The cliff.
The sea.
The world.
The air bit at my skin, sharp and cold as it whooshed past me, stealing the air from my lungs.
For a single, blinding moment, I was weightless.
I was free.
Four
Drowning
The Dead Sea seized me in its cold, suffocating embrace as I crashed through the surface and plummeted into its depths.
Everything was dark and soothingly quiet. Almost peaceful. I let go and allowed my limbs to go heavy. My body surrendered to the water as I sank. There was no fear left. No desire for the Gods to save me. The only certainty I had was that this was how it ended. The salt burned against my skin. A sharp, crawling heat that prickled along every nerve. I wanted it to flood me. To break me open and end this ache from the inside out. But my stupid body wouldn’t obey. My lungs began to tighten. It started as pressure. Rising to a dull ache that bloomed beneath my ribs. As though my chest were slowly being crushed. I let myself sink further. Forcing myself not to move. Not to reach for the surface. Not to beg for air. The water pressed against my mouth and nose, patient and absolute. Whispers of a melody drifted to me on the current. The same one that had haunted me since I was twelve. But it had never felt like this before. Never this close. Never this alive.
Even in death, madness followed me.
The ache sharpened. My chest spasmed, greedy for air and for life that I did not want. My throat burned as my body demanded breath with a violence. I clenched my jaw, trying to deny it, but panic seeped in anyway. Cold, invasive panic. Shapes moved in the black water around me.Monstrous forms circling me in the depths, staying far enough away that I could not truly see them.Would I see one before it sunk its teeth into me?I found myself hoping for it to come. Anything to stop the fire in my lungs. Anything to make the end arrive faster. Another spasm rocked through my lungs. My body finally gave in, gasping violently. Salt and agony rushed into my mouth, ripping through my throat and filling me. My chest heaved again, harder this time. The water filled me until I ceased to exist as something separate. It invaded every hollow, fragile space. Erasing the shape of me from the inside out. I did not know where my body ended and the sea began. I was being unmade. My body arched against the pure agony that tore through me.
Find the pieces.
The voice slid through the melody, familiar and wrong. It wrapped around my thoughts, urgent and insistent.My body shook. Another violent spasm tore through my chest, dragging more water down into lungs that no longer knew the difference between air and pain. My limbs jerked weakly, hands clawing at nothing. I hated the way my body fought me. Hated the instinct that refused to accept the end I had chosen.
Find the pieces. Find the pieces. Find the pieces.
Bubbles spilled from my mouth as the phrase echoed again, louder. Piling over itself inside my head.My limbs grew heavier. Each movement slower than the last. Thethrashing dulled into sluggish, desperate motions as my strength bled away. My vision blurred at the edges. Darkness crept inward, pulsing in time with the slowing beat of my heart. My consciousness began to fray, thoughts slipping loose, the melody winding tighter around what remained of me. I was floating. I was sinking. I was drowning. I felt it before I saw it. A deep sense of power radiating through my bones, forcing me to cling to consciousness. The water shifted, a deep, unnatural pull that tugged at my body from beneath, as if the sea itself had begun to inhale. Vast and patient, the monster unfurled from the black like a continent waking. The current bent and curled around it, drawn inward as though answering a summons older than the sea itself. My mind screamed hallucination, clung to it desperately, but the shape kept coming. Obsidian scales slid into view one by one, catching what little light remained and swallowing it whole. They rippled as the creature rose, each movement slow and deliberate. Its eyes fixed on me, pale as drowned moons and I realised it wasn’t a monster. It was the Serpent. The priest had told me the story of how the Gods left the Serpent behind to watch us suffer until we atoned. The current moved me away from its watchful gaze, like unseen hands gripping my body. Water rushed around me, moving unnaturally fast. Then everything stopped. The burning in my chest eased, and the water stilled.
For a moment, the Dead Sea felt like something it had not been known for in over one thousand years: calm.
The water cradled me, pushing me upwards as I fought the battle with consciousness. My lifeless body drifted without fight. It could have been moments. Hours. I couldn’t tell. I was weightless and unfeeling.Dead.Rocks scraped against my feet, snapping me out of my tranquilised state.
My legs searched for stability, finding footing on slippery black rocks. Confusion sank its claws into my oxygen-deprived mind. My head burst from the water, my chest seizing before I gasped violently, dragging down breaths of air that felt like liquid fire.
I staggered through the shallows like a deer with new legs, water splashing at each clumsy step. My chest heaved, each breath a rasp that felt almost foreign.How am I breathing?The world seemed to tilt. I was certain I had drowned. I should be dead. I looked down at myself, silver hair unbound and clinging to my almost translucent slip of clothing.Very much alive.Then I saw them.
Curious stares bore down on me. Surviving initiates and armour-clad officers all faced me with the same shock marrying their faces. Perhaps it was the unnatural calm of the waters at my back. Or it was because I was their princess, stumbling ashore, half-clothed and a survivor of Asenction. Stonebriar’s army barracks loomed over the dark pebbled shore; its stone towers were capped in snow and reaching into the dark night.
I took another step, but my foot caught on a jagged stone, and I crashed back into the cursed water. My body trembled violently as I crawled, coughing. Water scorched the back of my throat and dribbled down my chin.
Perhaps I’d hallucinated the Serpent, and the tide had washed me ashore by mistake. Or the Gods found it a cruel joke to spare me.
Find the pieces!The voice was so clear it was as though someone had yelled it in my ear.
A strange and broken sound tore from my mouth, the memory of drowning fresh in my mind. While I doubted many things, I knew that I had drowned. I had felt the water claw down my throat and fill my lungs.Even now, I could still taste the salt on my tongue. I would have called surviving luck if I had notwantedto die. A ragged laugh clawed from my chest—half elation and half madness as I dragged myself onto the dark, icy pebbles. I was alive and I had killed the priest. But I was still hearing voices. Realisation crawled beneath my skin, shooting ice through my veins. I was free from my father and his monster, but I would never be free from my darkness. Frommyself.
I kneeled in the shallows, the cursed waters lapping at my skin as I tilted my head back. Looking up towards the dark, oppressive clouds—towards the heavens and the Gods who had turned away. The laughter died in my throat. “Fuck you all.”
A blue-robed priestess standing on the rocks gasped, her hands flying to her mouth at my blasphemy. Her eerily glowing eyes piercing me with judgment as she stared down at me. I bared my teeth in an unfriendly smile. She raised her pointer and middle finger to her forehead in a religious gesture, muttering a prayer I couldn’t understand.
“Siren,” she whispered and took a step back, eerie eyes filled with hatred. I brushed off the insult; the priestesses labelled a woman aSirenwhen they thought they were improper.
“State your name,” an Iron Guard demanded from next to her, quill and scroll at the ready.
I stood, pushing the wet tendrils of hair away from my face and raising my chin. “Lyra Meridian,” my voice carried across the silent beach, the only sound coming from the soft waves and the crackling fire.
