The Epic of the Discarded Son-Chapter 48: Diary 3

"02/29/3024"

"I met a mysterious old man a few days ago."

"He looked homeless. Not just regular homeless, but super homeless. Like the world itself had forgotten he existed, and he was perfectly fine with the arrangement. Suspicious eyes, though. Sharp. They followed my every step like he was reading a book only he could see."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

"At first, I figured he wanted money. So every day, I’d toss him a few bronze coins as I passed. The island’s currency. Enough for a meal. Maybe two. I didn’t think much of it. Just a strange old man sitting in the same spot every morning."

"He never spent them. I noticed that on the third day. The coins just sat in a pile beside him, untouched. But he’d nod at me every time I dropped one, like it wasn’t the money he wanted—it was the gesture."

"About a week later, I was picking up supplies for the next voyage when he called me over. Didn’t speak. Just waved his hand, telling me to come. Like he’d been waiting for this exact moment and wasn’t surprised it had arrived."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

"So I went. Because I’m an idiot who walks toward things he shouldn’t."

"He smelled worse than I remembered. And I remembered it being terrible. Like something had crawled into his clothes, died, and then something else had crawled in after it to mourn."

"But then he did something that made me forget the smell entirely."

"He started drawing on the ground with his finger. Slowly. Every line deliberate. Every curve placed with a precision that didn’t match his appearance. I stood there watching. Minutes passed. I almost left twice."

"Then he finished and leaned back. And I realized what I was looking at."

"A map."

"He looked up at me and smiled. Not the kind beggars give you when you drop a coin—the kind that belongs to someone who knows the ending of a story you haven’t started yet."

"Then he pointed. Not at me. Not at the ground."

"At my ship. At her. The figurehead. The girl I carved from a dream I can’t explain."

"His finger traced across the map. Slowly. Past coastlines I didn’t recognize. Past islands with no names. All the way to the end. To a place that shouldn’t exist. A place that isn’t on any chart I’ve ever seen."

"I wanted to ask him everything. Who are you? How do you know about her? Why have you been watching me? What’s at the end of this map?"

"But the old man couldn’t speak. As if his voice had been taken away completely. His mouth moved sometimes, like the habit of speech was still there, but the sound wasn’t. Just silence shaped like words."

He turned the page. The map filled the entire next page. Coastlines. Islands. Mountains. Rivers. Some parts precise, others rough, like he’d tried his best to copy exactly what the old man had drawn—every line, every curve, every detail transferred from dirt to paper so he could follow it step by step.

’That’s kinda smart.’

Just as he was about to continue, the wind picked up. The pages flipped on their own, one by one, like the sea itself had decided he’d read enough for today.

The ship lurched. The deck tilted. Creaked. Tilted again. The ocean beneath them had gone from calm to temperamental, tossing the ship around like it had suddenly remembered it didn’t owe Shiro any favors.

’And here I was at the good part too.’

He tucked the diary into his shadow and climbed down. The rigging groaned overhead. The mast swayed. Everything that wasn’t nailed down slid toward the wrong side of the ship.

He loosened the sails and let the canvas fill. Stopped fighting the sea and gave it what it wanted—control.

’Fine. You win. Take us wherever you want.’

But he wasn’t done reading. Not yet. Whatever was out there in the distance could wait a few more minutes.

He made his way to the helm. Grabbed the wheel with one hand. Flipped the diary open with the other. Eyes splitting their attention between the sea ahead and Rei’s handwriting below.

Half sailing. Half reading. Fully irresponsible.

"This is called multitasking."

"Now where was I?"

"Oh yeah."

He found the page.

"03/01/3024"

"I went back today. Same street. Same corner. Same time."

"He was gone."

"Not moved—just gone. Like he’d never been there. The ground where he sat was clean. No trace that anyone had spent a week sitting in that spot."

"I asked around. The merchant across the street. The woman who sold fish on the corner. The kids who ran around the alley every afternoon."

"They all looked at me the same way. Like I was crazy. They all said one thing."

"’What old man?’"

"Every single one of them. Not one person remembered him. Not one person had ever seen him. A man who sat in the same spot for over a week in broad daylight, and somehow I was the only pair of eyes that noticed."

"But here’s the thing that won’t let me sleep."

"In the exact spot where he used to sit, there was a small pile of coins. The same number I’d given him. Every single one accounted for."

"Except they weren’t my coins."

"The bronze was different. Heavier. Older. Stamped with markings I’ve never seen before. A language I can’t read. A symbol I don’t recognize. They looked ancient. Like something pulled from a tomb that hasn’t been opened in a thousand years."

From the distance — a screech. Sharp enough to split the air. High. Piercing. Interrupting him once again.

And just like that, Rei’s story would have to wait. Again.

He sighed. Pure annoyance.

’I guess that’s it for today.’

He closed the diary and let it sink into his shadow without a sound.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He didn’t climb back to the nest. Instead, he went higher. Past the platform. Past the rigging. All the way to the top of the mast, standing above the sail where the wind hit hardest and the world stretched out in every direction.

He stared at the distance. Water and sky bleeding into each other at the horizon. Endless. Indifferent.

’Father. Why must you always underestimate me?’

This whole mission—the so-called defense of the island—had sounded suspicious from the beginning. A thought that had been sitting quietly in the back of his mind, waiting for him to pay attention to it.

Why couldn’t they just defend the island from the shore?

The answer he’d been given—"the rest of the captains will handle the shoreline; your group will go to the main hive and kill the leader"—had made sense at the time. Cut the head off and the body dies. Simple. Strategic.

But now, standing above the sail with the wind tearing at his hair, it didn’t feel simple anymore.

They’d sent all of them. Together. On one ship. Richard, his father’s oldest friend. The one man who knew his father’s fate. The one man who carried the island’s deepest secrets. Packed onto a boat with the son the Patriarch thought he had killed years ago.

That wasn’t strategy. That was a cage.

’I guess that’s what they call killing two birds with one stone.’

He paused.

’Well. In this case, five birds.’​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He sighed. Long. Tired.

’Richard... you’ve gotten weak.’

He remembered a different Richard. The one from before. Sharp. Cunning. A captain who thought three moves ahead and never let emotion cloud his judgment. The kind of man who moved through danger the way water moves through cracks—quiet, patient, inevitable.

But that Richard was gone. Replaced by a man haunted by a dead wife. Softened by guilt.

’How far you’ve fallen, my dear teacher.’

His father had always known what Richard was. What he was planning. Who he was meeting with in the dark.

He knew. And he chose to let it happen.

Because keeping your friends close is good. But keeping your enemies closer is better.

And if Shiro had to guess—if he had to put a name to what his father actually wanted out of all this—it was never about stopping them.

’You let them play their little game. Let them think they were winning. All so you could watch and wait and see who was pulling the strings.’

He didn’t even bother stopping them. Why would he? His father had always known how his end would come. By his own children.

If your death is already decided—if fate has already chosen the hand that kills you and the moment it happens, then why fear anything else?

A smile crept across Shiro’s face. Slow. Sharp.

That would be the death of him.

Not the prophecy.

But his own arrogance.

Just then—the door below slammed open.

Ana. Luca. Nora. All three of them rushed onto the deck at once. Alert.

Shiro looked down at them from the top of the mast. Wind in his hair. Smile still on his face.

"Oh good. You’re all up." He tilted his head down from the mast, looking at their confused, sleepy faces staring back up at him. Then he pointed at the distance. "You might be wondering why they’re coming from behind us and not in front."

"What?" Nora squinted up at him, rubbing her eyes. Still half asleep.

Shiro just smiled wider.

"Well, you see—my father thought we were getting bored. So he decided to send us some company."

His expression darkened. The grin vanished like it had never existed. He reached for his hand, pulled the ring from his finger, then produced the one he’d taken from Richard while the man was bleeding out on the floor.

He crushed them both in his palm. The metal crumbled. Decayed. Turned to dust between his fingers like something ancient finally given permission to die. The remains fell to the deck in a fine, grey powder.

"All of you." His voice came out cold. The voice of a captain giving his first real order. "Please kindly destroy those rings. Now."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​