The rope had already been prepared.
The prisoner had not yet arrived.
Stacy watched a royal clerk fasten a proclamation beneath the gallows.
STACY:
“They’re hanging a pirate.”
CAELWYN:
“They are.”
She read another line.
STACY:
“He attacked enemy ships.”
CAELWYN:
“He did.”
STACY:
“He sailed under the King’s commission.”
CAELWYN:
“He did.”
She lowered the paper.
STACY:
“Then why is he dying?”
Caelwyn looked toward the harbor.
Merchant ships drifted peacefully where warships had anchored only months before.
CAELWYN:
“Read the date.”
Silence.
STACY:
“The war ended.”
CAELWYN:
“Yes.”
She looked back at the gallows.
STACY:
“So yesterday…”
“…he served the Crown.”
Caelwyn nodded.
STACY:
“And today…”
“…he serves as an example.”
A long silence.
The tide slowed beneath the pier.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
Every wave simply…
stopped.
Dockworkers kept shouting.
Children kept laughing.
Nobody looked toward the water.
Stacy did.
STACY:
“…Did you see that?”
Caelwyn never took his eyes from the sea.
CAELWYN:
“The law changed.”
Another pause.
CAELWYN:
“I wonder…”
“…did justice?”
Far beyond the harbor—
something moved beneath the calm surface.
Too large to be a whale.
Too slow to be a wave.
The sea did not answer.
It only remembered.
🜍 THE PRICE OF INDEPENDENCE
A king’s seal can make violence legal.
A treaty can make the same man a pirate.
Perhaps freedom has never depended on paper.
Only on the price someone is willing to pay for it.
If you remember what this felt like—
you already know what you’re missing.
Raise the black flag.
Or keep watching from the shore.
👉 https://startplaying.games/gm/dunchan
Want to go deeper?
Then don’t stop at the surface.
The full stories.
The historical research.
The forgotten charts.
The debts hidden beneath the tide.