Blood & Barnacles: A Nautical Dark Fantasy of Rebellion, Godships, and Sea-Bound Betrayal

Before there were sails, there were teeth.
Before there were maps, there were monsters.
And before any man carved a name into the sea, the sea had already named itself: Hunger.

They say the ocean is blue. It isn't.
It's black.
Black as oil, black as old gods and broken promises.

Long ago, when the stars still hung low enough to kiss the water, the Drowned Kings ruled the endless tides. They rode ships made from leviathan ribs and stitched their sails from whale skin. They spoke to the moon. They drank storms like wine. They owned the sea-not as a sailor owns a boat, but the way a throat owns a scream.

Their names are all but forgotten now. Swallowed.
But the sea remembers.

It remembers King Aratheon the Silent, who cast his crown into a volcano and fed his crew to the fire to summon rain.
It remembers Queen Sypha of the Broken Bell, who could raise ghost fleets from fog and bone.
And it remembers the last of them-Oron the Hollow, who built a throne from coral and teeth... and who vanished when the Empire came.

They didn't kill him.
They couldn't.
They simply poured iron into the ocean until the water screamed-and the gods who lived there sank into silence.

That was a hundred years ago.

Now, ships sail safe. Trade flows. The Empire rules the coasts. The world forgets.
But the sea? The sea is patient.

It's been waiting.
Watching.

And somewhere-far beneath the Shattered Strait-something stirs.

The tide is shifting.
The drowned will rise.
And their new queen... will not be born from gold or blood or crown-

She will be born from silence.