Read Codextober 2025 :: System

A Lost Memory of Edward Kenway

MEMORY START

I. The Weight of Water

They say the sea forgives all sins.
They lie.

The sea remembers. It holds every cry, every cannon blast, every name whispered to the depths. It’s a ledger, like any other — only the ink runs blacker.

I’ve spent near fifteen years upon her skin, from Bristol to Havana, from the blood of the Spanish Main to the calm of the Bahama shallows. I’ve fought kings, Templars, Assassins, and friends.

But lately, I find myself asking what any of it means.

Freedom, we used to call it.
But freedom without purpose feels a bit like sailing without stars.

II. Nassau

When I returned to Nassau, the dream was gone.

The streets that once rang with laughter were empty. The taverns smelled of rot and regret. Charles Vane’s gallows still stood in the square, the rope swaying in the breeze like a finger wagging from hell.

Thatch was dead. Rackham gone. Mary — Anne — vanished to the wind.

The Republic of Pirates, they’d called it. Our own little Eden.
But Eden rots when every man fancies himself a god.

I walked the dock, boots heavy, coat ragged. A boy no older than I was when I first took to sea watched me pass. His eyes were hungry — not for food, but for something worth believing in.

I gave him a coin and nothing more.

III. The Creed’s Shadow

In Havana, the Assassins still skulked in the alleys, whispering of liberty while drawing their blades for order.

Kidd had spoken of them like saints.
But to me, they seemed just another system dressed in virtue’s rags.

Still, part of me wondered — perhaps that’s what I lacked. A system.
Something greater than plunder or pride.

When I was a boy, my mother told me systems were what separated man from beast. Rules, laws, order.
But my father — when he was sober — said systems were chains made of ink and coin.

Now, standing between them, I see both were right.

IV. The Letter

We anchored the Jackdaw off a small cove near Andros Island. The crew was restless — too many weeks without a prize, too many ghosts in their sleep.

A courier boat found us there, carrying a letter sealed with wax I hadn’t seen in years.
A black seal. Assassin’s crest.

It read:

“Captain Kenway, the Order moves in Kingston. The Templars gather relics to strengthen their dominion. You’ve seen their ambition — their system of control. Help us end it. There is payment, if that comforts you.”

Signed: Ah Tabai.

Payment. Always that word.

But it wasn’t the gold that caught my eye. It was the phrase system of control.

It stank of Templars, yes — but also of something deeper.
Maybe, I thought, this was a way to understand the world that kept slipping between my fingers.

V. The Prisoner

We reached Kingston at dawn. The harbor was calm, the air heavy with sugar and smoke.

Our mark was a man named Richard Howe — a merchant under the Templar banner, said to be shipping relics to London.

We struck at night, silent as sharks.

When the smoke cleared, only one ship remained above water — his.

We found Howe below deck, bleeding but alive.
He looked me in the eye and said, “You think the world can run without a hand upon the wheel?”

I said, “Aye. That’s how it learns to steer.”

He laughed through blood. “Without system, there is no peace. Men crave order like breath.”

“And if order strangles them?” I asked.

“Then they thank you for the rope.”

I struck him across the face — not from anger, but to stop myself from agreeing.

VI. The Hidden Room

In Howe’s cabin, beneath the floorboards, we found a chest lined with lead and symbols — Templar script, mixed with something older.

Inside lay a disk of silver and glass, humming faintly with light. It shone like the dawn but colder.

Kidd would’ve called it a relic.
I called it a problem.

Adéwalé urged me to toss it to the depths. “It’s a curse,” he said. “No man should meddle with such.”

But I kept it. Not for greed — though I’d be lying to say the thought never crossed my mind — but for curiosity.

If systems ruled the world, I wanted to see what made them tick.

VII. The Voice

That night, I dreamed of a voice — not man, not woman, something between storm and whisper.

“You are chaos,” it said. “Born without design, moving without reason. Yet even chaos serves a system.”

I woke with sweat and a hangover of fear.

The disk pulsed faintly beside my bunk, as if it had a heartbeat.

Adéwalé wouldn’t go near it. He said it was the voice of the First Ones — those who built men like houses and left the doors open.

Maybe he was right.
Or maybe the voice was my own guilt, dressed in thunder.

VIII. The Governor’s Ball

Word came that the Templars were hosting a gathering in Kingston — governors, admirals, men of coin and cruelty.

I shaved, dressed the part, and went as a guest.
Old habits die hard — deceit, especially.

In that gilded hall, beneath chandeliers worth more than any ship, I heard them speak plainly.

“The Brotherhood flounders,” said one. “The pirates are broken. Soon the world will know only one system — the Order’s.”

“Order brings peace,” said another.

“Peace built on obedience,” said a third.

I drank their wine and smiled. But in my heart, I felt the sea rising.

When the dance ended, I slipped away and stole their ledgers.
Every system bleeds when you cut the right vein.

IX. Adéwalé

He found me on deck after the raid, staring at the relic again.

“You chase the same chains you broke, Edward,” he said.

“I only want to understand them.”

“Understanding becomes worship soon enough.”

He turned to go, then paused. “Freedom without purpose is just driftwood. Purpose without freedom is a prison. Find the middle, before both drown you.”

He left me with the relic — and my reflection in it.

X. The Storm

Two nights later, the storm came.

Winds like knives, rain that beat the sea into glass.
The Jackdaw groaned under the weight of it, her masts screaming.

We lost two men to the waves before I even reached the helm.

And then the relic began to glow again — bright enough to blind. The compass spun like a mad thing.

I could swear I heard the voice again:

“See the system, Captain. The order beneath chaos. Every storm has a pattern — even you.”

For a heartbeat, I saw it — not the sea, but something behind it: a web of light, each drop of rain connected to the next, moving in rhythm.
A perfect, terrible harmony.

Then the mast snapped, and the world became water.

XI. The Shore

I woke on a beach, alone.
The Jackdaw was gone — her crew, her guns, her song.

Only the relic lay beside me, half-buried in sand.

I thought to cast it into the waves, but my arm refused.
Instead, I built a fire and stared into it until dawn.

That voice haunted me still.
Every storm has a pattern.

I realized then that I’d been chasing storms all my life — picking fights with kings, Orders, gods — anything to prove I could not be contained.

But maybe freedom isn’t the absence of system. Maybe it’s the right to build your own.

XII. The Creed Again

When I returned to Nassau months later, the Assassins found me first.

Ah Tabai greeted me like a ghost returned from sea.

“You have walked far from the shore, Edward Kenway,” he said. “Have you found your treasure?”

I laughed. “Only questions.”

He smiled. “Good. The Creed has room for questions.”

He took the relic from my hands and studied it. “Even the First Ones built systems to survive their own power. It destroyed them. Remember that.”

“Then why do we follow another?”

“Because even a broken compass can still point north.”

He looked at me then — not as a pirate, but as something close to kin.

“You have the makings of a teacher, not a thief. Stay awhile. Learn how to steer the storm instead of chasing it.”

XIII. The Lesson

Years later, when I took to sea again, I sailed not as a raider but as a man with a map — not to gold, but to understanding.

I still curse the wind, still drink too much, still gamble with fate. But I’ve learned something the Templars never could.

Their system builds walls to keep the world still.
Ours builds bridges to keep it moving.

The difference is choice.

XIV. The Letter to Haytham

My son,

By now you are grown, and I have little claim to your name. But if these words find you, know this: the world will always build systems to bind you. Empire, church, order, creed — all promise peace at the cost of your will.

Do not destroy them outright; that only breeds more. Learn them. See their pattern. Then decide where you fit.

Even a sailor must use stars to steer, though he sails alone.

Your mother once told me the sea was God’s mirror. I think she meant that freedom, like faith, is never free of reflection.

Whatever system you build, son, make sure it leaves room for mercy.

— Edward James Kenway