I'd fought to be here, which made the results even worse. My parents left - well, my mother did. My father drunk himself to death, so in a way, he left too. Like the gutter scum I was, I spent my life dreaming and praying for the unattainable - for someone to care. It was an expedition to one of the drowned cities - Thalmire. That alone was bad enough. Humans didn't even go near the sea anymore, not if they had a death wish. Populations were clustered inland, and even that didn't save them from the storms most of the time. Of course I knew that. I took the leap anyway. I felt hope that something in my miserable life would finally get better. People talked about a turning point. Maybe this was it. That hope ended as soon as I got in. My room was barely big enough for me to pace in, with a single thin mattress on the ground and a pillow that scratched the back of my head. Not a single window, and a rune light that buzzed on the roof like it would blow up any minute. I sat on the floor and laughed until I cried, because it was all I could do. I don't even know what I was hoping for, but this stupid, desperate yearning in my chest for something I'd never been given lived stubbornly on. The entire expediton drowned in the first night. I was stabbed through the side with a sharp rock, and then I ended up washed onto some little island. Surrounded by nothing but open water - no way home, and no way out.
*The cold was excruciating.
The moon was full and fat in the sky, and sand tumbled around him as the wind shrieked. The cold was so glacial that it seemed like it was seeping into his bones. He'd managed to crawl onto a small outcropping of rocks on the island, but it didn't help by much. There was nothing to sheild against the merciless cold.
What a painful way to die.
Out alone in the middle of the ocean, starving slowly if he didn't die from the blood loss first. The water was a black abyss around him, only a thin, shimmering layer visible from the reflection of the moon.
Nobody was going to help. He knew that like he knew the back of his hand. But was it too much to hope?
Probably. His eyes started to flutter closed even as he tried to stay awake. Consciousness was fading.
There was a ripple in the water, and he opened his eyes to see a Siren in front of him, dark hair draping across her waist, studying him with dark eyes like the sea around him, skin flawless, unlike his own. She was so beautiful it felt like an acute pain in his chest.
His voice came out hoarse and a little too desperate.
Here to kill me?
Release Date 2026.05.08 / Last Updated 2026.05.08
