Chapter 9 Nerina
Nerina
The Black Marrow, On Course to the Forgotten Trench
The cabin was too quiet—save for the ship’s creak and the low groan of the hull. The air hung heavy with brine and damp wood, but beneath it lingered smoke and aged leather, a scent that clung to the space—ghosted with its captain.
The silence didn’t comfort me. It crowded my thoughts, threatening to drown me in questions I couldn’t answer yet.
I sat at the desk, fingers tracing the worn grain while I stared at my new legs. Their weight still felt wrong—an anchor pulling me into a reality I hadn’t chosen.
I had no idea what waited beyond the Veil, but I never imagined this: legs, a pirate ship, the Forgotten Trench … with the pirate who saved me.
The thought almost made me laugh.
Never in my wildest dreams had I pictured myself here—far from Thalassia, far from my mother’s control, from the Tidekeepers watchful eyes, far from the path I’d been told was mine. And yet I was here—something new, something unknown—stepping into a story that had never belonged to me.
My fingers slid along my thighs, feeling smooth skin where iridescent scales had been. It didn’t feel like mine yet. Still… a part of me thrilled at the freedom of movement.
Would I ever feel whole again? Had I surrendered something sacred in my escape? The guilt bit down. Was I allowed to feel that? To enjoy something so foreign when it came at the cost of everything I’d known.
My toes wiggled beneath the desk—exhilarating and disorienting.
If I learned how to use them—how to move without hesitation—maybe I’d stop feeling unsteady. Maybe I could carve a path that was truly mine. A new way to exist.
For the first time, I wasn’t bound to the currents.
A single lantern flickered, throwing long, wavering shadows.
Papers and maps sprawled across the desk, edges curled from salt air.
An ornate compass lay among them, its needle twitching, never settling.
Along the shelves, bottles of rum and ink stood beside sea-worn books—histories, legends, places swallowed by time.
A pair of cutlasses hung crossed on the wall, edges catching the lantern’s dim gleam.
Below them rested a leather-bound journal. Its cover was worn soft from years of handling; the spine cracked; the page edges curled as though it had been opened and closed too many times to count.
Everything in the room spoke of Alaric—precision threaded through disorder. The maps weren’t merely scattered; they were marked. Notes and symbols meant nothing to me. Several books had corners bent—one page after another—searching, never satisfied.
The journal felt different. Too personal for a man who survived on secrets. What mattered enough to keep it close, even at sea?
I shouldn’t.
I knew I shouldn’t.
My fingers brushed the worn leather anyway.
Warm. Recently handled.
I hesitated.
Did I want to know what lived inside?
What did Alaric really want with the artifact? Was he lying about the Trench—or worse, telling the truth? Would it reveal the origin of my mark and the power I barely understood, or confirm my fears?
Thoughts tightened into a spiral until my chest constricted. I replayed our conversation—his smirk, his careful wording. Alaric carried mystery and authority with the same ease he carried a blade.
And now I was bound to his course, sailing toward a place that should not exist.
The Forgotten Trench.
I’d only heard it in whispers—tales traded at night, voices kept low, as though speaking its name too loudly might summon it. Ocean shadows were said to move there. Creatures with too many teeth and eyes that glowed from the deep.
The Tidekeepers always faltered into uneasy silence when it was mentioned. They spoke of cold that seeped into bone, whispers calling to anyone who drifted too near. They warned of a pod that ventured there and returned lifeless—eyes gone, bodies marked with glowing symbols no one could decipher.
A warning.
A place where even the ocean recoiled. And I was sailing straight for it.
Part of me wanted to turn back—to run to the familiar horrors: my mother’s judgment, the Tidekeepers’ suffocating grip, the doctrine that punished anyone who strayed too far from purpose.
Another part—older than obedience—kept me rooted. The part that always questioned. The part that wanted answers more than safety.
Was this bravery? Or recklessness?
I couldn’t tell anymore.
My legs shifted restlessly beneath the blanket Alaric had draped over me earlier. The irony wasn’t lost: a mermaid choosing to stay aboard a pirate ship rather than risking the open sea.
Yet beneath the dread, exhilaration pulsed—proof that I was no longer tethered to the currents that had dictated my life. Water had always been my refuge, my sanctuary.
Now it felt like a line I didn’t dare cross. If I entered the sea, my mother and the Tidekeepers would know. Water was never just water to my kind. It carried presence. Power. Awareness.
I learned that the hard way.
When I was younger, a single outburst sent ripples through the depths. My mother appeared within moments, expression carved from ice, warning me never to let my emotions get the better of me.
The ocean whispered secrets to those who knew how to listen. And my mother?
She had always been listening.
I stopped asking questions she could lie to a long time ago.
By now, she likely knew I was gone. The Tidekeepers would feel the shift—the absence of my presence in the currents. They would be searching.
And they wouldn’t stop until they found me.
A shudder ran down my spine. If they caught me before I had answers—before I understood what I truly was—I would be dragged back into the life I fled.
I couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not ever.
My gaze drifted to the artifact across the room. Its pulse was steady—too steady—synced with my heartbeat. The connection between it and my crescent mark wasn’t subtle. Whenever I focused on it, the glow intensified, brightened, responding with unnerving intimacy.
What was it?
Why did it answer me?
Alaric believed the Forgotten Trench held the truth. Maybe he was right. Maybe we were searching for the same thing.
His motives were murky as the abyss we sailed toward. Did he want the artifact’s power? Did he think I was the key to unlocking it?
Or worse—
Was he lying altogether, sent by my mother to drag me back to Thalassia? My chest tightened.
I would rather face the horrors of the Trench than return without knowing who—what—I was.
A groan from the hull shattered my thoughts, followed by commotion above. Shouts—frantic, panicked.
I pushed myself to my feet. My movements were clumsy, body still learning itself. I stumbled to the door.
The moment I stepped outside, wind hit my face—salt and ozone. A storm brewed… or maybe it never left.
The crew stood frozen, pale, eyes wide. The scent of cannon fire mingled with something fouler. The ship’s timbers groaned under strain. Waves crashed against the hull, relentless.
The water churned violently, frothing as though alive. Something moved beneath the surface.
Something wrong. Then the waves split.
Dark figures rose from the depths, bodies twisting with unnatural grace. Their translucent forms shimmered with eerie phosphorescence, ribbons of inky darkness trailing behind them and dissolving into the water. Hollow eyes locked onto the crew with a hunger that didn’t belong to any living thing.
Each movement left a trail of glowing ichor in the wake. Their mouths that shattered thought.
Jaws split impossibly wide, rimmed with double rows of needle-fangs, each one slick with seawater and something darker. Their lips had withered away long ago, leaving exposed muscle and bone.
When they opened their mouths, it wasn’t to sing. It was to devour.
Shadow Sirens.
People said sirens lured sailors with lullabies—sweet melodies drifting on the tide.
That was a lie humans told themselves to make the taking easier.
The most dangerous of them didn’t sing at all.
They mimicked the voice of the one you loved most. A mother.
A sister.
A long-dead lover whispering your name in the fog. Then they pulled you under.
Their screeches pierced more than ears. They burrowed into bone, scraping sanity raw.
They were mermaids once. Before their voices were carved out and sold. Before their songs were bottled, traded, burned down to charms and control. When the sea was robbed of its music, it did not let the silence lie.
Reality snapped back with the scream of iron and flame. A siren’s voice.
Not like mine.
Not like the shadow sirens.
Hers carried weight—controlled, honed—bending the air with intention.
That note hadn’t lured. It hadn’t softened or beckoned. It had commanded—raw, unbridled power bending the water and the creatures within it. The red-haired woman didn’t look surprised by it. No one did. The crew moved around her as if it were expected. Accounted for.
My gaze tore across the deck with new eyes.
The elf at the cannons reloaded again—too fast, movements blurring where they shouldn’t.
A crewman near the rail took a claw across the chest and barely staggered, blood steaming as he laughed through clenched teeth.
Another hauled a siren bodily back over the side, strength far beyond any human frame.
Not human.
The realization settled cold and heavy.
This wasn’t a pirate crew stitched together by desperation and drink. These were survivors of something older. Darker.
My pulse thundered. The crew fought—blades flashing, gunfire cracking—but the battle was slipping away. They were losing.
A sailor screamed as a siren’s teeth sank into his shoulder, dragging him toward the edge. The red-haired woman was there in an instant, severing the creature’s grip and yanking him back before the sea could claim him.
Another sailor fell beneath slashing claws, lifeblood spilling across the deck in a dark flood.