Page 87 of Drown Me Gently

“Let’s head back, I can teach you another game of cards—” Ulric’s sentence died in his mouth.

He thought he had more time.

He thought he’d feel it coming. The moment when the gods reached out to take their due. That there would be warning—thunder, waves, some dramatic sign befitting the end of a Kraken’s final chapter.

But when it came, it was in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

There was no storm.

No howling wind.

Just the cry of a gull, and the sudden, breathtaking pain lancing through his gut.

Ulric stumbled, grabbing at Auren’s shoulder. He gasped once, then dropped to one knee.

“Ulric?!” Auren cried, catching him—but not fast enough. Ulric crumpled forward, eyes wide.

The sand was warm beneath his palms. Too warm. His vision swam.

“Auren…” he rasped.

Auren fell to the ground beside him, hands gripping his arms. “What is it? What’s happening?!”

Ulric looked up, barely able to hold his head steady.

“Go… back,” he whispered.

“Do you need a tonic? Which one? I can run and get⁠—”

“No.” Ulric rasped. “Go home. Go to Atlantis. I can’t hold it anymore.”

And as the sunlight spilled across the sea like ambrosia, he thought⁠—

This should’ve happened at night.

The world shouldn’t have looked so delighted by his demise.

But it did.

And now…

Now he had to say goodbye.

“Ulric!”

His name tore from Auren’s throat as he fell to the sand, hands sliding beneath the Kraken’s shoulders, trying to keep him upright. Ulric was trembling, skin ghost-pale, every breath coming ragged and wet.

“Stay with me—please, come on, talk to me!”

Ulric’s tattoos were vanishing. One by one, those ancient symbols, marks that once pulsed with magic, dissolved like ink in water, leaving pale, bare skin in their wake. The lines on his chest faded beneath Auren’s fingers. His arms. His throat. Gone.

Ulric’s lips parted, his breath a ragged gasp as though each tattoo that faded was a vital part of him. On his forearm, a final tattoo flared white-hot, casting sharp light across the sand. Auren watched, stunned, as the ancient glyph pulsed, not fading like the others, but glowing brighter, glowing defiantly, as though the very ink of it had caught fire.

It wasn’t burning out.

It was burning to speak.

One last message.