PROLOGUE

The pigeon made no sense.

A seagull might fly a hundred miles from the coast, but they were much farther out than that, and this was certainly no seagull. Perhaps someone could have stowed a pigeon below deck, but the sailor had sharp eyes, and he knew what he had just seen: a pigeon flying toward him from the depths of the sea. It truly made no sense.

The inexplicable bird landed upon the boat’s railing, looking ruffled and no less confused by its current situation. The sailor collapsed his brass telescope, pocketing the instrument as he approached the pigeon, trying not to startle the creature. The hour was late, and no one but the man and the bird were above deck as they silently monitored each other’s cautious movements.

As he neared the seafaring flyer, the sailor noticed something else that made no sense: a rolled-up slip of paper, tied to the pigeon’s foot. He gently removed and unfurled the strange letter. Written in ink were three words and three words only.

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You were warned.

It was a message the sailor finally understood. And just as quickly, he understood the bird too. The epiphany was a bolt of lightning in a storm of his own making. He crumpled the letter in a weak fist and tossed it out to sea.

Had anyone else been on watch that night, they would not have noticed the subtle changes on the starry horizon. They would not have realized the calm breeze had faded to a fatal stillness, nor observed the faint lines forming in the air like spider-web cracks on a dropped glass. For their eyes were not as sharp as the sailor’s.

No, the trap would not have been apparent to a normal man until any hope of salvation was but a shadow behind him, as the sailor knew it was now.

What anyone would have undoubtedly witnessed, however, was the moment their colossal vessel tipped suddenly, groaning and cracking, ropes and crates bouncing down the wooden planks. What they would have seen—had they not been sleeping below deck—was their ship plummeting bow-first down the torrents of an endless ocean waterfall, as The Crimson Voyager fell ever deeper into the black abyss that had swallowed it.