1
Nerina
Thalassia
I’ve always been restless—but lately, the restlessness feels more like a warning.
The ocean had always been my answer to that feeling—my first lullaby, the place where the restless edge inside me finally went still—but tonight, even its steady pulse couldn’t soothe the unease curling beneath my skin. It stretched endlessly around me, ancient and aware, moonlight spilling through the surface in pale ribbons that brushed the sand in silver and shadow. The reefs hummed with the same low thrum beneath my skin.
I floated in the shallows, letting the current tug idly at my hair as I tried to focus on the only thing that mattered tonight: the Celestial Choir. One of the most sacred rituals among merfolk—and one of the few times I felt I belonged.
It was a ritual of balance—of easing magic back into its proper rhythm, not reshaping it. A way to return magic to the sea beforeit could grow restless or dangerous. The Tidekeepers called it necessary, a means of smoothing the currents and welcoming new life into each pod. It was an honor to be chosen to sing. Refusing would be unthinkable. To question it—ungrateful.
All the pods gathered beneath the twin moons, each carrying their season’s essence.
All except me.
I hadn’t been born under a solstice or equinox, wrapped in songs and certainty. I’d come into the world during the Eclipscera Convergence—when the moons eclipsed, the stars aligned in unnatural patterns, and the sea went still, as though it were listening to something it didn’t understand. No pod had claimed me. No ancestral melody rose to greet me. The Tidekeepers said my magic did not move like the others’. They said they had never heard silence ring that loud.
I grew up inside that silence. Inside the stares. Inside the whispers people thought the water would swallow whole. I learned what it meant to be an equation no one could solve—too strange to ignore, too rare to discard.
I let the water settle inside my chest, the cool pressure spreading through me. Above me, the surface shimmered, reflecting a sky I couldn’t see but somehow… remembered.
Something tugged inside me whenever I looked up too long, like there was another ocean above this one. Colder. Darker.
I hummed, letting my voice slip into the current. The note thrummed through my bones, brushing the strange tension coiled behind my ribs.
The sea answered.
Tonight, everything felt too aware. Too focused. A quiet tension gathered beneath my skin, my body bracing for something it couldn’t name.
Autumn crept through the water—not in leaves or wind, but in sensation. Currents cooled. Dusk-bloom coral unfurled, glowing faint and inky. Amber plankton drifted in lazy spirals. The seasons were changing. Maybe that was why my attention kept wandering to the horizon. Toward the Veil.
A pale seam of light cut across the sea, separating Thalassia from whatever lay beyond. The Tidekeepers said Meris had raised it to protect us from humans after the Sanctuary massacre centuries ago.
Long before the Veil, merfolk swam freely between oceans and the surface. Migration between courts. Diplomacy. Even worship. Humans built altars of coral and bone to honor us—until they realized what we were worth. Our tears strengthened talismans. Our blood prolonged youth. Our scales could mend even the most repulsive injuries.
Some of us fell into the hands of captors. Stripped. Sold.
Humans: predators of the supernatural. Harvesters of magic.
The Tidekeepers claimed the Veil saved us from them.
But every time I looked at it, my crescent mark throbbed—metallic, starlit, wrong. Thin currents of power stirred beneath my skin.
Dangerous. Forbidden. Fatal to cross.
I turned away from the horizon and swam toward the only place that still felt soft—Maleia’s garden.
The water cooled as I entered her territory, scented with kelp blossoms and autumn growth. Pale fronds rustled like distant whispers, and bioluminescent flowers painted the reef in violet and blue dream-light.
“Daydreaming again?” Maleia called, jest dancing in her voice.
She drifted between curling strands of kelp, sea-flowers clustering wherever she lingered. Her hair floated in rose-gold waves, shimmering like the inside of a pearl. Her scales spilled lavender, turquoise, and soft green—spring and dawn, gentle and sure. If the ocean could choose a favorite, it would choose her.
“Always,” I said, managing a small smile. “It’s my best quality.”
“You have others,” she said, nudging my shoulder. “You’re stubborn and reckless, for one.”
