You proved it. Not to them – to yourself.

The lid rises with a soft, heavy sigh, as if the chest were drawing breath for the first time in ages. You sit still for a moment. Your notes lie beside you, filled with observations, symbols, equations – the researcher's instinctive reflex to record everything.

But this time was different.

You didn't just observe. You played, felt, doubted – and still you didn't give up. In a way you never thought you could, back when you sat at the institute brooding over nautical charts that no one but you took seriously anymore.

They were wrong. You were right.

Then you pause.

Something isn't right. A feeling you can't quite place – warm, almost pleasant, like the tingle after a long-awaited research breakthrough. But more intense. More persistent. As if it were settling in, deep beneath the skin, in a region no science has ever fully mapped.

The old records mentioned it. You had dismissed it as mythology.

The curse's final breath.

Not death. Not punishment. Something more cunning: an insatiable craving for the next puzzle. The next box. The next locked door.

You will lie awake at night pondering symbols no one has discovered yet. You will buy nautical charts that no one reads anymore. You will call your colleagues – not to admit they were right, but because you need someone who understands what you have just experienced.

No one will understand.

The Pirate King knew exactly whom he was welcoming here. Not just anyone. Only the most dangerous – those who cannot stop searching, because the search itself is the reward.

Grab a rum. Sit still for a moment.

Because the next puzzle box is already waiting for you.