“Where you off to, darling?” Jetsam asked.
“Out,” she replied without looking back. “Someone’s got to think further ahead than the next ship.”
She was already halfway out of the ruins, gliding through a curtain of sea grass when the current shifted. The water trembled—an echo, a vibration. Something large slicing through the sea just above. She paused mid-stroke, instinct prickling along the ridges of her spine. The sea carried more than salt and shadow; it carried whispers, disturbances, danger. This one felt wrong.
Behind her, the coral reef dimmed as Flotsam and Jetsam darted past like arrows loosed from a bow.
“Ship,” Jetsam hissed, giddy, vanishing into the gloom above.
Flotsam followed, his body curling around a jagged column of coral before surging toward the surface. “It’s fast.”
They all saw it at the same time.
The royal seal gleamed in the moonlight, stitched into its tattered sails—an ivory crest against deep navy fabric, flapping weakly in the breeze. The ship was lean and fast, built more for speed than cargo, but it moved strangely tonight—listing slightly, as if the current pulled against it or something inside had thrown it off balance.
“Leave it,” Ursula commanded, her voice low, edged with warning.
Flotsam slithered ahead, his tail cutting through the dark like a knife. “It's a cutter. Easy pickings.”
Ursula’s fingers curled into fists, her nails biting into her palms. “That cutter is coming from the palace. What do they have to trade?”
“They might not have goods to trade,” Jetsam whispered, voice slick as oil, “but they would have the means to trade with. Gold.”
They were fools. Short-sighted, greedy fools. They didn’t understand the balance of power, the delicategame of timing and precision she was playing. She had a plan—one that didn’t involve petty theft or mindless destruction.
It was just like her brother. Just like her father. Men never listened—not unless she sang. Flotsam and Jetsam weren’t worth wasting a song on. Neither were the humans worthy of saving.
She turned her back. But when she did, she heard a song. Low and guttural, it vibrated through the water like a war drum softened by distance. The melody wasn’t woven with magic like her siren's call—it was rougher, a different pitch, an eel-song.
The sound coiled through the sea like a serpent, curling through trenches, wreckage, and forgotten caverns. It echoed off rusted hulls and the bones of long-dead leviathans. Flotsam and Jetsam didn’t have the range to summon true monsters—but they didn’t need to. They could call their allies from the deep.
A shimmer of bioluminescence flickered along the sea's floor—Glimmerscale Lanternfish, dozens of them, darting toward the ship above, casting illusions of lanterns, false beacons that would lure it straight into peril.
From the reef’s edge, Gravecurrent Crabs lumbered into motion, their massive claws leaving trails in the silt. Barnacle-encrusted and armored with fragments of shipwrecks, they moved with eerie purpose, headingtoward the ship’s hull like siege engines rising from the grave.
Above, the ship still sailed, oblivious. Ursula turned back, her expression thunderous. “Fools. You’ll tear everything down, and for what? A few pieces of gold?”
But her voice was swallowed by the chaos already rising around her. Dark shadows emerged from the depths, twisting, writhing, drawn by the call. Jagged fins cut through the water, gleaming rows of teeth flashed in the gloom, and the rhythmic pulsing of giant jellyfish sent eerie bioluminescence spiraling through the deep.
The monsters were awake. There was no stopping them now.
The crew’s shouts rang out, loud and desperate, but they could do nothing against the horrors rising from below. Planks splintered. A mast snapped. Then, with a thunderous crack, the sea opened its mouth to swallow the ship whole.
The water churned with the wreckage of the ship, splintered wood and scattered cargo bobbing between overturned lifeboats. Distant cries echoed over the waves, voices thin and desperate against the vast stretch of sea. The scent of salt and burning pitch clung to the air, sharp and acrid, mixing with the bitter tang of blood.
Ursula drifted beneath it all, arms folded, watchingwith cool detachment as the crew scrambled for safety. Pathetic creatures, humans. They clung to their fragile boats, their cargo forgotten, their desperate hands reaching for survival. Then he caught her eye.
A man—broad-shouldered, brown skin like fertile earth, strong, moving through the wreckage with purpose, not panic. Even here, amid chaos, he commanded. His voice cut through the shouts, firm and steady. And people listened.
Ursula did too. There was something about his voice. Something in the pitch of it.
She watched as he moved between the crew, hauling men to their feet, guiding them to lifeboats before stepping away to help the next. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop to think of himself first, didn’t cling to a single scrap of cargo.
Idiot.
A fool who put others before himself, who thought that if he threw himself into the fire, someone might reach in to pull him out. No one would. No one ever did.
And then, as if the sea heard her thoughts, the mast gave way. A sharp crack split the air. The man had just helped the last sailor into a lifeboat when the towering mast collapsed, its rigging snapping like a giant’s whip. The thick beam came crashing down, knocking him clean off his feet.
