Kai's Lullaby

Eerie and black was the night upon the distant wake of the ice-covered sea. The ship lay docked, unable to press farther into the pitch-dark horizon while the winds howled around her. It was too cold on deck without three layers of fur and a mask to warm the breath. A few moments in the open air froze a person so thoroughly that their flesh felt fused to the bone. Burning from the inside out.

Here, the darkness lasted for months, and the sea swallowed more than the light. A lamp’s flame stretched only inches from one’s face, the glow a feeble path through the void.

Below deck, her crew huddled together, listening to the ship's wooden ribs groan in the night as they sang shanties to keep their spirits from fracturing. There was no way out. No way in. They were trapped until their dying breath. This winter was the coldest it had been since the dawn of time.

And nothing could have prepared them for the untold stories of the Frostwraith Sea.

The Commodore stared out through a frost-webbed porthole into nothingness as the lantern flames jittered across the hull, dancing with their own shadows. She knew the fate that awaited them: a few nights at most before the sea claimed them. She never forbade her women from laughter or song until Reagan began the unforgotten melody of the Frostwraith Sea.

“The wind cuts sharp, the waves stand still, the ice begins to ring….And through the dark of winter’s throat the Frostbound start to sing.” Reagan’s voice threaded through the air, warm at first, then wrong.

The Commodore didn’t move, but her voice struck like a blade. “Why do you sing that song, Reagan?”

The shanty died instantly. So did every smile.

“Why not?” Reagan snorted, trying to dispel the tension. She strode to her long-time friend and clapped her gloved hand against the Commodore’s back. The leather softened the blow, but somehow the sound echoed, hollow, ominous, misplaced.

“That,” the Commodore whispered, “is the song of the Damned.”

Reagan lifted her chin. “Aren’t we damned already? Stuck here until the winter subsides?”

“The cold will not leave us now.” The Commodore’s eyes closed, breath trembling. “Not now. Not after you…” Her jaw tightened. “You called them, Reagan.”

A ripple of unease tore through the twenty women huddled in the hull.

The ship groaned, deep, long, wrong.

“That isn’t the ship…” the Commodore breathed.

“What is it then?” Angeline asked—young, red-haired, naive. A bardess who should have known better. “What’s making that sound?”

The Commodore’s eyes snapped open. “The Frostbound.”

At once, the hull fell silent. Not even the rasp of the women’s icy breath dared disturb the air.

The groaning deepened. No… not groaning. Singing.

A low, resonant hum vibrated through the boards beneath their boots, too deep for human throats, too ancient for mortal memory. It pulsed like a heartbeat trapped beneath the ice.

One voice. Then another. Then dozens, rising in a cold, harmonic tremor that rattled the lantern glass.

The Commodore exhaled one word, barely a breath: “They’ve answered…”

The Commodore braced one hand against the wall as the hum deepened, threading itself through marrow and mind. A chill of something older crept up her spine. The lanterns flickered, shrinking back as if the flame itself feared the sound rising beneath them.

The hull trembled enough to shift something inside her chest she had locked away seasons ago.

“Commodore?” Angeline whispered. “What…what do they want?”

She wanted to answer, but the hum slid behind her eyes, turning cold thought into colder memory.

A shoreline. A storm of ice. A hand slipping from hers into black. A voice, familiar, beloved, calling her name as the sea swallowed him whole.

The Frostbound’s harmony rose, and the past grew with it. “Hush now…hear the Frostbound sing, under ice where shadows cling. Still your voice and guard your mind. The Frostbound came for what’s left behind.”

Reagan stepped forward, reaching for her. “Leyna, Commodore. Stay with us.”

The Commodore flinched at her touch, breath sharp. “They don’t sing for the living,” she rasped. “They sing for those we’ve lost. They’re coming for us.”

As if to answer her, the Frostbound shifted their tune, a new tone echoing up from the depths, a fractured melody that did not belong to the sea. “Our song is made of stolen breaths, of men who froze below. A harmony of broken hearts, the living shouldn’t know.”

Angeline gasped. “This isn’t a shanty… someone else is singing with them.”

The Commodore’s blood iced over. She knew that voice.

“Kai…” she whispered, barely sound, barely breath. The name she had not spoken since the night the Frostwraith Sea took him. The lantern nearest her shattered, flame snuffed in an instant. Above them, the deck creaked under a weight that should not be there.

Reagan’s face blanched. “They’re…they’re climbing the hull.”

The singing stopped. And the silence left was somehow worse.

Long after the crew had dispersed for the evening, trying not to hear the sounds above, a soft pattering broke the silence from the narrow sleeping corridor behind them. Reagan stiffened. “Who’s awake?”

The Commodore turned slowly and felt her stomach drop. Yora.

The child stood barefoot in the corridor’s mouth, her thin nightshirt trembling with every breath. Frost had already crept across the floorboards beneath her feet, spiraling outward from where she stood. Her pupils were blown wide, reflecting lanternlight like shards of obsidian.

“Yora,” the Commodore whispered. “Little one…why are you out of bed?”

The girl didn’t blink. Didn’t look at her, didn’t look at any of them. She was listening. A faint melody, almost too soft to hear, threaded up through the boards and wrapped around Yora’s ankles like a ghostly tide.

“Papa?” she breathed.

The Commodore’s chest constricted. “No…” she whispered. “Yora, that’s not—”

“It is.” The girl stepped forward, her voice distant, dreamlike. “He’s singing. Papa is singing. He said—he said I shouldn’t be afraid.”

Reagan swore and lunged for her, but the Commodore shot out an arm, halting her with a force that surprised even herself.

“Don’t touch her,” the Commodore hissed.

The humming below twisted into something warmer, gentler, unbearably familiar, a lullaby carried on winter wind. A father’s voice layered atop the Frostbound’s harmony, coaxing the child closer.

Yora reached toward the ladder leading topside.

“Papa,” she murmured. “I’m coming.”

The Commodore’s heart cracked open.

She strode forward, dropping to her knees beside the girl. “Yora. Look at me.” No response. “Yora, please. Listen—” her voice broke. “They’re not your father.”

The girl’s eyes, glassy, faraway, turned toward her at last. And for a moment, the Commodore saw him reflected there. Kai.

Smiling.

Reaching.

Welcoming her home.

The Commodore staggered back as if stuck.

Reagan grabbed her shoulder. “Leyna, what did you see?”

Before she could answer, a scrape tore across the deck above them, heavy, clawed, slow. The unmistakable sound of something pulling itself over the railing. The melody below fell silent.

Then, three deafening knocks thundered directly above the hatch. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Yora’s head lifted.

“They’re here.”

The hatch burst open with a violent crack, the cold air exploding down the ladder like a living thing as if winter itself had claws. Every light was snuffed out, leaving only the silver streak of the full moon.

“Yora!” the Commodore roared, launching up the steps two at a time.

Her boots hit the deck, and she stopped dead.

The world above was a cathedral of ice. Frost had spread thick across every surface, encasing ropes and rails in crystalline webs. Snow whirled in a tight spiral above the ship as though trapped in its own private storm. Lanterns hung frozen mid-sway, flames stilled in a moment of impossible suspension.

And in the center of it, Yora stood barefoot in the storm, staring up at the beings that surrounded her.

The Frostbound.

They were taller than any man, pallid and sleek like creatures carved from ancient winter itself. Their skin was grey, with a faint blue shimmer, as though ice flowed beneath it rather than blood. Plates of frost clung to their shoulders and ribs like armor. Their hair hung in tendrils made of frozen mist.

And their eyes, white, pupil-less, glowing faint as moonlit snow.

When one opened its mouth, only darkness stared back.

Reagan stumbled up behind the Commodore and screamed. “To arms! All hands—on deck!”

Women poured up from below, blades drawn, makeshift weapons in hand, slipping on the frost but refusing to fall. The Frostbound didn’t flinch. They sang.

A deep, resonant chord vibrated out of their chests, twisting the air, warping the storm, burrowing into the crew’s minds. A few women gasped, clutching their heads as old memories tore open like wounds: “Mothers calling from distant shores, lost sisters drowning beneath waves, babies’ cries swallowed by winter storms, lovers’ final breaths frozen on their lips.”

“Do not listen!” the Commodore roared, slicing her blade upward as the nearest Frostbound lunged.

Steel met ice, sparks bursting into the storm. The creature reeled back but did not bleed.

Reagan charged past her, hacking at another’s arm. Frost cracked but did not break. “Leyna, they’re too strong!”

“They’re not flesh,” the Commodore snarled through gritted teeth, kicking another creature square in the chest. It slid back across the deck like a skating ghost. “They’re memory made manifest!”

A scream tore across the deck, one of the younger sailors falling to their knees, clutching their ears as the Frostbound’s voices dragged her into a vision of her dead brother.

The Commodore grabbed the girl’s arm and shoved her behind the mast. “Stay awake! Stay with me!”

But the Frostbound pressed closer, circling Yora like wolves around a lamb.

The child held her trembling hands out toward the nearest one. “I hear him,” she whispered. “He’s calling me.”

The Commodore surged forward, but a massive Frostbound intercepted her, its clawed hand lifting to her throat. The darkness inside its mouth quivered. A voice, Kai’s voice, whispered: “Leyna…come home.”

Her heart stopped.

Then her fury ignited.

“I buried you once,” she growled, wrenching free and driving her blade into the creature’s jaw. “I will not do it twice.”

The creature shuddered, a sound like ice fracturing across a lake.

Across the deck, the crew fought back viciously, axes biting into frozen limbs, ropes whipping through the air, boots crunching across frost. But for every Frostbound they knocked down, two more rose from the edge of the ship.

The Commodore realized the truth, they were not here to kill the crew. They were here to take Yora.

And they were calling her with the voice of her dead father.

“Yora!” she shouted, sprinting through the melee.

But a Frostbound reached for the child first. It cupped her face in its glacial hand. Yora’s breath fogged as she whispered: “Papa…?”

The creature leaned closer. And the storm around them roared.

The storm hit its crescendo.

Snow whipped in violent spirals as the Frostbound closed in around Yora, their hollow mouths widening, their song deepening into a single bone-rattling note. The ice beneath the ship groaned, the entire Frostwraith Sea responding to their call.

“No!” the Commodore screamed.

She hurled herself forward, slamming her shoulder into the nearest Frostbound. The creature staggered, frost crackling along its ribs. Reagan and two others rushed in behind her, swinging axes and blades with precision.

“Get her back!” Reagan shouted. “Pull her away!”

But the Frostbound didn’t retreat.

They tightened the circle. One raised its hand toward the clouds. Ice spiraled downward, forming jagged spikes along its forearm. Another dropped to all fours, frost rippling across the deck like living veins.

“Commodore!” someone cried out—but the howling wind swallowed the voice.

A Frostbound lunged.

The Commodore ducked, rolled beneath its arm, and slashed upward in a perfect arc, ice shattered across its chest like crystal glass.

It reared back, howling.

For a heartbeat, the tide shifted.

Then a second Frostbound grabbed Reagan from behind, dragging her backward toward the rail. She clawed the deck, boots slipping, shouting, “Leyna! They’re taking me—!”

The Commodore spun just in time to see Reagan hurled over the side.

“No—no—no—” the Commodore choked, stumbling toward the rail—but three Frostbound blocked her path.

Behind them, chaos erupted: The Commodore’s breath hitched as she realized—Her crew was falling. One by one. Memory by memory. Voice by voice.

Yora stood frozen at the center of it all, tears thawing against her cold cheeks. “Papa…please,” she whispered to the creature before her.

The Frostbound lowered its head toward her. White eyes glowing. The darkness in its mouth swirling like a vortex.

The Commodore charged.

She crashed into the Frostbound with a force she didn’t know she still possessed, knocking Yora loose from her grip. The girl stumbled backward into Angeline’s waiting arms.

“Take her below!” the Commodore ordered. “Now!”

Angeline grabbed Yora, dragging her toward the hatch—but the girl fought like she was being torn from life itself.

“He’s right there! Papa is right there! Let me go!” Her screams carved through the storm.

But Angeline hauled her downward, vanishing into the dark.

The Commodore turned back to the Frostbound, and for the first time, she saw them clearly. Not monsters or ghosts. Men. Men frozen by grief and made into something eternal. Bound by memory.

They moved in sync, circling her slowly, singing a low, mournful note that vibrated through her bones.

A note she had heard the night Kai died.

She raised her blade. Her breath steadied.

“If you want the girl,” she whispered to the storm, “you’ll have to go through me.”

The largest Frostbound tilted its head. Recognizing the challenge and accepting it.

Then the world erupted once more.

Ice exploded beneath her boots as the Frostbound launched forward. She met the fist with steel, sending shards of frost into the air. The second slammed her back against the mast. The third clutched her arm, draining the warmth from her skin.

But still, she fought. With love for the child she protected.

One last strike. One last scream.

Her blade tore through the final Frostbound’s throat.

There was a blinding flash, a sound like ice shattering across a continent, and then...silence.

The Frostbound collapsed around her in heaps of glacial fragments, their song dying in a final exhale of winter wind.

The Commodore fell to her knees. The sea was littered with bodies. Her crew. Her sisters. Her world.

And the storm, at last, began to calm.

Eerie and black was the night upon the distant wake of the ice-covered sea. The moon had vanished with the Frostbound. With Yora. With the entirety of the Commodore’s crew. No bodies remained aboard the vessel, except Leyna’s.

Cold, she lay upon the frozen floorboards of her ship, breath a faint wisp in the frigid dark. Ice spidered beneath her palms, as though winter itself reached to claim her.

Above, the sky was a vast, starless void. And for the first time in all her years at sea…there was no song.

Leyna pushed herself upright. Frost fell from her coat like spent memories as she staggered to the mast. Her ship. Her kingdom. Her grave.

She lifted her chin, voice low but unbroken. “Let it be remembered,” she whispered, “that I stood my ground.”

A tremor stirred across the ice. A hum began in the deep, ancient, and inevitable. Leyna faced the horizon. “I am Leyna Greywind,” she murmured. “Commodore of the Ashen Gale. And I do not kneel.”

Frost wrapped her boots. Her legs. Her ribs. A captain’s final shroud. She did not flinch. Her last breath left her lips in a glittering plume. A note. A memory. A melody. The storm parted.

Figures emerged from the mist. Tall and pallid, crowned in winter. The Frostbound.

They did not reclaim her. They only bowed, silent and solemn in honor of their fallen queen.

And the Commodore’s voice rose with theirs, proud and eternal: “A captain always answers the sea. And the sea never forgets.”