They fought. Steel against spectral rage. But Salazar was beyond swords. He reached for Jack’s throat with hands that turned to smoke and cold. And as he touched Jack’s skin, he felt it—the living heat, the pulse, the life that had been stolen from him.

Every pirate ship they found, they erased. No wreckage. No survivors. Only a strange, oily stillness on the water and the faint scent of Spanish incense.

But the Triangle had vomited forth its horror.

The hunt led to the Trident of Poseidon, the only object that could break Salazar’s curse—or destroy every pirate on the sea. Salazar cared nothing for the Trident. He wanted only to see Sparrow’s face as he snuffed out his soul.

The sea does not forget. It remembers the scent of blood, the crack of splintering wood, and the last, gurgling prayers of drowning men. And no man knew this truth more intimately than Captain Armando Salazar.

And then he did the unthinkable. He steered his sloop directly into the jagged, unseen reef of the Triangle. The Wicked Wench vanished into the mist, but the Silent Mary , chasing at full sail, could not turn. The reef tore out her belly like a shark’s bite. Salazar felt the lurch, heard the screams of his men, and saw Sparrow’s small boat escaping through a gap only a pirate would dare attempt.