((Closed to Shinsou, Philomel, and Venex))

The old fisherman sat on a crate at the edge of the long jetty, line twitching to and fro as he reeled it back in. His lure came out of the dark water still bare, and he cast again with a practiced flick of his heavy wrist. In the dying rays of crimson sunlight he could see younger fishermen working aboard boats that bobbed with the incoming swells. They battened down hatches and secured loose ropes before heading back to their homes to sleep. It seemed unusually wavy for such a windless night. The boats cast flickering moonshadows as they rocked with the tide.

In his youth the old man had fished on those boats, rising before the dawn each morning to take to the sea with sails and nets. He had earned himself a reprieve in his old age, squirreling away what gold he could whenever he could. Now he only fished for the pleasure of it, or rather as an excuse to take a break from his daughter and her husband and their three squalling children. He loved them all dearly, of course, but living under the same roof made it difficult to remember why.

They enjoyed a humble, peaceful existence in the small Scaran village of Caedron, several hours sail south of the capital city itself. While miniscule, the village provided everything they needed. There were plenty of other old men for him to jaw with, and there was the ocean. There was work for his daughter’s husband, and a schoolhouse for the children. And there was always interesting gossip going around.

The lure came out of the water bare again, and again he cast it out into the rousing waves.

Just a week ago, there’d been a particularly juicy story going around. One of the larger fishing boats had gone missing on a particularly misty day. Vanished into thin air, the other sailors claimed. A small search operation had found nothing, not even a bit of wreckage. Likely the crew had given over to the temptation of smuggling and sailed north to the capital city. The village magistrate had sent word to the harbormaster there detailing the missing ship, but it would be days still before they heard back. Of course, there were whispers of sea monsters, but the old man did not believe in such things. He’d spent thirty years on the ocean, and the scariest thing he’d ever seen was a summer storm.

He reeled his lure in and cast once more, eyes following its arc until it plunked into the waves.

A blemish appeared on the horizon, a sleek spot of darkness. The old man blinked twice and looked again. At first he thought he was seeing a ship approach - one of the great warships he’d seen on his visits to Scara Brae. It cut through the water toward Caedron, growing taller and wider with each second. The old man blinked again. He could see no sails or masts, no rigging… only the angular yet smooth shape of it. As it approached it grew, ever rising out of the water.

The fisherman’s breath caught in a throat that felt coated in ice. Nerveless hands dropped his rod into the white-capped waves, and he scrambled to rise, falling off his crate. Sprawled on the dock, he could only look up at the approaching monstrosity.

It had eyes the size of his family’s house, jet black and cavernous. It had fangs as large as young oaks that curved out of its triangular maw. And as it drew nearer, still seeming to grow as it rose from the water, it unhinged its jaw and opened that terrible mouth.

In that moment, the old man knew why he had never seen a monster in his thirty years at sea. This beast had swallowed them all up.The monster’s open maw was taller and broader than the walls surrounding Scara Brae. In a moment’s clarity between shock and terror, he wondered how even the ocean could house such a serpent. He found his feet and ran up the jetty, although he knew it would not matter.

A frantic glance over his shoulder showed the end of the dock and the first boat being swallowed whole. There was no cracking of timbers; only the rushing sound of the curling whitecap that preceded the monster’s maw. As the wave arced over him the fisherman offered up a final silent prayer to the ocean deity Am’aleh. Not for salvation, but that the wave would kill him, so he would not be alive to witness the serpent swallowing Caedron.