She lay there now, beside the other two girls—finally at peace. Whatever agony had wrung their bodies, whatever torment had twisted their last breaths, it didn't matter now. I had them. I'd carry them one by one out of that hell and give them the respect they'd been denied in life. Four more to go. And then, only then, would I let myself burn this place and everything in it.
I stepped back into the cabin.
The stench hit me once more—alcohol, sweat, decay—but I forced it down. I didn't let it register. Not the half-empty bottles, not the broken glass that crunched beneath my boots. Not the captain's wretched snores rolling out from the dark corner like a reminder that evil could still sleep peacefully while innocence died in pieces.
But I couldn't think about him. Not yet. Not while the girls still waited.
She was in the corner. Crumpled. Abandoned. Like a toy a child had broken and lost interest in. Her limbs lay splayed, awkward and stiff, her hair matted and clinging to her face with dried blood. Her skin was sallow, her lips parted slightly as if she had been caught mid-breath, or maybe mid-plea. Her eyes stared nowhere. Nothing was left in them.
I knelt beside her, the rage already swelling again in my chest. But I pushed it down—again. Rage could wait. For now, she deserved gentleness.
I moved her carefully, slowly turning her over to her stomach.
And that's when I saw it.
A long, jagged splinter of wood—thick, ugly, stained—pierced straight through her chest, embedded deep like some cruel final nail. It jutted out from between her shoulder blades, almost grotesquely proud of itself. My stomach turned, and not because of the gore.
This wasn't from a weapon. This wasn't from the pirates.
This was from the cannon I had fired.
This was from me.
Was she already dead before it hit her? Had the splinter torn through lifeless flesh? Or had she still been breathing when it struck, when the explosion I caused sent that fragment tearing through her chest?
I didn't know.
And that uncertainty wrapped around my throat like wire. I wanted to tell myself she was gone already. That my hand didn't play a part in ending her life. But I couldn't know. I might never know.
All I could do was stare at the wood—recognize its grain, its shape, its unmistakable origin.
It came from the cannon I had fired.
And even if she had already been lost to this world, the idea that something meant to punish evil had touched her body, marked it, broke it further—it burned. I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt. My hands trembled, but not from fear. From grief. From guilt. From fury.
She didn't deserve that. Not from them. Not from me. Not from anyone.
I placed a hand on her back, just beside the splinter, careful not to press too hard. She felt light, frail, hollow. But even now—even like this—there was something sacred in the way she lay. A stillness that demanded reverence.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly.
Not just for the wood.
For everything. For nothing.
And I lifted her into my arms.
I laid her gently beside the others—now four of them, side by side. Their forms broken, their spirits stolen long before I ever set foot on this cursed ship. And still, I held onto the thought that maybe, in this final act, I could give them something—however small—that resembled dignity. That resembled peace.
My knees sank beside her as I whispered, barely loud enough for even the wind to hear.
"I'm sorry… for this."
I placed a hand over the splinter in her chest. It jutted from her body like a reminder of cruelty with no face. My fingers curled around it slowly. The wood was warm from her blood, still wet, still fresh—too fresh. I took a breath.
Then, carefully, I pulled.
The wood slid out with a soft, sickening sound, dragging ribbons of blood with it. Thick. Slow. The kind of blood that's seeped deep into tissue and muscle, where it had no business going. My hand trembled as I held the splinter up, now fully freed from her body. It dripped crimson, like it still remembered where it had been. Like it didn't want to forget.
She didn't flinch, of course. She couldn't. But I did. Inside. Because I could feel it—feel that this was wrong. She deserved to rest whole. She'd already been torn apart by monsters. By men. By circumstance. And now, here I was, taking something from her one last time.
I turned my head toward the crew, slowly, deliberately.
They were watching. And not with arrogance now. Not with hunger. But with fear. Real, rooted, primal fear. They saw me holding the bloodstained wood. Saw it drip onto the deck. And they understood something in that moment. Not in words, but in their bones.
That I could feel it.
That I wasn't some detached punisher, some executioner blind to the cost. I felt every wound they gave. I bore every mark they carved. Every bit of pain that she—and all of them—had endured, it now passed through me like a flame through dry leaves.
I looked at the splinter in my hand.
"This," I muttered, turning it slowly, "this will not go to waste."
They flinched. I almost smiled.
"I will carve every inch of that demon's body with this. Every tendon. Every muscle. I will strip him with what he left in her. I will feed his agony through the same pain he gave. I will make his skin remember her name."
I looked back down at the girl. Her face was still blank, but not empty. There was a kind of solemnity in it now. A final stillness. A strange peace, even among the wreckage. Maybe it was my imagination, but I liked to believe she knew.
"You deserve that," I whispered to her. "At the very least… you deserve that."
Then I stood. The splinter in my hand. Her blood still wet between my fingers.
And the promise of justice still heavy on my shoulders.