on him longer than necessary, uncertain whether he was a noble, a mage, or something altogether other. The way he stood without shifting, the way he looked past people rather than at them, and the silence he kept—always silence—unsettled them in small, growing ways.
They had tried, at first, to warm up to him. Small comments. A question here, a joke there. Awkward, but not unkind. Some even offered him small portions of dried fish or bread from their meals—gestures of camaraderie they extended to strangers on long voyages.
But Ludwig never reciprocated.
He did not sleep. He did not eat. He did not tire. No matter how choppy the waves became, or how long the hours dragged into silence, he remained at the railing, unmoving. Observing the sea with an expression too unreadable to place. He didn’t even blink as often as he should have.
After the first day, the sailors stopped trying. By the second, they kept their distance. By the third, they had started muttering quietly to one another when they thought he couldn’t hear—rumors of curses, of deep dark magic, of a passenger who might not even be alive.
And Ludwig heard every word. He simply chose not to care.
It was near midday, or what passed for it on the ocean, when the crow’s nest broke the stillness.
“Land ho!” came the call, cracked and distant.
Ludwig’s head shifted slightly toward the sound, though his body did not. His fingers tightened faintly around the railing. In the far horizon, just barely visible through the sea haze, clustered specks of land emerged like jagged teeth biting out from the water. Islands—dozens of them—rising and falling in misshapen formations. An archipelago tangled in mist.
From a distance, the Dawn Islands looked strangely peaceful. But Ludwig already knew better.
He was not going there for peace.