And then he was gone. The silent tide finally released its own.

He fell onto the deck of the Silent Mary —a dead man, finally, truly dead. His crew crumbled into salt and bone. The ship groaned and began to sink into calm, ordinary water.

Every pirate ship they found, they erased. No wreckage. No survivors. Only a strange, oily stillness on the water and the faint scent of Spanish incense.