I pushed myself to my feet. My movements were clumsy, body still learning itself. I stumbled to the door.
The moment I stepped outside, wind hit my face—salt and ozone. A storm brewed… or maybe it never left.
The crew stood frozen, pale, eyes wide. The scent of cannon fire mingled with something fouler. The ship’s timbers groaned under strain. Waves crashed against the hull, relentless.
The water churned violently, frothing as though alive. Something moved beneath the surface.
Something wrong. Then the waves split.
Dark figures rose from the depths, bodies twisting with unnatural grace. Their translucent forms shimmered with eerie phosphorescence, ribbons of inky darkness trailing behind them and dissolving into the water. Hollow eyes locked onto the crew with a hunger that didn’t belong to any living thing.
Each movement left a trail of glowing ichor in the wake. Their mouths that shattered thought.
Jaws split impossibly wide, rimmed with double rows of needle-fangs, each one slick with seawater and something darker. Their lips had withered away long ago, leaving exposed muscle and bone.
When they opened their mouths, it wasn’t to sing. It was to devour.
Shadow Sirens.
People said sirens lured sailors with lullabies—sweet melodies drifting on the tide.
That was a lie humans told themselves to make the taking easier.
The most dangerous of them didn’t sing at all.
They mimicked the voice of the one you loved most. A mother.
A sister.
A long-dead lover whispering your name in the fog. Then they pulled you under.
Their screeches pierced more than ears. They burrowed into bone, scraping sanity raw.
They were mermaids once. Before their voices were carved out and sold. Before their songs were bottled, traded, burned down to charms and control. When the sea was robbed of its music, it did not let the silence lie.
Reality snapped back with the scream of iron and flame. A siren’s voice.
Not like mine.
Not like the shadow sirens.
Hers carried weight—controlled, honed—bending the air with intention.
That note hadn’t lured. It hadn’t softened or beckoned. It had commanded—raw, unbridled power bending the water and the creatures within it. The red-haired woman didn’t look surprised by it. No one did. The crew moved around her as if it were expected. Accounted for.
My gaze tore across the deck with new eyes.
The elf at the cannons reloaded again—too fast, movements blurring where they shouldn’t. A crewman near the rail took a claw across the chest and barely staggered, blood steaming as he laughed through clenched teeth. Another hauled a siren bodily back over the side, strength far beyond any human frame.
Not human.
The realization settled cold and heavy.
This wasn’t a pirate crew stitched together by desperation and drink. These were survivors of something older. Darker.
My pulse thundered. The crew fought—blades flashing, gunfire cracking—but the battle was slipping away. They were losing.
A sailor screamed as a siren’s teeth sank into his shoulder, dragging him toward the edge. The red-haired woman was there in an instant, severing the creature’s grip and yanking him back before the sea could claim him.
