Chương 151: 10. Day of Distress 3

I'd assumed the island's entire hospitality consisted of that half-collapsed shack barely good enough to keep wind and rain at bay. The second day proved me wrong. Around the back of the island, I found a spring. Calling it a "spring" was generous. At first glance, it looked more like a small facility someone had deliberately concealed.

The source was ringed by low stones, their edges far too smooth and uniform—not the kind of weathering that sea wind and rain produce over time, but the kind that comes from human hands. Beside it ran a shallow drainage channel, half-ruined now, but clearly designed to direct water downslope. Moss filled every crack, and the outer perimeter was so thoroughly overgrown with shrubs and wild vines that if I hadn't walked those extra steps searching for fresh water, I never would have spotted it.

I stood at the edge, stared at it, and my instincts immediately supplied: This cursed thing did not grow here naturally. But I didn't pursue the thought. For one thing, what we needed right now wasn't detective work—it was drinkable water. For another, when you're stranded and desperate, the impulse to flag something as "suspicious" usually yields to "survive first, think later." That was one of the most honest—and most embarrassing—survival lessons I'd learned over the years.

So I filled my canteen without ceremony, topped off a spare waterskin for boiling, and headed back. All things considered, being stranded with Ignicia had one undeniable advantage: I didn't have to make fire the primitive way. Other castaways spent their time grimly experimenting with tinder and friction techniques. All I had to do was stack the wood, adopt the reverent attitude of someone placating a natural disaster, and ask Her Highness the Fire Dragon Princess to breathe on it.

Though the first time she obliged, she gave me a look usually reserved for lower life forms.

"Is starting a fire really this much trouble for you humans?"

"With respect, Your Highness, people who carry fire in their throats don't have much standing to critique the rest of us." She made a sound that wasn't quite dismissal, then opened her mouth and exhaled a single thread of crimson-gold flame. It brushed across the woodpile without even a crackle—more like someone pressing a white-hot needle against the grain of dry bark, tracing the wood's natural veins. The next instant, the fuel caught quietly and completely.

I had to admit: dragons, when not being used to level cities, made remarkably efficient camp stoves. The day passed uneventfully. Ignicia's condition had stabilized somewhat compared to the previous night, but her color was still poor. She could sit upright. She could deploy that imperious tone to catalog my various shortcomings. What she couldn't yet do was shift back into dragon form and simply fly us off this rock. For my purposes, that was neither good news nor bad.

The upside: she wasn't going to abandon me on the island without warning. The downside: I had to keep sharing close quarters with a wounded, irritable Dragon Princess who might, at any moment, translate "gratitude for saving my life" into "time to settle accounts, with interest." Thinking about it that way, my recent existence felt less like a survival story and more like the premise of a particularly vindictive farce. The sea put an end to that feeling on the second night. It started with the wind shifting.

Something changed in the rhythm of waves against rock—an unnatural cadence threading through the familiar sound, low and heavy, like thick timber forcing itself through water. I went still inside the shack, snuffed the fire immediately, and pressed myself low against the gap in the wall. The night was deep. The sea wasn't entirely black. Distant lights moved on the water—faint, intermittent, surfacing and vanishing behind sea-fog like drifting ghost-eyes. This story has been stolen from Royal Road.

If you read it on Amazon, please report it Not fishing lanterns. Too steady. Too disciplined. I watched until the shape resolved: a ship. More precisely, a military vessel. It didn't approach the shore. It circled our island's perimeter at a measured, unhurried pace—the way a predator moves around something floating in the water, deciding whether it's worth the bite. The circuit was slow, but it made my spine go cold anyway.

For a moment I genuinely wondered if they'd already spotted us and simply couldn't be bothered to act yet. But the ship never came closer. It completed one full orbit, held position briefly—as though taking notes—then turned and disappeared back into the deeper darkness. I waited until the last glimmer vanished completely before I let out a breath. I hadn't even finished exhaling when I turned and told Ignicia everything I'd seen. Her expression darkened instantly. Not her usual irritation.

Not that familiar humans are such a nuisance impatience. Something heavier—the particular gravity of a commander running worst-case calculations. She leaned against the wall, one hand pressed to the unhealed wound at her side, and was quiet for two heartbeats before she spoke.

"That was only the advance unit." I frowned.

"Advance unit?"

"The Blazing Yanxia Empire's dragon-ships are too massive and draw too much water. They can't approach shallows like this directly." She looked up at me, her golden pupils cold and bright in the dying embers.

"They weren't here to search the island. They were here to mark it. One circuit to confirm position, tide lines, whether it can conceal people—then carry that intelligence back." Something sank in my chest.

"Back to whom?"

"To the ones who can actually come ashore." She said it with a flatness that was worse than alarm.

"Human soldiers aren't suited for search operations in terrain like this. Reef approaches, rip currents, tidal shallows, night currents—all of it would kill them. Sea-dragon people are different. They know this kind of ground. They're superior trackers in coastal environments." I found myself echoing the term.

"Sea-dragon people..." Ignicia didn't answer immediately. She just stared out through the gap at the black water, which had gone calm again as though nothing had happened. That brief silence was somehow worse than confirmation. I thought of the capital. Of Black Dragon Pass. Of that suffocating briefing room that gave me persistent stomach aches—and all those threads I'd heard named so many times they'd become background noise. Marriage alliance. Sea routes. Sea-dragon clans.

Words that had sounded like distant political abstractions. They'd just become this stretch of water, this island, and a ship that circled without landing.

"So this island—" I began.

"I can't confirm it yet," she cut in.

"But that artificial spring you described is... interesting." When she used the word interesting, it was never good news. Experience had made that one of the most reliable laws in my life.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"If a seemingly uninhabited island conceals a spring that can supply fresh water long-term," she said slowly, "and someone has deliberately maintained and hidden it—then it isn't just a water source. It's a node." That word again. Black Dragon Pass had been a node. Now this godforsaken rock might be one too. At some point I was going to have to seriously consider whether I possessed some kind of supernatural talent for stepping directly into the center of every geopolitical crisis that existed.

"For resupplying ships?" I asked.

"Not only that." Ignicia closed her eyes briefly—suppressing discomfort, organizing her thoughts, or both.

"Resupply, short-term anchorage, concealing personnel, exchanging cargo, receiving things that can't safely appear at major ports. An island like this on ordinary shipping lanes is worthless. On a route that can't see daylight—it's invaluable." I went quiet. Scattered pieces in my mind were beginning to lock into place. The sea-dragon marriage alliance had never been just about a wedding.

If that thread was genuinely tied to the Blazing Yanxia Empire's maritime arrangements, then islands like this—springs like this, maintained and hidden—wouldn't exist in isolation. They'd be like nails driven into the darkness, hammered one by one along the sea-lanes. Invisible during peacetime, but capable of bringing an entire network to life the moment someone decided to pull the line taut. And we were currently stuck on one of those nails.

I dragged a hand down my face, feeling the situation develop in a profoundly unwelcome direction.

"So what do we do?" The moment it left my mouth I felt like a green recruit asking his first tactical question—but honestly, there wasn't a more dignified way to phrase how do we not die under the circumstances. Ignicia looked at me. There was exhaustion in that look. Controlled anger she wasn't giving voice to. And something else I'd slowly learned to recognize—she was starting to take this seriously.

"That artificial spring you mentioned," she said.

"First thing tomorrow morning. Take me there." I nodded.

"As you wish." After that, the shack fell quiet again. Only the sea wind remained, threading low through the cracks. I repositioned the covering over the doorway, made sure no light or movement would be visible from outside, then settled back against the wall. The night was still long. The island was still an island. On the surface, nothing had changed. But I knew perfectly well that from the moment that search ship completed its circuit, this place had stopped being just a temporary refuge.

It was more like a loose thread that had surfaced from the water. And whatever unraveled when someone pulled it—it was almost certainly not going to be anything good.