Nyra
Another report. The third one this week.
Five casualties.
All while we had the northern and southern coasts under surveillance, with regular patrols across the western waters. The eastern block was useless terrain anyway, crowded with jagged rocks. Some delusional locals liked telling children they were the teeth of ancient sharks. Either way, it was no place to fish or wander near after sunset.
I flipped the report open, my eyes searching for theCircumstancessection. The moment I read it, my jaw tightened.
All five deaths had happened along the northern coast.
My coast.
The area I kept under constant watch.Twenty of my best interns rotated patrols every two hours, and I personally inspected the shoreline just as often. So how had five people died without any of us noticing?
The room fell silent.
“Nobody heard anything? Screaming? Fighting?”
“Captain Blackwell,” Agatha spoke up, far steadier than Stephen ever managed to be. “Should we search the northern coast for more clues?”
Her voice sounded almost bored.
“Well, obviously.” I slammed my hand against the table hard enough for my tea cup to rattle. “Five people are dead, and we still have no idea why. Check for unlicensed ships, illegal crossings, anything suspicious. Identify the bodies while you’re at it. This isn’t the first case you’ve handled.”
Stephen stared at me in disbelief. “You want us to go into the water?”
“You have your guns and draggers.” My voice came out cold enough to freeze any new recruit. “That’s already more protection than those five people had.”
He swallowed hard.
“Now move before this becomes the fourth time this week I’ve destroyed my office over incompetence.”
That finally got them moving.
As the soldiers hurried out of my office, I reached for the old research texts stacked beside my desk.
Merfolk records.
The earliest descriptions painted them as beautiful creatures untouched by the crushing pressure of the deep. Sailors once spoke of them with fascination rather than fear. Most people didn’t even believe they existed.
Then came the end of the Golden Age.
Trade ships vanished beneath the waves. Entire crews were found torn apart beyond recognition. Small islands like Little Pearl were abandoned to fend for themselves while the sea turned hostile around them.
News of the merfolk declaring war spread too slowly.
Too many fishers were already trapped at sea before the warnings reached them.
Without fishing, starvation followed quickly. The town mayors tried rationing supplies, but sickness spread faster than food ever could. Soon enough, the islands solved their famine problem themselves.
The dead filled common graves. Others were burned before disease could spread further.
I lowered the papers and glanced outside. Fog swallowed the coastline. At first, I saw nothing unusual. Then I noticed it — a faint yellow reflection shimmering across the water beneath the mist.
I narrowed my eyes.
Slowly, I stepped out of my office and pushed open the heavy doors of the northern standing. Little Pearl insisted on calling military headquartersstandings.Supposedly, it reassured people that humans still controlled the land.
The closer I got to shore, the stronger the smell became. Bitter, rotten, heavy enough to burn my throat. I wrapped my scarf around my face and continued toward the water.
The beach was empty. No patrols. No soldiers. No movement. As if my crew had vanished from the surface.
Only the sound of waves folding against the sand. I drew my gun and stepped into the sea. After only a few steps, my boot struck something soft beneath the water. Heavy and slender. Perhaps the morning victims were illegal emigrants, and this is one of their luggage.
I crouched down and grabbed it.
Stephen’s lifeless eyes stared back at me through the dark water. I checked for a pulse immediately. Nothing. His skin was already cold. Dead for hours at least.
The stench slipped through my scarf, making me hold my breath. Carefully, I lowered his body back into the water.
Pity clawed briefly at my chest. Maybe because I had sent him there myself.
But the dead could wait.
The living mattered more.
I pushed farther into the sea until the water reached my knees. The coast remained silent around me while the waves rolled calmly against the shore, as if nothing had happened at all. Darkness settled quickly, making the sea even more dangerous.
Eventually the terrible smell began to fade, and I pulled the scarf from my face, rinsing it in the water. My eyes searched desperately through the fog for signs of the others.
Calling their names would only attract unwanted attention, I could only trust the light what the moon and the stars provided, trying to keep a watchful eye. I kept walking.
A jagged rock rose from the surface ahead of me, slick with seawater. I climbed onto it briefly, swallowing a mouthful of alcohol mixed with bitter dark chocolate to steady myself.
That was when another body drifted toward the rock. I caught the soldier by the shoulder and dragged him onto the stone beside me. The wounds across his body were so severe that even beneath the moonlight, I couldn’t identify him.
I slid back into the water, waist deep now. Cold waves pressed against my uniform as I kept moving forward.
After several more minutes, I accepted the truth. Nobody survived. Every member of my squad was either beneath the water or being carried away by it.
Dead. All of them.
But how? The water near shore wasn’t deep enough to drown trained soldiers so easily. They had weapons. Guns. Draggers.
So what had dragged them under?
Before I could think further, something seized my ankle violently.
My feet disappeared beneath me as I was yanked underwater. I inhaled sharply before the sea closed over my head and raised my gun toward the pressure wrapped around my leg. I fired, and in the following moment purplish liquid exploded through the water.
A chipped, echoing scream tore through the darkness.
I forced myself back to the surface, gasping for air as I stumbled toward shallower water until the sea only reached my knees again.
Then I heard them. Splashing. Strange cries that sounded almost like whale calls, except sharper, chirping unnaturally through the fog. Slender figures flickered in and out of sight beneath the waves.
Merfolk.
Before I could waste time watching them drag away their wounded, I aimed my gun again and fired toward the movement.
Once. Twice. Three more times.
The shots thundered across the water while purple blood spread through the waves around me. For one dangerous moment, I almost believed I could kill all of them. That’s when a knife hit my shoulder. It was thrown underwater, hitting just the main veins under my skin. It was a military knife, one I recognized from the engraved symbols.
I looked down and was ready to strike back, when a chilling sight caught my eyes. The knife’s owner was Agatha. Her eyes were so bloodied , the irises disappeared entirely, leaving only her pupils and several wounds that caused her death to be seen. Her body was blue and green from being in the cold water too long. Yet her legs stood and now threw knives towards me like I trained her to do in her first days.
She stood, didn’t make a sound, just reached for another knife in her belt. After my shock, I shot her. No use. Her body was already dead, whatever moved her was only wearing her like a puppet. My hands started to shake as the salty water reached the wound.
I escaped the water putting some distance between me and Agatha, trying to figure out if her body could move on the ground still. Her body moved slowly towards me, her strong legs, she was always proud of now carried her in an unnatural way. But as soon as she reached the coast, her body trembled, a pained groan escaped from her throat, and her body collapsed. Mixture of red and purple blood soaked the golden sand.
Suddenly someone grabbed my shoulder and pulled out the knife from it, pushing a cloth on the scar. My sight blurried by the sudden pain but I could still recognize the old, grey eyes of Commander Harrow, before the fever of the fight passed me out.
