Kai #4
I stand at the center of it all, magic crackling off my skin like lightning, and I make a vow.
I’ll find them, every last siren, and I’ll burn them from this world.
No mercy. No surrender. No soul spared. They thought they could take her from me.
Thought they could use me. Break me. But they didn’t realize, they created something worse than any siren alive.
I step forward, hands braced on the rail, eyes locked on the horizon. Let them run. Let them hide. I’m coming.
“You’ve unlocked your powers, son.” I turn toward Taika. She’s still alive. She hasn’t been there when I’ve needed her, not once. Just a ghost in the corners of my life, a shadow I could never outrun. But now, after everything, after Mira, after Jay, she is the one left standing.
It makes me sick. I spent every ounce of myself trying to save Mira, trying to outrun fate, trying to make sense of the storm inside me. But I’m done chasing what’s already lost. Because now I see it clearly, with a clarity that only comes after destruction.
This is more than a war. It’s a game, and I’ve just been handed the winning card.
My power, bloodline, and title. This is what the sirens wanted all along.
And now I’ll use it to take everything back.
They had to have made some sick twisted deal with Varn.
To get me distracted, to get her away from my side and slaughter her.
What kind of mother puts a blade through her own daughter's heart? The thought makes me slightly thankful for the woman standing in front of me. The tell all of the betrayal? Anya, grinning up at me like she’d just won a chest of gold.
I stare at Taika, drunk on secrets and confidence. But whatever hope she has of playing mother now is gone, burned away in the fire that has taken Mira from me. There is no bond here. No warmth, nor family. Just power.
“And?” The word cuts through the air between us like I meant it to draw blood. She doesn’t flinch.
“Let’s get her back,” she says. “I’ll help you.” My eyes stay locked on the black water ahead. The waves slam against each other like fists in a fight, rising higher with every breath. But the ship doesn’t move, not even a shudder. The sea finally knows fear. It knows who I am now.
“Who let you out?” My voice is colder than the water below.
“No one did. The cell broke open.” Of course it did. I nod once, slow and silent, salt stinging my skin, rain burning through the grime and blood on my face. The ocean sprays me like it’s trying to remind me I’m still alive. It doesn’t matter. She’s gone. And now the world is colder.
But I have something else now. A weapon. And I’m going to use it.
Taika steps beside me, calm, like she hasn’t just watched the world burn. “You see, son? You command the tides, just as she does. You can wield water. You are far from human. You’re immortal. So is Mira.” Her voice is smooth, almost proud, but it makes my skin crawl.
I turn my head slowly, my gaze drifting from her face back to the ocean, our ocean.
The sea that has chosen us, blessed us, and bound us.
She is right. The ocean touched me the same way it touched Mira that night.
That night everything changed. When salt met skin and the stars carved fate into our bones.
We weren’t just chosen. We were born to be this.
Two souls made from the same storm, split into two bodies.
Bound by something deeper than blood, deeper than magic.
My soulmate, flame, light, treasure, she is gone.
Rage surges through me like lightning in a storm, each heartbeat a thunderclap in my chest. I’m not supposed to be standing here with Taika. Not after everything we lost. We traded the wrong person. We traded the wrong fucking person. My jaw clenches, my fists curl tight.
“It should’ve been you,” I spit, my voice raw, deadly.
“Not her. Never her.” The fury inside me cracks open.
The sky splits and the sea answers. A tidal wave roars on the horizon, a towering wall of black water rising like a beast summoned from the deep.
The crew screams with panicked voices, boots slamming against soaked wood, as they rush to take cover below deck.
But I don’t move. I am the storm now, and I want the world to drown with me.
“You’ve caught sirens before?” I ask, my gaze fixed on the tidal wave surging toward us.
“Yes. Many.” Taika’s voice carries a quiet, unsettling pride.
“I need you to do it again.” From the corner of my eye, I see her nod once.
I try to breathe, but it’s like the ocean has wrapped itself around my chest, crushing and relentless.
Her memory clings to me, salt, blood, the phantom weight of her slipping through my arms. I close my eyes and I see her face, the storm behind her gaze, the promise she made with her final breath.
The sirens took her to save her… or so they claimed.
I turn to Taika, my voice carved from the wreckage of everything I’ve lost. “I don’t know where they’ve taken her, or what they truly want with her, but I will find her. I will turn this ocean to blood till I do.”