THE RED SEA

THE RED SEA 2

Kade learned that in Murmansk, six months after the sea swallowed the Gate. The bar was called _Led_, Russian for “ice.” Fitting. He didn’t drink, but he kept the bottles full and the door unlocked. Soldiers came. Young ones, old ones, mercs, deserters. All with the same question carved into their faces: _What does it take to be the Cold Prince?_

He’d pour them vodka, watch their hands shake or stay still, and tell them the truth. “It takes knowing when to put the gun down.”

They never liked that answer. Men who come to Murmansk in winter aren’t looking for peace. They’re looking for permission.

*Six Months After: The Knock*

The knock came at 3AM. Three taps. Military cadence.

Reyes stood in the snow, thinner, eyes hollow. She hadn’t slept right since the Red Sea. None of them had. You don’t watch an ocean hang in the air and sleep easy after.

“It’s happening again,” she said. No hello. No preamble. “Adriatic this time. Same walls. Same Gate. Different ocean, same nightmare.”

Kade didn’t invite her in. The cold was honest. “I’m retired.”

“Mercer’s not.” She threw a tablet on the bar. The screen lit up the ice in his windows. Satellite feed: two walls of water off the coast of Croatia. Higher than the Red Sea. And bodies already washing up. Face down. Running. “He’s there. With a new team. New prince. Kid from Delta. Calls himself Frost.”

Kade looked at the feed. The Gate was bigger this time. The silver veins weren’t just bright. They were bleeding light into the water.

“They think they can control it,” Reyes said. “Pentagon, Mercer, this Frost kid. They think you were weak for closing it.”

Kade picked up his knife from behind the bar. Tsarist steel, older than both of them. It had a new notch from the Red Sea, right where it bit into the Gate. He ran a thumb over it. The edge was still perfect.

“Was I?” he asked.

Reyes didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Two thousand civilians didn’t die in Port Sudan because he chose not to take the Gate’s offer. They lived because he chose to drown a god instead.

“Where’s the team?” Kade asked.

“Five left. Winter’s got a leg full of titanium and a grudge. She’s in. The others… they’ll follow you into anything but hell. This might be hell.”

Kade set the knife down. The bar went quiet except for the harbor ice cracking outside. Then he picked the knife back up.

“I’m not going to fight it, Reyes.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to end it.”

*The Adriatic*

They dropped into Split under cover of a NATO “humanitarian exercise.” The city was empty. Evacuated in 12 hours when the sea stood up. The walls of water were 400 meters here. You could hear them from 10 klicks out. Not crashing. Breathing.

Frost was waiting on the dry seabed. Twenty-five. Clean. Unscarred. The kind of soldier who’d never had to choose between a mission and a city.

“Colonel Markov,” Frost said. “Heard you retired.”

“Heard you volunteered,” Kade replied.

Behind Frost: Mercer. Same suit. No age. No scratch from the Red Sea. Some things don’t drown.

“You can’t keep closing doors, Prince,” Mercer said. “Evolution doesn’t stop because you’re scared of it.”

“Evolution doesn’t ask for funerals,” Kade said. “You do.”

The Gate was awake. Bigger. Hungrier. The sphere was already red, already turning to face them. But it didn’t turn to Frost.

It turned to Kade.

_Kholodnyy Prints._

Frost saw it. His hand went to his sidearm. Young. Fast. Stupid.

Kade didn’t draw. Winter did. One round, Frost’s shoulder, non-lethal. Message sent.

“You don’t get to be him,” Kade told Frost. “You haven’t paid.”

The shadows came early this time. Not from the Gate. From the water walls. They peeled off like pieces of the ocean learning to walk. Tactics. Wars. Genocides with legs.

Mercer smiled. “See? It’s adapting. It wants you. It _needs_ you.”

Kade looked at Reyes. At Winter. At the three others who followed him into hell. Then he looked at the Gate.

He walked to it. Not with his knife. With empty hands.

The sphere pulsed. The whispers became a roar. Every battle he’d ever fought, every boy he couldn’t save, every second of ash in Port Sudan. It offered to take it all away. Offered to give him the power to never lose again.

Kade put his forehead against the cold stone.

“You want a prince?” he whispered. “Then you listen to your prince.”

He didn’t stab it. He didn’t break it.

He gave it an order.

“Close.”

The silver veins flared white, then black. The sphere didn’t shatter. It obeyed. The water walls didn’t fall. They lowered. Like curtains at the end of a play.

The shadows screamed and became mist.

Mercer stared. “You… commanded it?”

“I told you,” Kade said. “Powerful doesn’t mean you fight.”

He turned his back on the Gate and walked toward his team.

Prepare yourself men..!