Read Chapter 25: The Ghosts Depart

The storm broke like a held breath finally released. One moment the world was screaming wind and salt; the next, silence pressed against Mack's ears so hard he thought he'd gone deaf. The sea flattened around the *Santa Catalina* as if God himself had smoothed it with a palm.

Mack stood at the rail, gasping. His hands were raw from rope, his lungs burning. The coat—Blackwood's coat—clung to him, heavy and warm despite the chill.

Then he saw them.

They rose from the deck like mist given shape. First the cook, a thin man with a scarred throat, his apron still stained with the blood of a wound that had killed him two centuries ago. Then the gunner, missing half his face. Then the boy—the cabin boy who couldn't have been more than fourteen when he died, his eyes still wide with the terror of drowning.

One by one, they appeared. Dozens of them. The entire crew of the *Santa Catalina*, standing in loose formation across the ghostly deck, their forms flickering like candle flames in a draft.

Mack couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

And then the captain was there.

Blackwood stood at the helm, his spectral hand resting on the wheel. He looked different now—less solid, more transparent, as if the curse that had bound him was already beginning to dissolve. But his eyes were clear, and they fixed on Mack with something that might have been gratitude.

"You did it," Blackwood said. His voice came not from his lips but from everywhere at once, like wind through rigging. "You let it go. You chose the dead over the gold."

Mack swallowed. His throat was sandpaper. "I chose what was right."

"Not many do." Blackwood stepped down from the helm, his boots making no sound on the deck. He stopped an arm's length from Mack. "You carried my burden when you didn't have to. You wore my coat, spoke my words, faced my enemies. And you still chose to release me."

Mack looked down at the coat. It had stopped warming against his skin. It felt suddenly like nothing more than cloth—old, salt-stained, heavy with years. "What happens now?"

"The sea takes us." Blackwood gestured to the crew. "We've been waiting for this moment longer than you can imagine. Waiting for a captain who would finish what I could not." His eyes held Mack's. "You are not me, Marcus Donovan. You never were. But you carried me long enough to set me free."

The crew began to fade. Not all at once, but slowly, like dawn erasing stars. The cook went first, nodding once at Mack before dissolving into mist. The gunner followed. The boy lingered, staring at Mack with those wide, drowning eyes, and then he smiled—a child's smile, innocent and relieved—and was gone.

Mack felt tears on his face. He hadn't noticed when they started.

Blackwood remained. He reached out a hand, and for a moment, Mack thought the ghost would touch him. But the hand stopped just short of his shoulder.

"Seek your own redemption now," Blackwood said. "The gold is gone. The curse is broken. But you—" He tilted his head, studying Mack as if seeing him for the first time. "You still carry your own weight. The partner you lost. The lie you told. The debt you owe to the living."

"How do I pay it?"

"You don't." Blackwood's form was growing fainter, his edges blurring. "You live it. You earn it, day by day. That's the only way." He paused. "And you'll need those."

He pointed at Mack's pocket.

Mack reached down, confused. His fingers closed around something cold and hard. He pulled it out.

Coins.

Four of them. Spanish gold, heavy and gleaming, still bearing the stamp of the *Santa Catalina*'s final voyage. The coins he'd pocketed in those early dives, before he'd understood what he was dealing with. Before Rosa. Before the letter. Before everything.

His hand closed around them. They were warm. Alive with something that felt like waiting.

"I thought—" Mack started. "I released the chest. I sank it all."

"You sank the chest," Blackwood said. His voice was barely a whisper now, his form a shimmer of light on the deck. "But you kept these. Small pieces of the curse, still tethered to you. As long as they exist, a thread remains."

"How do I break it?"

Blackwood's smile was sad. "That's your journey now. Not mine." He looked past Mack, toward the horizon where the first light of dawn was beginning to creep over the water. "Find the place where they were first struck. The source. Only there can they be cleansed."

"The source? I don't—"

But Blackwood was gone.

Mack stood alone on the deck of the ghost ship. The crew had vanished. The ship itself was beginning to dissolve beneath him, the boards growing translucent, the rigging fraying into mist. He felt the sea beneath his feet, cold and real, and realized the *Santa Catalina* was finally letting go.

He looked down at the coins in his palm. Four of them, glinting in the early light.

A thread remained. A tether.

And somewhere ahead, the source of it all was waiting.

Mack shoved the coins deep into his pocket, shrugged off the coat that now felt like just a coat, and began to swim.