At the bottom of the Siren Wastes, where light no longer dared to swim, the silence wasn’t still.
It pulsed.
With mory. With madness. With hunger.
In the heart of that deep, the siren known as Maelora opened her eyes.
Her lashes were like sea threads, coated with silver dust. Her body curled in the trench like a sleeping god. It had been centuries. Maybe more. Ti did not count here.
But sothing called her.
A voice.
A scent.
A ripple.
She opened her mouth, water swirling through fanged teeth. Then, slowly, she sat up. Her tail unfurled with a crackling snap that echoed for miles.
"Poseidon..."
She whispered the na like it was a curse. Like it was love. Like it was both.
Maelora had once been the goddess of drowning.
Long before Nearida wore a crown, Maelora had ruled the southern trench kingdoms with songs that made warlords bleed and whales beach themselves in worship. But she had betrayed the wrong current. Or perhaps, she had simply loved the wrong god.
Poseidon.
His na was branded into her ribs, carved there by her own claws in the throes of rage and heartbreak.
And now, she felt him again.
No. Not him. But a whisper of his power. Soone else.
Soone walking the ocean in his shadow.
Her smile blood, slow and sharp.
"So, he left an echo."
She began to rise. The trench walls trembled. Schools of glowing fish darted away. Jellyfish exploded into glowing ink.
Her hair twisted around her shoulders, moving as if it had a mind. Her voice had not been used in decades, but when she spoke again, the trench listened.
"I was forgotten... by the gods... by the sea... but not for long."
She turned her head toward the distant current.
"Let them co. Let the Queen twist her plans. Let the vessel struggle. I will sing again."
Her eyes glowed like volcanic pearls.
From her spine, long, jagged fins unfolded—wings made of bone and scale.
She launched upward.
The sea above shuddered.
Far away, even in Nearida’s court, the tide shifted.
Sothing old was awake.
Sothing wild.
And Maelora was swimming toward the surface.
To claim what the sea owed her.
---
Deep Current - Nearida’s Citadel
"What did you say?" Nearida’s voice cut through the chamber like sharpened coral.
The priestess bowed so low her forehead touched the cold, wet stone. "The Trench trembles, my Queen. Sothing... ancient. A song not sung in our ti."
Nearida turned to the vast wall of water that made up the rear of her throne room. She peered through it like a mirror.
"Maelora..." she murmured.
Her advisors flinched.
The na was taboo.
"Summon the Tideguard. Triple the warding on the western trenches. If she rises, she will co for . For all of us."
The waters behind her churned.
"And send word to the surface. The boy... Poseidon’s echo... tell the watchers to keep him moving. Keep him blind."
The priestess rose, voice trembling. "And if she reaches him first?"
Nearida didn’t blink.
"Then we drown the ocean."
Deep within the Trench of Thorns, the sea trembled.
Maelora drifted above the ancient coral bed, her hair a floating veil of obsidian silk, her body swaying like a thread caught between currents. Her eyelids remained shut, but her mind was awake—awake and hungry.
From the shadows, black eels slithered away. Even the stone crabs paused their skittering, feeling the shift in the current. Sothing was wrong. Sothing old.
Then her eyes snapped open.
Not eyes—voids.
Twin whirlpools of darkness spun behind her lashes, like portals to a place where ti had drowned. The mont they opened, the water stilled. Even the plankton paused mid-glow.
She was awake now.
Maelora raised a hand, fingers twitching like she was still learning how to move again. A pulse of water spiraled outward, a silent ripple that reached far—too far. It brushed past reef walls, curled around forgotten shipwrecks, and climbed up toward warr currents.
Far above, in the mid-tide zones, fish scattered.
In the distance, a young sea guard patrolling the underwater borders froze. He turned, eyes wide, hand drifting to his spear.
"Did you feel that?" he whispered.
There was no answer. His partner had already swum away.
---
Maelora moved slowly at first. Her bones were stiff. She hadn’t been used in centuries—sealed inside that trench by powers long dead. Powers she once knew by na. Powers she once slept with and then betrayed.
Her voice was silent, but her mind... loud.
Where is the king? Where is the Trident?
She saw flashes.
A boy—young, confused, powerful—standing on a cliff of coral. Aegirion beside him. A temple behind them. The Trident near.
"Poseidon... reborn?" she whispered.
The sound of her voice cracked the rocks above. A sharp tremor rolled up the trench walls like an echo trying to escape.
So much had changed.
So much would die.
---
Maelora drifted upward, eyes open wide. Her mories were patchy, shattered like glass underwater.
The last thing she rembered clearly was Queen Nearida.
A war.
A betrayal.
Her punishnt.
The sirens had fled, her sisters scattered, many dying in the great purge Poseidon had ordered. But Maelora had survived—barely. They’d trapped her instead, in a tomb ant to rot.
Now, her prison was open.
Her thoughts darkened. Had Nearida returned? Or was she still running from ghosts?
She needed answers. She needed blood.
And she needed the Trident.
---
Elsewhere, inside a spiraled conch observatory built into a sea wall fortress, a seer jolted awake from a vision. Her breathing was shallow, frantic. She stumbled from the cushions, seaweed scrolls falling beside her.
"The Siren... the Deep One... she’s awake," the seer rasped.
Guards rushed in.
"Who?" one asked.
She didn’t speak—she only pointed upward.
A cloud of blood had begun spreading across the waters near the edge of the trench. Not real blood. Prophetic. Symbolic. But real enough for the gods.
The Queen would feel it.
So would Dominic.
---
Back in the deeper midwaters, Maelora found her voice again.
Her song was not beautiful.
It wasn’t soft or inviting like the legends said sirens used to be. It was twisted now—jagged. The lody broke into shards as it passed through coral caverns and drowned valleys.
Every beast that heard it paused.
Every creature that rembered ancient fear fled.
Above the reefs, dolphins scread.
---
Far away, in the Temple of Thalorin, one of the statues cracked. A thin line ran through the chin of a granite rman, and from it, water poured—not normal water. It shimred like oil and moaned like it missed soone.
Aegirion, seated near the altar, flinched.
Dominic, leaning against the cold wall, caught the shift too.
"You felt that?" he asked.
Aegirion didn’t speak.
His eyes narrowed toward the broken statue.
"No..." he whispered.
"It’s too soon."
---
Beneath it all, Maelora smiled.
She had heard his voice.
Dominic.
The na floated around her like prey.
And then, like a shadow lting into deeper blackness, she vanished into the trench once again—headed up. The world above had changed. But it had forgotten her.
She was coming to remind them.
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