Chapter 233: Into The Fog The crew members were gobsmacked. They stared at Vara in utter terror like she had lost her mind. "You... you’re mad," someone whispered hoarsely. "Captain, you want us to sail into that?" "That’s suicide!" "We’ll all die!" Vara’s expression remained firm. "My great-grandfather sailed there. He entered that wall and returned. Everything I’ve studied, every chart, every calculation... it all led here." She paused, then continued in an almost reverent tone. "I didn’t fully believe it existed until now. But seeing it..." She gestured at the impossibility before them. "Now I know he wasn’t mad. Now I know it’s real." Finn frowned slightly at her words. For a second he was almost convinced that she genuinely hadn’t known this place existed until this very moment. But then he remembered the meticulous detail of her charts, her precise calculations, the confidence with which she’d navigated these impossible waters. No. This was Vara simply being Vara. Telling the truth while carefully framing it in a way that would help the crew accept what they were facing. Revealing her end goal while making it seem like she was also just realizing it was real rather than being certain about it. But Vara didn’t get to finish her explanation. Finn’s frown deepened as he noticed something wrong. The ship was still moving. Forward. Toward the wall of white. Their sails were furled. Completely furled. There was no wind catching canvas, and neither was there any form of propulsion that could be driving them forward. Yet the Tidebreaker glided across the water like an invisible hand was pulling it along. Finn’s eyes narrowed as he gripped the rail, feeling the subtle acceleration. Within moments, other sailors noticed too, their fear-addled minds finally processing what was happening. "We’re... we’re moving!" someone shouted. "But the sails are—" "It’s pulling us in!" The observation spread through the crew like wildfire. Panic began to replace their previous fearful silence. Even Vara seemed genuinely surprised, her eyes widening as she looked at the furled sails, then at the water rushing past with increasing speed. This hadn’t been in any document, any log, or any account her great-grandfather had left behind. She glanced at Finn, and in that brief exchange, he saw genuine uncertainty flicker across her face. This was real surprise, not performance. The ship continued to pick up speed. "Lower the anchors!" someone screamed desperately. "We’re too far into deep seas! They won’t hold on to anything!" "I don’t care! Lower them!" Sailors scrambled toward the anchor mechanisms, their movements frantic and uncoordinated. Some were already crying, others shouting prayers to the Shadow God, and in fact any God at all as they tried quickly to lower the anchors. But even that desperate plan died before it could be executed as the Tidebreaker’s speed doubled, then tripled. The ship surged forward with enough force that crew members stumbled, grabbing onto rails and masts and rigging to keep from being thrown across the deck. Tools and loose equipment slid across the planks, clattering against bulkheads or disappearing over the sides and into the ocean. This was impossible. The Tidebreaker couldn’t reach these speeds even with the most favorable winds, even with every sail unfurled and catching perfectly. Every sailor here, including Finn whose first voyage this was, knew the ship’s capabilities extensively. They knew what it could and couldn’t do. Yet here they were, racing toward that white wall like a stone pulled into a whirlpool. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶 The acceleration continued to build relentlessly. Unstoppably. To make matters more weird and uncanny, the wind that should have been roaring past them at these speeds was eerily absent. In fact there was no violent spray of seawater. No violent pitching of the deck. They simply honed onward to the fog with smooth, impossible speed. The whole situation reminded Finn of a black hole. Except this was white. Just like a black hole, this also pulled them in like they were caught in an event horizon, and once they crossed it, nothing could save them... No wonder it’s called the Fog of No Return, Finn thought ominously as they sped forward into dangerous proximity of the fog. What had been a distant phenomenon now dominated their entire field of vision, rising endlessly upward and stretching infinitely in every direction. It wasn’t just blocking the horizon anymore... right now it was everything and the only thing they could see. This close, Finn could see that the wall wasn’t quite solid. It moved. Churned, perhaps, though so slowly and with such subtle shifts that it created an impression of stillness from a distance. Like looking at clouds that seemed frozen until you watched long enough to notice their creep across the sky. "Brace yourselves!" Vara’s commanding voice cut through the hysteric panic. "Everyone hold onto something! Hold fast!" She was trying to inject courage into her words, trying to be the captain her crew needed. But even she gripped the helm till her knuckles were white, her arms trembling from the force of holding steady. The sailors didn’t need to be told twice. They grabbed onto whatever they could — rails, masts, rigging, each other — and held on like their lives depended on it. Which it actually did. Several men wrapped their arms completely around support beams, legs locked around bases, creating human anchors. Many squeezed their eyes shut, as if not seeing the white wall would somehow protect them from it. As if darkness behind their eyelids was safer than witnessing what approached. Some were praying. Others were weeping silently, tears streaming down faces gone pale with terror. Finn kept his eyes open. He forced himself to watch, to observe, to catalog every detail even as every instinct screamed at him to look away. This was information. This was knowledge. And knowledge, even terrible knowledge, was better than ignorance. Vara kept her eyes open too, gaze firmly set and jaw clenched hard. Her hands never left the helm, even though steering had become meaningless. She stood at her post like a captain should, facing what came with her chin raised and her back straight. Across the deck, near the mainmast, Althea stood with one hand on the wood, the other arm extended to keep Ailin steady beside her. Her face showed the same determined fear that Finn felt. The conscious choice to witness rather than hide. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the mast, and her breathing came in controlled, measured breaths. The kind of breathing you did when you were fighting panic with everything you had. Only Ailin remained perfectly still and unmoved. The Mnemosyne stood as if the ship wasn’t accelerating at impossible speeds, as if they weren’t racing toward something that radiated wrongness into the very air. The white wall was mere meters away now. Ten meters. Five. Finn could feel his body tensing involuntarily. His muscles coiled. His breath caught. Every fiber of his being wanted him to move, to do something, to use his powers to escape. To activate [Frame Skip] and teleport away. But he couldn’t. He forced himself to remain motionless, gripping the navigation station until his knuckles ached. He sucked in an involuntary breath, physically recoiling subconsciously as the ship’s bow finally touched the wall... And then the fog swallowed them.