Chapter - 11 - The Twilight Lagoon

The fire snapped as if in protest. Wind lashed through the trees with sudden force, sending feathers and salt into the air.

Tiger Lily burst into the circle, face pale, breath sharp.

"They're gone," she said. "All three. Kina, Amaiya, Zalika. Gone."

Panic rippled through the gathering like a wave hitting stone.

Elder Muniya knelt near the fire; her fingers curled around a cracked shell long faded from color. Her eyes, sharp despite age, lifted to the mermaid princess who sat on the rock pool's edge, half-shadowed in silver light.

"Tell me, Thaliena," she said, voice low and pointed,

"Sirens were the ones who flew. Winged like gulls, cruel as thunder. They lured men from cliffs, not dragged girls beneath waves."

"So how," she continued, leaning forward,

"Do flying creatures now crawl the ocean floor… and change girls into things they themselves are not?"

A hush followed. Even the fire seemed to listen.

Thaliena's silver scales shimmered dull, like moonlight behind fog. Her gaze dropped—not in shame, but in caution.

"Because these sirens are no longer what they were," she said.

"They've drowned too many truths.

Their wings are gone, but their hunger grew. They are becoming something else."

"What?" Muniya asked.

Thaliena didn't answer. Not at first.

Then softly, as if afraid the water might carry the words too far: 

"Mothers."

"They were not always ocean-born, Elder. Once, they ruled the skies.

Winged, cold, and cruel—death with a song on their lips.

But as humans rose, so did their weapons.

Spears turned to arrows. Arrows turned to fire.

And the skies, once theirs, became a battlefield."

Elder Muniya said nothing, watching her closely.

The fire cracked like bone.

"So they fell," Thaliena continued. "And when they could fall no farther, they prayed."

"To Selene?" Elder Muniya asked.

Thaliena nodded.

"To the Moon Goddess of Tides and Secrets.

They begged her to cloak them in the sea—to give them a place where human eyes could not see, where no skyborne death could reach.

And Selene listened."

"She gave them new forms—fins instead of feathers. Gills instead of breath.

And in return, she took their wombs."

Thaliena's voice tightened now, like a shell about to crack.

"But the sea is wild. Even a moon cannot tame it.

So Selene shaped a guardian for them… from the sorrow of the last moon war."

"She reached into the sea's deepest wound and pulled forth a creature made from the tears of drowned gods—a monster with no voice but endless rage."

"She called it Leviathan.

 And it would be their shield, their sword, their vengeance in the dark."

"That is what sleeps beneath the trench," Muniya whispered.

"That is what they now seek to awaken."

Thaliena nodded.

 "Yes. And this time… they don't just want protection.

They want to summon him on this sacred land."

Right as Thaliena finishes, someone runs into the circle—another tribe girl, breathless.

"The lagoon—it's glowing. The water's not right. It's humming like bone."

A silence fell across the tribe. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.

Tiger Lily and Elder Muniya rushed to the water's edge, followed by Thaliena, who felt the pull like a hook beneath her ribs.

Twilight Lagoon shimmered with unnatural light—not silver, not moon-white… but deep blue, like the color of something ancient waking up.

The water rippled in slow spirals, as if breathing.

From its center, a dark glow pulsed once… then again.

Each beat echoed in Thaliena's chest.

Then came the whisper—not in sound, but in memory. Something older than speech, something only she could hear:

"Daughter of the depths… you have waited long enough."

Thaliena stumbled forward, eyes wide, scales shimmering gold for the first time.

"He's here," she whispered. "Noctis… He's watching."

The water began to rise—not in a wave, but like a column of silk.

Within it, glowing letters spiraled—runes that Thaliena had never seen, yet somehow knew by heart.

She reached toward the glowing column, and the runes melted into her skin, sliding down her arms like ink.

Elder Muniya gasped. "What is this?"

"A spell," Thaliena said. "A gift. Noctis is giving me the words to bring them back."

"The girls?"

Thaliena nodded. "And the sirens who took them. The sea has been theirs too long.

Now… it belongs to something older."

The elderly women knelt at the edge of the shore. One pressed a trembling hand to her chest.

"We have offered it to him… for years," she murmured. "We sang, we waited, we burned incense over the sea.

And now—he answers?"

Tiger Lily knelt beside her, her eyes shining with tears.

For the first time in years, her mother's feather glowed warm in her braid.

"He never left us," she said.

"We just had to survive long enough to be heard."

Thaliena entered into the lagoon, her tail slicing the water in silence.

The runes still shimmered down her arms, glowing brighter with each breath. Around her, the lagoon pulsed like a heartbeat, responding to her presence—as if the water itself waited for her voice.

The tribe formed a wide circle on the shore, watching in silence. Even Elder Muniya lowered her head in respect.

Thaliena raised her hands to the sky, her voice steady but heavy with old magic:

"By the tide that remembers,

By the moon that weeps,

By the blood of Noctis buried in the deep—

I call them back."

"Let the stolen be seen.

Let the takers be bound.

By his name, by his light,

Let them be found."

The water exploded in light—deep blue and starless black—then fell still again.

The Sirens' Lair

Far beneath the surface, in the sirens' hidden trench, the atmosphere shifted instantly.

The girls—Kina, Amaiya, Zalika—sat in trance, their eyes dull and voices murmuring softly. The sirens had already begun the next stage of their ritual: entangling the girls' dreams, softening their resistance.

Then—the water shivered.

A sharp wind cut through the currents, unnatural and cold. One siren recoiled.

"What is this—?"

Another hissed, her song breaking mid-note.

"He's dead! He's dead! This is not possible!"

But it was too late.

The magic coiled around them like invisible chains. Not violent—just... inevitable.

Noctis's power wasn't wrath. It was gravity.

A pull from the depths of memory and starlight and mourning.

The sirens cried out—but their voices could not reach the surface anymore.

"We are not finished!" one shrieked.

And the sea whispered back—

"No. But I am."

Back at the Lagoon…

The water surged once—then erupted.

The lagoon fell silent, but the wind did not.

It moved differently now—low and circling, like it was whispering something only the brave would dare listen to.

From the tide's pull, shadows began to form.

They rose from the water—the missing girls, returned.

But they were not the same.

Their skin shimmered like pearl dust and dusk.

Their hair moved even without wind.

And their eyes—too still. Too ancient.

They swimmed towards the shore without blinking.

And the sea delivered the others behind them—the sirens, faces unreadable, smiles carved from secrets and moonlight.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then a child near the fire clutched her mother's sleeve, her voice barely a whisper:

"They're back…"

The words passed from lip to lip, tent to tent, fire to shadow.

"They're back."

"They're back."

"They're back."

But no one could say who had truly returned—

the daughters they prayed for…

or the tide's new queens.

And far out at sea, a low rumble echoed beneath the waves—

something ancient stirring in its sleep.