Ravensblood Forest the seas did not forgive, and they did not welcome their wayward children home

The woman’s kindness was wasted on someone like him. She should not have shared her food or offered him any form of companionship – no matter how temporary it might have seemed. There were far greater things at play. The keeper of the trench had requested that he collect souls for her. Smokestep could not refuse, of course. He had been made into one of her very best dredges. He had already claimed the lives of so many others for the keeper. Still, she sought more. Something within him recognized that this green-eyed woman would have made an ideal addition to the crew, but something deeper prevented him from luring her to the waters.
 
The response that she offered him was peculiar for a number of reasons. Sandpiper scoffed at his side, having reappeared for a brief moment to dwell on the foolishness of communing with spirits. Even Smokestep was not certain that he understood what the stranger meant with her word. “Spirits…” he echoed back to her in a sullen tone. His head tilted to the left ever so slightly as confusion etched across his features.