I step down from the helm, the wood cool beneath my boots, and begin strapping on more weapons to my belt: blade, dagger, pistol, another blade. Each click of metal grounds me.
Smith does the same. Shadows my movements like the soldier he is. We descend the rope ladder, each rung slick with sea mist. The moment our boots hit the bridge, it groans beneath us. Not like it was made from wood but from cursed bones. I step cautiously. One foot. Then the other. Smith mirrors me, silent and ready.
The farther we walk, the more the fog thins, revealing a crooked hut at the end of the bridge. As though the hut had drowned once, then clawed its way back to the surface, resurrected. Vines snake across the rotting wood, tangled with twitching insects and patches of pulsing moss. Something skitters in the shadows, a rat, or worse. How anything can live here, I’ll never understand. The air reeks, like rotting fish and old boots left to bake in the sun. It hits the back of my throat, sour and unshakable.
The hut is barely lit. A faint, flickering glow leaks through the warped wooden slats like a dying heartbeat. Still, I know where we are.
With magic guiding us, we’ve made it to Taika’s.
Chapter three
Kai
Marked
The morning fog had thinned by the time I stepped out here, leaving the horizon stretched wide and endless over the sea. A cup of hot coffee warms my hand, a pipe resting easy in the other.
I set my coffee on the ship’s weathered rail and let the ocean breathe beneath us, then run my fingers along the scar on my forearm. Once it was only a pale crescent beneath the skin; now it throbs with small, electric stabs that jumped down my arm, short-lived but painful. I don’t like that. I never liked anything it reminded me of. But this pain… It's new and unexpected.
The memory of her claws tearing into my right arm, the world collapsing into the black ring of water she carved around us. In that circle there was no up and no down, just pressure and the sound of my own breath turning thin. I blew bubbles, traced their path with my fingers, hoping they’d lead me to the surface. They did.
I crawled onto shore under moonlight, the flames of the nearby battle flickering in the distance. My arm was mangled, bloodied, dangling by sheer will. I was certain I’d lose it that night. But it healed. Looking back, I think my magic had something to do with that. I was just a child.
My best friend, Jack, had been a victim of the sirens that night. He never fell for their songs and was always the first to mock the poor bastards who did. But one of them called him by name. Her voice wasn’t like the others, wasn’t haunting or seductive, it was soft. And her eyes… They were piercing blue. Curious but sparked with sadness. Not dead like the others. Her long black hair moved through the water like oil, and when she smiled… it didn’t look like a threat. She didn’t have razor-sharp, unsettling teeth like a siren typically does.
Even I hesitated. Sirens aren’t beautiful. Not like that. Not in ways that make you forget what they are… but she was different. And there was something else in her gaze, something almost human. Jack stepped toward her like he’d been waiting his whole life. She took his hand, then his arm, and dragged him beneath the waves. Kissed him as he drowned, and he let her.
The sea stilled where he vanished, moonlight spilling over the surface like silver. I screamed his name. But he didn’t hear me. Or maybe he didn’t want to. I never saw him again.
He was a few years older, more like a brother than a friend. And the ache hasn’t dulled. But the way he looked at her… I can’t stop thinking about it. Like maybe he chose her, or she chose him, or they had known each other. Maybe it wasn’t her voice that lured him in, but something entirely different.
And if that’s possible, if it’s even remotely possible to fall in love with a siren, then everything we’ve been taught about them is wrong. Worse… It means they’re not just killers. They’re something far more dangerous.
After I watched my closest friend, my brother in every way but blood, vanish beneath that silver-streaked, black water, I sat there. Sat there while the sirens sang their death songs. While men screamed. While fire consumed everything around us. I sat there, blood pouring from my mangled arm, every heartbeat pulsing with the sound of his name. He was the first and only person I ever cared about losing. I swore to myself to never get attached to anyone after that night.
Sirens don’t just drown you. They unravel you, piece by piece. They toy with your memories, make you believe you’re home, that you’re safe. And then they drag you under, and you beg for death to come faster. They don’t kill you outright. They make you fall apart, one memory at a time, drowning at the same time.
Last night’s encounter lingers in my mind, unwanted, unexpected, and something I would’ve preferred to keep buried. I take a slow sip, the bitter heat chasing its way down my chest, steadying me from the inside out. Then comes the pull of smoke, soft and familiar. I exhale into the rising light, watching the cloud curl and scatter, wrapping itself around the thin shafts of sun as if the day itself were reluctant to wake.
I know she’s been following me for months. Her trail is messy, erratic at best, but I can’t tell if that was her doing or the result of her incompetent crew. She first caught my scent back at Shoreline Village. Small island. Strategically wedged between Coral Haven and Magda. Too tiny to matter, but just big enough for pirates and common folk to barely coexist. The guards have their districts. The locals know which taverns to avoid, the ones we’ve claimed as ours, where pirates drink, deal, and disappear.
I’d heard whispers that someone there knew the location of a map fragment. Just one. But it only takes one piece to start a war. And when I want something? I get it by persuasion or by force.
I spotted her ship a few ports down from mine, carelessly docked, sloppy as ever. Mira’s rise to captain after her father’s death was the worst thing that could’ve happened to that crew. And that ship,The Siren, it’s a waste in her hands. A vessel carved from enchanted teak, steeped in old magic, whispered about in every port from Coral Haven to the Barrens. I can feel it whenThe Sirenis close. The magic radiates off her hull, thick and cloying, tainting the sea like perfume on a corpse.
That ship is the only reason Captain Bleu ever made it out of battle alive. The only reason anyone remembers his name. As someone who commands magic myself, I can’t help but want it. A ship like that? It’s priceless.
My ship, however,The Leviathan, is the fastest vessel on the sea, an unholy beast carved from nightmares and legends. She doesn’t just slice through water, she hunts, silent and ruthless. But it’s my quarters that are the heart of her. A place no one has stepped foot in since I was a child. As I grew, so did the walls I built around it, thick with secrets, soaked in blood and memory. Every item inside is sacred. Untouchable. I've grown… territorial. Obsessive, even. I don't let people near the things I care about. Not my weapons, maps, or space. It’s not aboutprivacy. It’s about control. I can’t afford to let anything, oranyone,get too close. Because once something’s mine, I don’t let it go.
As for Mira, she’s not ready. She doesn’t know how to lead. She lacks the steel, the instinct, the kind of edge it takes to make the hard choices and walk away while the rest are left bleeding inside. She’s no Neressa. Now, she’s a killer. Mira can hold her own in a fight, sure, she’s been trained. But you can see it in her eyes. There’s too much soul left in her.
With my father growing sicker by the day, command of the ship and crew has fallen to me. Rightfully so. It was always my birthright. This vessel runs like a well-oiled machine beneath my hands, powered not just by discipline, but by magic. My magic. And my crew, they’re stronger than most, because they follow someone worth bleeding for. The title of Pirate Lord wasn’t handed to me, it was earned. In blood, bone, and fire. And I intend to keep it that way.
Using magic on Mira, her mind was easy to invade. All I had to do was make simple eye contact. Manipulating a mind to unlock what once was hidden, dark secrets, untold truths… Except when I tried to use magic on creatures born from magic, sirens, mermaids, witches, their minds were too strong to alter. Humans, however, I could twist their minds into something dark, easily.
They say the power came from my mother’s bloodline. She was a witch, strong, feared, and long gone. She vanished after I was born, leaving me behind with my father and a legacy wrapped in secrets. I’ve tried to slip inside his mind, to claw out whatever scraps of truth he’s hiding about her. Just one image is all I need, but his thoughts are sealed and the key thrown away. And if he ever knew I’d tried? He’d skin me alive. Her name was never spoken to me. It has been something that has haunted me my entire life. But I know this: what I’ve uncovered so far about mymagic? It’s barely the surface. I can feel it just under my skin, waiting to wake.
The magic hums in my veins, steady and relentless, like a storm waiting to break. It sharpens in battle, in every encounter where a choice could mean blood or breath. It feeds on my emotions. Anger makes it flare, despair makes it burn. Sadness is rare, but when it strikes, the magic swells with a ferocity I can’t control, as if it refuses to let me die.
