"Sailing the seas was the worst decision your father ever made."

A small family of two sat around a dining table in their modest family home. The food in front of them was scarce.

Roseus had purposely taken less food than he wanted, so that his mother could eat more.

Yet that didn’t save him from having to hear her nagging about his father.

"Becoming King of the Gods and pirates... pfftt," she mocked her husband’s dreams. "What sort of king has a family back home, eating stale bread and vegetable soup?"

As always, Roseus remained silent whilst his mother ranted about his father, Captain Redeye. From his memories, his father was no way near as deplorable as she tried to make him out to be.

It was true that he abandoned his family to become a criminal and sail the eight oceans, but the reasons were not as simple as she made them out to be.

Captain Redeye had apparently received a prophecy that he or a member of his bloodline would become not only King of the Seas, like many men and women wished to achieve, but also King of the Gods who controlled the seas.

Roseus always thought that it was a prophecy worth setting out to the seas for.

His mother, Clare, took a swig of alcohol from a glass bottle. No matter how poor they were, she always seemed to have enough to purchase that.

"Listen, Rose. Make sure to never even think about following in the footsteps of your father. No matter how much the world glamorises the pirate life, there is no hope there. Only inevitable death. When you turn eighteen, join the Navy like your older brother. That way, you can make the world a better place."

Roseus almost threw up on the floor.

He was no pirate, but he was also certainly not a Navy lover. He hated the navy, regardless of what jurisdiction they came from. They were the Halo Empire’s dogs who not only hunted pirates, but also any other adventurer that might want to set out to the seas without permission from the government.

Roseus stood up faster than intended, and his mother looked over at him with wide eyes.

He did his best to hide the annoyance on his face.

"Thanks for the food, Mum."

Clare looked down at her son’s plate and frowned. "But you didn’t even eat your soup?"

"I thought I was hungrier," he lied. In truth, he was starving, but simply had no desire to be around his mother any longer.

The half-drunk woman shrugged her shoulders and reached forward to take his plate.

"More for me then. You can go."

With that, Roseus headed next door and entered his tiny room, closing the door behind him.

His room was just as modest as the rest of his house. It consisted of a mattress on the floor, and piles of clothes scattered around with no other place to go.

From the window of his room, he could see the stretch of the waters. The one good thing about his house was its position atop a hill, far from the closest city. This allowed him to see the First Ocean in all of its glory.

Its surface shimmered under the setting sun, incredibly vast beyond comprehension.

The Halo Empire itself was shaped unlike any other land. It was a colossal ring of continent, encircling a body of water so large that no man had ever travelled it in full.

That water was known as the Eight Oceans.

They were not separate seas in the usual sense, but rather part of a much larger thing.

Each ocean formed a ring within the next, stretching inward toward a distant, unseen center.

To sail deeper towards the center was to pass from one ocean into another. The First Ocean, all the way to the Eighth Ocean.

And with each crossing, the sea changed.

The waters became more dangerous the more one travelled. Pirates with bounties so high that their deaths could feed a city sailed these seas. Creatures that could devastate entire countries soared beneath its depth. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

There were eight oceans in total, each more dangerous than the last. And at the center of them all lay something no one who might have reached it had ever returned to describe.

Yet every year, thousands of men and women continued to set sail, despite the Halo Navy’s warning that they would incriminate themselves, in hopes of reaching the Eighth Ocean.

Roseus sighed as he watched the seas of the First Ocean. His father had left behind a spyglass before setting out to the seas, which he had always treasured and used for sightseeing.

Through the spyglass, in the distance, he saw navy ships of various sizes, hoping that anyone might pass through their territory so that they could destroy them with canon fire, Treasures, and magic.

Pirates often had to take roundabout routes if they hoped to set sail, otherwise they would almost inevitably be caught by the navy. Once caught, their fate would be decided by the jurisdiction that caught them.

However, as he watched the flowing seas, he spotted something peculiar. From his knowledge, such a thing shouldn’t have been possible.

Far in the distance, a ship sailed through a pair of navy ships with no difficulty. It was almost as though the steam-powered navy ships didn’t spot it.

Roseus thought for a moment, could the ship belong to the navy? But that didn’t make sense. It was waving a flag, just like the pirates did, except it was too far away to make out anything of its design or crew.

He stopped looking through the spyglass for a moment and wiped his eyes, hoping to see just how far away the ships really were.

That was when he realised that something was truly wrong.

The ship was no longer there. It had disappeared.

"What... But it was just there?"

He looked through his spyglass again, and all of a sudden, the ship reappeared. In fact, it was much closer than before.

Close enough to see the design of the flag.

A black background with a red eye in its centre.

Roseus wondered if he was going insane.

That was the flag of his father’s ship. The Redeye Pirates.

~~~

BlessedPen: Chapters with a "*" after the title include details of the crews skills and progression.