Billy's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Billy stepped through the archway and the cold changed. Not colder, but sharper, like the air had teeth. The purple glow lit the tunnel walls enough to see twenty feet ahead. Beyond that, shapes hung in the ice on both sides — dark forms pressed against the frozen surface like insects trapped in amber. He moved closer to the nearest shape, his breath fogging the ice. A hull. Wooden planks, curved and splintered, frozen mid-collapse. He pressed his paw against the wall and felt the cold burn through his fur. The ship wasn't beyond the ice — it was inside it, preserved in the moment it broke apart. He pulled out his journal with shaking paws and tried to sketch what he saw, but his pencil hovered over the page. This wasn't like the visions. This was real, solid, and it meant his family's treasure was here. But so was the wreck itself, and wrecks had causes. His family never mentioned how the ship sank. They never mentioned survivors. The silence in his memory felt heavier now. Then he saw it, ten feet deeper in the ice — a chest with metal corners and a carved clasp, tilted on its side with jewels spilling from a crack in the lid. Rubies caught the purple light. Emeralds glinted like frozen eyes. Billy's chest tightened. He'd found it. The treasure was real, exactly where the spirits had led him. But the spirits had gone quiet again, and now he understood why. They'd brought him to the answer, and the answer was this: his family's treasure sat in a tomb. Whatever happened here, someone had died for it. Maybe everyone. And his family had known.