The Reckoning Tides

A dead patch of ocean is strangling the port city of Selvreth—water that refuses to move, boats frozen mid-voyage, and now entire crews trapped in living stasis. Piet Walgren, a dockworker turned reluctant salvager, discovers the horror firsthand when he finds conscious sailors locked inside their own motionless bodies. As the phenomenon spreads, Piet must confront an ancient oceanic intelligence demanding repayment for centuries of borrowed motion—a debt measured not in gold, but in the stillness of everything the city has ever known.