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Every eye at the table turns toward her.
Echo’s arms fall away from her body. “The siren stories say the ocean screamed before Atlantis fell.”
A chill crawls over my skin.
“Screamed?” Raze asks.
She nods. “My mother used to tell me the story when I was little. She said a sound beneath the water was so powerful that every siren for hundreds of miles heard it. They fled into deeper water, and when they finally came back, the city was gone.”
Sentinel’s expression tightens.
Echo looks at him. “We were always told it was the death song of Atlantis. The sound the city made when the ocean took it. But it was a myth, a fairy tale.”
“It wasn’t.”
Her brow pulls tight.
Sentinel turns his burned hand over on the table. “It was the collision.”
Echo takes a step back from the table. “You’re saying my ancestors heard Heaven and Hell combine?”
“I think they did more than hear it. I think they survived it.”
She stares at him.
Scar leans back in his chair. “Which would explain why the story survived among sirens when most of the supernatural world only has fragments.”
Echo’s eyes move slowly around the table. “Because sirens could hear what happened.”
“And they were already in the water,” Sentinel says. “Far enough from the center to escape when the island broke apart.”
Her face loses some of its color. “There is another part.”
My attention snaps straight to her.
‘What part?’ I gesture, and she looks at me.
“The stories say the song didn’t stop when Atlantis sank.” Nobody moves. “The sirens who went back could still hear it beneath the ruins. Faint, but there. They were forbidden from swimming anywhere near the city because the closer they got, the louder it became.”
Sentinel sits straighter. “Echo…”
“We were told the song was cursed.” She swallows. “That if a siren listened for too long, it would hear her listening back.”
My fucking blood runs cold because I’ve heard that before.
Today.
From Echo. ‘I think it heard me listening.’
Sentinel’s burned hand curls into a fist. “That isn’t a children’s story.”
Echo looks down at his hand. “No,” she whispers. “I don’t think it was anymore either.”
Nobody moves.
Nobody speaks.
The weight of just how many worlds have already ended quietly for the sin of letting hellfire and Holy Light touch settles over the table like ash falling after a blast none of us were alive to witness.