The rain began without warning, hammering the ship on the coast of Blacktide Harbor until sea and sky became one sheet of silver.

From the ghostly attic of the ship, Mira Vale watched the storm roll in. She liked storms, because they made people careless.

She knelt beside her bed and pried open one of the many loose floorboards. Underneath it was a tin cylinder - one she herself had placed there, and it contained a map made out of old parchment signed by the vanished cartographer named Arlen Thorne.

Most of the map marked familiar waters. She had memorized it all, except for one mark, a broken circle at the edge of the known sea.

Lightning in her window flashed once, twice. For an instant, the circle on the map shimmered in the light. Mira froze and tilted the parchment closer to the window.

Flash. Hidden lines emerged within the symbol—ink that only revealed itself in the flicker of the lightning. It was like a hidden second map layered over the first.

A map within a map.

Then came a shout from above her.

“Fire!”

Smoke coiled across her window. Loud bells clanged. Her stairwell was filled with flame. It seemed too fast, too deliberate. This wasn’t an accident. After she started trying to escape through her window, a sharp knock rattled her door. “Mira Vale,” a calm but firm voice called. “Open the door. We need to discuss the map.”

Her blood ran cold.

The map in her hands pulsed faintly with warmth. New lines flared across the map - this time not across the sea, but through Blacktide Harbor itself. A new glowing path led from the boat to a point across the harbor. Pointing to a ship she had never seen before.

Wayfarer.

It had to be. This is what her father had told her about all those years ago, before he died and she was left all alone. This was what she had been waiting for. The door that protected her from the calm voice collapsed inward from a group of men breaking in. Tall black figures stood, surrounded in smoke, quickly walking toward her. Mira didn’t hesitate. She shoved the map inside her jacket, climbed out through the window onto the rain-slick roof, and crawled her way up to the top deck where the chaos was. She ran back and forth on the dock, escaping the grasp of each person, and was only guided by the frequent burst of lightning. Far in the distance, half-veiled in storm, waited a ship with a full black hull and unfurled sails. A single lantern burned at its prow.

Wayfarer.

She realized that she had to escape, but how?

After another flash of lightning, she found two lifeboats placed down in the waters, ready for launch. Behind her, boots thundered across the dock, chasing after her. Crew members yelled out, telling each other to stop her from getting on the life boat. After she untied the boat from the ship, she began slowly paddling away, to the dark figure that she had sworn she had seen. Eventually she got to the ship and boarded, but there was just one problem:

They were catching up to her in a life boat of their own.

She had seconds to get to the strange ship moving. Seconds to start moving and to discover what was on the map, or seconds to instead waste and to lose everything.

The lantern on the ship flickered in the wind.

Once, twice.

And then it went dark.