Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of domestic abuse, substance misuse, and homicide.

Eighteen-year-old Fable works as a dredger, diving for precious stones in the reefs off the coast of Jeval. Her father abandoned her on the island when she was 14, and she’s fended for herself ever since. Fable discovers a valuable deposit of red gemstones called pyre using skills her mother taught her. She sees the body of a “dredger who’d crossed someone or didn’t repay a debt” and knows that she may meet the same fate unless she’s careful (6). Fable plans to use the money from the pyre to pay for passage across the Narrows so that she can find her father, a trader named Saint. The last time she saw him, he made her a promise and “carved into [her] arm with the tip of his whalebone knife” (8).

Fable recalls growing up on her parents’ ship, the Lark. Her father taught her five rules about life. These include keeping a knife within reach at all times, basing lies on truth, and never revealing who or what matters to her. The scar that Saint left on Fable’s arm kept her alive during her first days on the island because the Jevalis thought she was cursed by sea demons and left her alone.