Siren song

The beginning

Sailors say the sea keeps its own kind of justice. Long before men mapped the edges of the world, ships would vanish where the water ran deepest. Their wrecks were found days later, hulls split clean as if by the hands of gods, their decks slick with salt and silence. And always, the crew was gone. Those who lived to tell of it spoke of singing, voices rising out of the mist, sweet as mercy, but merciless as the deep. Songs that filled a man's chest with longing until he forgot the oars in his hands, forgot the land, forgot to breathe.

They said the singers were women once. The forsaken, the condemned. When the old sea god took pity on them, he did not grant them peace. He gave them purpose. To each, he offered a choice, die as the world decreed, or live as vengeance demanded. The ones who chose life were remade: lungs turned to tide, hearts to coral, voices to the weapon of the deep. They became his daughters, his wrath, his song. Men call them sirens. They are what remains of every woman thrown to the waves in fear or superstition, every "omen," every "curse," every offering to a sea that never asked for blood. When the storms come, sailors still swear they hear them. Singing. Calling their names. And one by one, the guilty

answer.