Chapter - 12- The Prophecy Stirs

The surface of the lagoon shattered like glass as three figures burst upward—Kina, Amaiya, and Zalika—gasping, wild-eyed, drenched in salt and silence.

But something was wrong.

Their skin shimmered with opalescent scales. Their ears were finned. Their eyes were no longer their own—wide, luminous, endless.

They were no longer fully human.

"We were too late," Thaliena whispered.

She swam to them, voice trembling with grief but lined with magic.

"Come to me," she said softly. "Let me undo it. The spell is fresh—I can bring you back. Before the sea takes you fully."

The girls stared at her.

Then Kina laughed, not cruelly—but with a strange, unreachable joy.

"Why would we want to go back?"

"We see clearly now," said Amaiya. "We've been blind all our lives. Noctis never came for us. Not when we were born, not when we bled, not when we screamed."

"But Selene," said Zalika, "Selene answered. She gave us voices that tear through bone. Gills that never tire. Power that makes the tides kneel."

Thaliena reached toward them.

"That power comes with a price you haven't seen yet."

"A price worth paying," Kina snapped, her smile sharp now. "And we owe nothing to the god who waited too long."

Amaiya turned, voice thick with salt-sweetness and something deeper—hunger.

"Besides," she whispered, her eyes gleaming like tide-wet shells,

"We saw a boy tonight… golden-eyed, defiant, glowing with power he doesn't even understand yet."

Her smile curled lazily.

"He said he was leaving behind for some proud fairy. How tragic. But boys like that… never stay alone for long."

She leaned in closer to her sisters, her voice low—half a whisper, half a dare.

"With the spells Nerissa gave us, maybe we could make him fall for us."

"And once he does… we'll have his babies and become the most powerful that everyone fears.."

A pause followed, thick with silence. Even the waves seemed to recoil.

Thaliena's eyes darkened, but before she could speak

Before Thaliena could speak, a shadow moved behind the waves.

Nerissa, the siren queen, rose from the depths with elegance like smoke and eyes like hunger. Her silver crown pulsed with lunar scars. Her voice slithered between the waves like silk on wet stone.

"Enough of the past, Thaliena. The future has already begun."

Thaliena's voice sharpened.

"You haven't told them the truth."

Nerissa's smile didn't waver. She swam between the three girls like a snake through lilies.

"They don't need to know everything. Power doesn't come with a pamphlet."

"Let me speak," Thaliena warned. "They deserve to know what they've given up—what they can never return to."

Nerissa's fin snapped. The water cracked like thunder.

"No."

The girls flinched, but Nerissa coiled an arm around Kina's shoulder, her voice turning syrup-sweet.

"They are mine now. The sea is wide. And I will teach them how to take all they desire."

"Even the boy?"

"Especially the boy."

And with that, the tide turned, pulling them back.

Before the girls could turn fully away, before the sea could swallow the sirens back into its current, Thaliena moved.

She rose higher in the water, her glowing arms folded before her, her presence suddenly radiant—not fierce like Nerissa's—but eternally anchored, like coral that outlasts storms.

"You've stolen children and stained the tide with lies," she said.

"At least leave without poisoning them further."

Nerissa's laughter rolled like distant thunder.

"Stolen?" she echoed. "We gave them purpose.

You—you gave them nothing but silence and stories."

She floated forward, her voice turning blade-smooth.

"What has Noctis given you, Thaliena?

Centuries in hiding?

A fading name and a curse for faith?"

She circled slowly, her fins slicing silver through the lagoon.

"You guarded Noctis. Not because you loved him,

but because Selene commanded you to.

Don't forget who gave you breath beneath the water."

She turned, speaking now to the tribe and the half-turned girls.

"The sea belongs to Selene.

She made us queens of it. Not watchers.

Not worshippers of corpses."

She opened her arms wide, dark runes glowing faintly at her wrists.

"Worship her—join us—and you'll never kneel again.

Noctis has no crown.

Selene gave hers to me."

But Thaliena did not flinch.

She raised her head, her voice soft—but the water stilled to hear her.

"Noctis has not faded. He waits."

She looked at the girls—not with pity, but with deep, eternal certainty.

"The prophecy has already begun.

A fairy has entered.

We are only waiting for the Demon Prince to awaken."

The wind shifted, the lagoon humming again.

"And when he does…

Noctis will rise, not in shadow—but in flame.

And the sky will remember who once ruled it."

Nerissa's jaw tightened. For the first time, her smile twitched.

"Fool," she hissed. "When your Demon Prince arrives…

he will not save you. He will consume everything."

Thaliena's reply was a whisper.

"Then let him.

Because he carries the one thing Selene could never own—

Noctis's heart."

The tide surged—dragging the sirens and the girls back into the deep.

All that remained was foam, and the whispers that followed them.

Far across Neverland, under the hush of silver trees and heavy skies—

Peter stirred.

A breeze moved through his hair like a memory.

His golden eyes opened slowly.

And then—just before he closed them again—

he smiled.

Not a wide smile.

Just the ghost of something ancient.

Something remembering.