00:00Vigil of the Deadlight
00:01Chapter 1
00:03The Circle Where the Sea Watches
00:07No one marked the Circle of Arcanis on maps,
00:11not out of superstition, but by agreement.
00:14Ancient cartographers knew that certain places should not be named.
00:18Drawing a line that was like calling something by its name,
00:21even so, the Aurora de Salle sailboat pressed on.
00:25It was a typical expedition.
00:27Six men, three weeks' worth of supplies, new compasses, faith in the wind.
00:33Captain Elias Morek recorded in his diary,
00:36The sea changes here, not in color, in intention.
00:41As they crossed the invisible boundary of the Circle, the wind ceased.
00:45The sails fell like dead cloth.
00:48The ocean became too calm, as if breathing silently.
00:52Then came the depth.
00:53The sea there didn't seem deep.
00:55It seemed open, an echo-less abyss, where the water darkened like a dilated eye.
01:02At night, lights appeared under the hull.
01:05They weren't reflexes, and they didn't go up.
01:09They watched.
01:10On the fourth night, the sailor Jonas cried out.
01:14He said he saw something moving under the ship,
01:16not swimming, but spinning,
01:18as if the bottom of the sea were reorganizing itself.
01:21On the fifth night, the ship's bell rang by itself.
01:26It was then that they heard the first voice.
01:28It didn't come from outside.
01:29I came from below.
01:32An ancient presence,
01:34patient,
01:35that did not command.
01:37He was pointing.
01:38The captain wrote just one line before closing the diary with trembling hands.
01:42We were not chosen to die.
01:45We were chosen to watch over.
01:47When the Aurora de Salle left the circle,
01:49the ship was no longer the same.
01:52Not even men.
01:53They returned in silence,
01:55with deep-set eyes,
01:57with salt marks on the palms of their hands,
01:59symbols that no one could copy without bleeding.
02:02On the third night, anchored in the harbor,
02:05the bell rang without wind.
02:07The ropes came loose,
02:08and the sailboat set off alone,
02:10swallowed up by the fog.
02:11The next morning,
02:13a fisherman found something floating near the pier,
02:16the captain's log.
02:18All the pages were blank,
02:20except for the last one.
02:22Written with salt water and something darker,
02:25the vigil has begun,
02:28and we are no longer sufficient.
02:30Since then,
02:31the ship has been sailing without a name,
02:34Sem Tripulus Home,
02:35but never without purpose.
02:37And in Arcanis,
02:39the elders say,
02:40the sea does not swallow all men.
02:43He returns some of them,
02:45to store what cannot be taken upstairs.
02:47as well.
03:08.
