[o] salt still in the wound

with each love i cut loose i was never the same

The sky ripples with sails where stars should be. Torchline’s port, usually alive with sunworn fishermen and reckless teenagers launching off the rocks, is now a mosaic of panicked landings and overloaded decks. Flora stands beside Hadama at the edge of the dunes, skirts pressed by the salt wind, one hand resting lightly against the curve of a ration crate as if pretending it’s just another market day.

But this is not a market day.

This is the world collapsing one flight path at a time.

Already, the emergency stations are set; she and the Tidebreaker had started preparing as soon as they'd heard Vox's broadcast, their efforts hastened and guided by the letter they'd received shortly thereafter from Koa. Pre-packed food parcels stacked and labelled in Hadama’s meticulous script. Bottles of fountainwater glint beneath stretched canopies. Hand-bound scrolls with hastily inked maps pointing to refugee housing and safe havens.

"I'll keep watch for anyone infected," Flora murmurs to Hadama without looking away from the ships. Her voice is low, steady. "If I see anything, I’ll flag the guards."

She breathes in deep, briny air burning at the back of her throat. Her spine straightens. The fear—bright and sharp and entirely impractical right now—gets folded up and pressed beneath the polished smile she wears as the next wave of refugees steps onto the sand.

"Welcome to Torchline," she says, voice golden and steady, even as her heart hammers. "You’re safe now."

It was not that no one could have predicted this day. It was that they had been lulled into a false sense of complacence by how comparatively quietly Dahlia's hand had rested upon Stormbreak's tiller. Now the storm was upon them and the very keel of that ancient region was cracking beneath the strain. Many of tts people - proud, insular, learned, and traumatized - given the options to submit or flee had largely chosen flight, and there had been no hesitation in either leader to offer them a safe harbor.

The Tidebreaker's face was solemn but serenely stoic, and no one who could read otherwise was near enough to sense the storm within, darkening with every new shipful of desperate refugees who landed with tales of terror. Of injuries sustained or loved ones lost in the second Tower's fall.

It was not the first time that he and Flora had worked together to create stations around Haulani and Kaiholo, and they had worked swiftly and well with their staff to stock supplies of food, of hygiene, of clothing and small comforts for those who would arrive in disarray.

"The guards, or myself," he replied to Flora just as quietly. "And I will teleport them to the Climb." He did not care to have any Family spies in Torchline just now, no matter that it was not their fault. The Climb would be unpleasant and take time for them to leave, but it would probably not kill them. Not if he dropped them in Frey's Breath, at least.

He stayed quiet as Flora handled the greetings and the assurances, offering his own presence as a demigod of Safrin as much as King to calm those arriving. The dark scales of his hippocampus shift rippled over his bare arms and back, sparkling with distant stars and nebulae and the starlit tines of his trident were a beacon promising protection and safe haven beneath the goddess's mantle.

There is love inside this madness
We are walking on the moon

Flora and Hadama had not been the only ones to receive a letter from Koa; so, too, had the Luminary.

The collapse of the Tower had been unexpected. Soh wasn't sure why she'd thought that the Family would largely leave Stormbreak intact - but hearing of the Tower's destruction had rocked her to her core. Her office had once been there; she'd spent more time in the Tower some weeks than in her apartment. It might have been cold and intimidating, but it had been hers once. To think of it gone was heartbreaking.

Thinking of the lives lost and the people displaced was worse.

Sohalia flitted here and there amongst the refugees, handing out rations and helping with directions. She'd followed Flora and Hadama's lead - they were the rulers here, after all. But these were her people once, and she had to do something to help them. Even if doing something felt like too little, too late.

Though I don't believe in magic
I believe in me and you

Sohalia

with each love i cut loose i was never the same

The beach becomes a mosaic of movement and murmurs, of barked orders and grateful tears. Guards line the edges of the dunes, directing foot traffic toward the canopies and rest stations set up further inland. Some arrive upright, clutching bags with trembling hands and heads held high despite the ash streaking their cheeks. Others collapse onto the sand with the stunned exhaustion of those who’ve run too long without looking back.

Torchers rally like tidepools forming around the broken. A pair of teenagers rush forward with baskets of bread, still steaming from home ovens. A fisherman's wife gently wraps a shawl around the shoulders of an older man staring out at the sea. Someone’s brought song—not loud, not triumphant, but something warm and humming and familiar—and it weaves between tents and tarps like a balm.

Children cry. Parents cling. The air is thick with salt, sweat, and the acrid tang of old fear, but no one is turned away. And in the midst of it all, beneath the weight of loss and the machinery of aid, Flora’s golden bangles glint like small promises, Hadama’s trident catches the sunlight, and Sohalia’s voice lifts gently over the bustle, asking if anyone’s hungry, if anyone needs a place to rest. Together, Torchline makes space.

It isn’t peace, it isn’t justice, but for tonight, it’s enough.

~FIN