Chapter 5: The Return
Seeming to be waking from a death-like slumber fuelled by nightmare, the first sounds the crews heard were the creaking of the masts and the snap of the sails as a slight breeze finally caught within them. For a long moment, no one moved.
The decks were as they had been. The sea stretched outward, calm and endless, its surface unbroken. The sky above was pale, indifferent, offering no sign that anything had ever been amiss. Only the silence felt wrong, too complete, too clean, as though something had passed through and taken more than it should have. One by one, the officials stirred.
Warlord Damirus gripped the railing as though testing whether it would hold. Elder Verkiry flexed his fingers slowly, watching the heat return to them in faint, uncertain pulses. Around them, sailors blinked awake where they stood or sat or had simply frozen in place, their last memory caught somewhere just beyond reach. No one spoke at first. There are moments when words feel like an intrusion, and this was one of them. It had been dawn. That much they remembered.
Signals raised. Distance held. The uneasy stillness of two fleets becalmed and meeting at the edge of the world, each waiting for the other to make the first move toward something no one quite trusted. Then....
Nothing.
Or something so close to nothing that it refused to take shape in the mind. A pressure. A silence. The sense of being watched from somewhere that had no direction. And now they were here again. Unbroken. Unharmed. Returned. The wind strengthened slightly, enough to set the sails into motion and stir the water into soft, reluctant ripples. The ships responded as they always had, as though nothing in the world had changed. Yet everything had.
'Report!' Chief Kort said at last, his voice steady but lower than it should have been. The answers came quickly, almost too quickly. No damage. No casualties. No signs of attack. No time lost, at least, not by any measure they could agree upon. And yet the sun sat higher than it should have. The angle was wrong. Subtly, unmistakably wrong. They exchanged glances across the narrow stretch of water that separated them, the old distrust still present, but dulled now by something neither side could name. Whatever had happened here had not belonged to one race or the other. It had belonged to something else.
Ruler Onufir turned his gaze skyward, his expression tightening slightly as he searched for something he could not quite explain. For a brief moment, so brief it might have been nothing more than a trick of the eye, he thought he saw it. A pattern among the fading stars. A shape that did not belong. A horse, caught mid-charge. Then the light shifted, and it was gone. He said nothing. There are some things that, once spoken, become too real. Instead, he lowered his gaze back to the sea, where the water had begun to move again, slow and steady, as though it had finally decided to breathe. “Whatever this was,” another voice said quietly, from neither side in particular, “it’s over.” No one argued. There was no evidence to the contrary. No enemy to pursue, no wound to bind, no explanation waiting to be uncovered. Only the simple, undeniable fact that they were still here, and whatever had threatened to claim them had… released its hold. Averted. For now.
Orders were given. Not loudly, not with the certainty of command restored, but with the quiet agreement of those who understood that remaining in this place served no purpose. The fleets turned. Not together, and not as allies, but not as enemies either. The distance between them remained, but it no longer felt like the edge of a blade. Behind them, the waters of World’s End lay still once more. Empty. Unremarkable. As though nothing had ever happened there at all, and yet, as the ships sailed on and the wind carried them back toward shores that would not quite believe their story, a lingering unease followed in their wake, not fear, not even certainty, but the faint, persistent sense that something had been interrupted rather than ended. That something had opened.. and then closed again. For reasons none of them would ever understand. The sea gave no answers. It never had. It never would. As the last trace of that distant horizon faded behind them, more than one among the officials found themselves glancing back, if only once, as though expecting to see something rise from the stillness. Nothing did. Only the quiet surface of the water remained, stretching endlessly beneath an empty sky. Whatever had waited there had withdrawn. Whatever had taken them had let them go.
And whatever price had been paid for that release.... was not theirs to remember.
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Task and Schedule
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Your task:
Your task is to decide what happened in the final confrontation and to tell the tale to us in a creative way. What was the final boss and how was it beaten? You can draw, bake, paint, sculpt, write, sing, crochet or even use interpretive dance!
Please read the forum for full details of how to enter.
Schedule:
30.08.2026 20:00 - 06.09.2026 20:00
Rules:
This event follows the GENERAL FORUM EVENT RULES.
Depending on the extent, rule violations can lead to the exclusion of individual tasks or even disqualification from the entire event.
The use of AI is strictly forbidden. You may not copy images from the internet and present them as your own.
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Rewards
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| 1st place: |
1 |
| 2nd place: |
1 |
| 3rd place: |
1 |
All other participants with valid entries:
1
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Read the story in the Library.
End the tale and aid future generations!
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