Yen leapt from the tidecraft the moment it stabilized.
The rest followed closely behind.
Her tail flared instinctively as she hit the water—then stiffened. Every scale on her body seemed to tighten at once, like an invisible current of dread crawling across her skin.
The village of Reefville lay before her.
Ruined.
Broken coral structures jutted at unnatural angles. Homes she once knew were collapsed into drifting debris. The water itself carried traces of soot, blood, and shattered light.
Her mouth parted, but no sound came at first.
Then—
"Hello?" Her voice cracked through the water. "Anyone here?" She surged forward passing by corpses. "Please! Anyone!"
Her movements became frantic as she swept through the streets, weaving between wreckage and drifting remnants of what had once been life.
Excellus broke away from the group, scanning the outer perimeter with sharp, tactical focus, checking for lingering threats—anything that might still be active in the ruins.
The Investigator, meanwhile, remained detached from the chaos.
He moved through Reefville like a recorder rather than a witness, retrieving a compact tablet from his coat and beginning to document everything with clinical precision. His fingers moved quickly, capturing images, readings, and structural data.
Yen reached her home.
She stopped. For a moment, she simply stared at it. Then she slammed into the door.
"Ysa! Yve!"
Silence answered. She struck the door again, harder this time, but it gave nothing back. No movement. No response. No presence.
She pushed off into the current again, searching blindly now, no longer following paths—only desperation.
Eventually, she found him.
The Investigator stood near a cluster of fallen coral, where bodies lay partially obscured by debris. He did not react to her arrival. He simply continued working.
Yen slowed. Something about him shifted in her perception as she got closer.
And then she saw him clearly.
His lower body wasn't humanoid at all—it was a long, scaled serpent's tail, coiled partly in the sediment like it belonged to the ocean itself. His ears were sharp and pointed, angled slightly backward. When he finally turned, his eyes revealed horizontal slit irises—cold, precise, predatory in their geometry.
Recognition hit her immediately.
"Oh… you're a Slytharian."
The man didn't react with surprise. "Indeed I am," he said evenly. "Is there a problem?"
"No," Yen answered quickly, then hesitated. "I just… have a question."
He gave a small nod. "My name is Silver."
"Okay… uh—another question."
Silver resumed scanning the wreckage with his tablet as he spoke. "Ten weeks have passed."
Yen blinked. "What?"
"More precisely," he added, "seventy-one days. One thousand seven hundred and four hours."
Her breath caught. "Two months…I was gone for two months?"
"More precisely," Silver corrected, "two months, one week, and two days."
Yen stared at him. "But we were only in the Confluence Realm for no more than three hours."
Silver gave a small, indifferent shrug. "Temporal displacement between reference frames is inconsistent. It becomes easier to accept with experience." He extended the tablet toward her. "Here."
Yen hesitated before taking it. Her hands were already shaking. "What—what is it?"
"A summary of events," Silver said. "And the official report to be transmitted to His Grace."
"That fast?"
"Yes."
He continued working even as he spoke. "Slytharian physiology allows sustained high-efficiency aquatic movement. Combined with the low-density ocean structure of this planet, my effective operational speed increased significantly. I will be noting this for future comparative field advantage."
"…Uh huh," Yen murmured absently. She began scrolling.
Page after page. Images. Damage reports. Deaths.
Her grip tightened, the tablet trembled in her hands. Her tail weakened beneath her as she sank slowly onto a broken coral slab, eyes locked on the screen.
Her breath broke. "What have I done…" Her voice was barely audible now. "I—I shouldn't have ever left…"
The tablet slipped from her shaking hands.
Silver caught it mid-fall without looking, as though it had always been part of his motion.
Then his horizontal pupils narrowed slightly as they settled on the distant ridge beyond Reefville—the jagged silhouette of a dormant volcanic structure, dark and immobile against the water's haze. "Huh…" he murmured. "Is that a volcano?"
Yen's hands were still trembling, but she followed his gaze anyway. "Yeah…" she said quietly. "That's been dead for a millennium now."
Silver tilted his head a fraction. "Interesting. I've never seen a dead volcano before."
Yen let out a short, hollow breath that almost passed for a laugh. "Really? Now that is interesting," she said, voice strained. Then she steadied herself. "We should go. We have to bury the fallen."
Silver glanced back at the scattered wreckage and drifting bodies. "We could inter them at the foot of the volcano," he said calmly. "The residual essence the corpses have there may interact with geothermal memory fields. It might revive volcanic activity over time."
Yen's head snapped slightly toward him. "That's ridiculous," she said flatly. "That's just a myth."
Silver blinked once. "Won't hurt to try."
Yen shook her head. "We will bury them at the foot of the volcano—not because it will revive anything." Her voice hardened, steadying itself. "But because they deserve a proper funeral."
Silver regarded her for a moment. "Understood." A beat. "What you said."
Yen turned back toward Reefville, already moving through the water again. "Start digging," she ordered. "We'll need a large grave." Her eyes swept across the ruins. "We'll handle the fallen."
Silver gave a small nod. "Will do."
Without further comment, he drifted toward the volcanic ridge, tablet secured, already calculating volume, sediment displacement, and structural integrity as if grief and logistics were merely two parallel datasets in the same equation.
~~~
They worked in silence.
One by one, the bodies were lifted carefully from the broken coral streets and placed onto the wagon Excellus had managed to stabilize near the dock remains. The vehicle floated slightly above the water, anchored by slow-pulsing stabilizers.
Yen moved like she was made of glass. Every time she bent down, every time she lifted a fallen siren, her breath caught as if the act itself was cutting something inside her.
If she recognized someone—if there was even a flicker of familiarity in a face—she paused longer.
Sometimes she didn't speak at all. Sometimes she just shook her head once, as if refusing reality a second time.
Then she kept moving.
Mercedius carried the weight of bodies with practiced restraint, his expression unreadable but heavy in a way he rarely allowed to surface. Excellus worked methodically beside him, checking for injuries, confirming identities when possible. The co-pilot said nothing at all—only helping lift and arrange, jaw clenched so tightly it looked painful.
No one tried to fill the silence. It was not that kind of moment.
Yen finally spoke as she lowered another body onto the wagon. "How did the creature get through the barrier…" Her voice cracked mid-sentence. She swallowed and forced it through. "It's made from liquidized and purified Volite."
Mercedius paused briefly, one hand still supporting a fallen siren before easing them down. "Either that creature is not native to this planet," he said quietly, "or it is something far older than classification allows." He looked toward the ruined horizon. "Something… godlike."
Yen's grip tightened on the edge of the wagon. Her voice broke. "I shouldn't have agreed to stay longer for the tour." She shook her head once, sharply. "If I had been here… I could have stopped it. None of this would've happened."
Mercedius exhaled slowly. "Do not assign yourself total causality, Chalisse." He lowered another body with care. "If blame must be distributed… then I am equally accountable. I indulged nostalgia. I extended your stay. I allowed distraction to override judgment."
Yen didn't answer immediately. Her hands were shaking again as she lifted another body from the wreckage.
She froze.
The siren in her arms was the same approximate age as her daughters.
For a moment, she couldn't move. Then she pulled the body close, holding it with a trembling restraint that barely kept her composure intact.
"Please…" she whispered, almost soundless. "Heavens… let my daughters be safe."
Mercedius looked at her, expression tightening with something between sorrow and resolve. "Have faith in your daughters, Chalisse. They are strong. Like you." He adjusted his grip on another body. "They are also Aethryx twins—the fourth recorded pair in all of siren history."
Yen's jaw tightened. "That doesn't help, Master." Her voice sharpened through grief. "The Aethryx mark isn't a blessing. It's a curse." She looked down at the body in her arms. "If one of them dies… I lose both of them."
Her breath broke.
"I don't know what I would do if that happens."
Yen moved through the wreckage with mechanical exhaustion, lifting debris, clearing collapsed coral, revealing what the sea had tried to hide.
Then she stopped.
Something beneath a broken slab of stone caught her attention.
Her hands hesitated. Slowly, she lifted it.
At first, only a face turned toward the sand. Then the features became clear.
Recognition hit her like a fracture through glass.
"Maira…" The name left her mouth without permission. One of her daughter's closest friends. A child she had seen laugh not long ago.
Now still. Empty. Lifeless.
For a moment, everything inside Yen went silent.
Then it broke.
Not gradually, nor gently.
All at once.
Her grip slipped from the debris. Her body dropped to her knees beside Maira's body as if her strength had been cut from her spine.
"No…"
The word came out fractured.
Then again—louder. "No—no, NO!"
Her breath collapsed into something unstable. Her vision blurred. Her tail lashed once against the seabed, then froze as if even her body no longer knew what to do.
The weight she had been carrying since Reefville's ruin finally cracked open inside her.
Fear.
Guilt.
Regret.
Helplessness.
It surged upward all at once, violent and uncontainable. Her voice shattered into a scream. It tore through the water like a rupture in the ocean itself. The scales across her body flared instinctively, vvibrating with uncontrolled resonance.
A pressure built around her—then released.
The water responded. A shockwave expanded outward from her position, folding through Reefville in a sweeping tidal distortion. Structures groaned. Debris lifted. The seabed churned. A force like a submerged storm detonated through the ruins.
Excellus was the first to react. "Brace—!" He grabbed onto a sturdy coral as the current slammed sideways through the street.
The co-pilot latched onto the wagon frame, struggling to stabilize it as bodies and debris threatened to shift.
Reefville itself seemed to bend under the pressure of Yen's grief-made current.
Silver was still working the burial site when the ocean itself changed.
The pressure hit first. A violent, unnatural surge rolled through Reefville like a submerged impact.
He reacted a fraction too late. The shockwave threw him sideways through the water.
He struck a half-buried slab of coral, using the shovel instinctively to anchor himself, driving it into the seabed to arrest his momentum. His grip tightened as the current tore past him, pulling debris and loose sediment in its wake.
His jaw clenched. Then—just as abruptly—it passed. Silence returned in heavy pulses.
Silver held position for a moment, stabilizing his breathing, rolling his shoulders once to recalibrate his body's balance. He shook his head sharply, as if discarding residual pressure, then reoriented himself.
That's when he noticed it. A faint glint beneath tangled seaweed and drifting kelp
He narrowed his eyes and swam closer. With precise movements, he pushed the vegetation aside.
A structure emerged. The control panel.
Silver's expression changed slightly—not surprise, but interest. He retrieved his tablet and held it over the panel.
A scanning interface activated instantly, projecting layered diagnostics over the structure: internal mechanisms, energy routing, structural schematics—rendered like an x-ray blueprint suspended in water.
"Subsurface access node," he noted quietly. His fingers moved across the tablet inputting a sequence. Encrypted verification override.
The panel responded. A low mechanical hiss echoed through the water.
Silver pushed aside the remaining kelp.
Behind it: the entrance.
He paused only briefly. Then he entered. His physiology adjusted instantly. His lower serpent form began to dissolve, segmentation loosening under controlled transformation. Scale and fluid structure reconfigured.
Within seconds, his tail had fully resolved into humanoid legs. He stood upright inside the sealed chamber.
Dry gravity-like stability replaced aquatic drift. He looked around once, expression unreadable then he activated the lighting system from his tablet.
The secret base lit up immediately. And then the smell hit him. Faint, layered, difficult to categorize—organic, metallic, slightly saline, with traces of decay that didn't fully align with either marine or terrestrial decomposition.
Silver paused. His expression tightened slightly. Instinct overrode formality.
He lowered his head and inhaled once—slow, controlled—mapping the scent profile out of habit more than necessity. "Unclassified biological residue," he muttered.
Tablet raised. He initiated a full-spectrum scan.
"UV/X-spectrum structural overlay engaged."
The world shifted through the display. Surfaces became transparent layers of data. Residual heat signatures. Microbial traces. And most importantly—genetic markers.
The table lit up first. Dozens of overlapping traces clustered across its surface, as if multiple individuals had interacted with it repeatedly over time.
Silver narrowed his eyes. He tapped the display.
The tablet resolved the first sequence.
Genomic Signature Match Confirmed
Species Classification: Homo sapiens sapiens
Sequence Integrity: 99.9987%
Confidence Index: Absolute
A second readout followed almost immediately.
Genomic Signature Match Confirmed
Species Classification: Sirenia atlantica
Sequence Integrity: 99.9992%
Confidence Index: Absolute
Silver straightened slightly. "…What the hell," he said under his breath. His eyes moved across the room again. "Human… underwater?"
He stepped closer, scanning the perimeter. The bed registered next. Multiple genetic traces layered into the fabric of the structure.
Long-term occupancy detected. Male biological material identified—hair strands, epithelial residue, trace skin shedding embedded in the seams.
Silver tilted his head slightly, processing. He moved the scanner lower.
Beside the bed was a container. He hesitated for the first time. Then picked it up and scanned it.
The tablet flickered. The readout destabilized.
Then:
Genomic Signature Analysis Failed
Species Classification: Unresolved
Sequence Integrity: Non-Catalogued Architecture
Confidence Index: Null
System Alert: ERROR // Biological Signature Not Recognized
A faint pause followed.
The chamber felt suddenly smaller.
"…That shouldn't be possible," he muttered. He scanned the bucket again.
The tablet processed for a moment, its interface cycling through spectral overlays and molecular reconstruction algorithms.
Then the same result appeared.
His brow furrowed.
Assuming an instrumentation fault, he crouched beside the bed and opened the tablet's diagnostics panel. Strings of code and calibration matrices scrolled across the display as he adjusted sensor thresholds, reset the genomic parser, and rerouted the spectral analyzer.
He ran the scan a third time. The readout did not change.
For the first time, genuine frustration crossed his face. The genomic parser was failing, but the chemical analysis was still running. He switched views.
A new window populated on the tablet.
Molecular Composition Analysis:
- Bilirubin Trace
- Necrotic Blood Cells
- Saliva
- Gastric Acid
- Bile Salts (High Concentration)
"Bile." He lowered the tablet slightly, horizontal pupils narrowing. "Human bile?" He stared into the container. "Why?" His mind worked through the implications.
Humans vomited when ill, poisoned, or subjected to extreme physiological stress.
He looked around the chamber. "I was under the impression sirens did not keep humans in captivity." Silver set the bucket down and turned his attention to the bed.
A few strands of hair and flakes of shed skin remained embedded in the fabric.
His claws extended with a soft metallic rasp. He carefully scraped a small fragment of epidermal tissue free and held it up to the light. Then he reactivated the tablet and scanned the sample.
The display resolved.
Genomic Signature Match Confirmed
Species Classification: Homo sapiens sapiens
Sequence Integrity: 99.9987%
Confidence Index: Absolute
Silver nodded once.
Then the display flickered. The classification changed.
Genomic Signature Match Confirmed
Species Classification: Sirenia atlantica
Sequence Integrity: 99.9992%
Confidence Index: Absolute
Silver's eyes narrowed.
The text shifted again.
Human.
Siren.
Human.
Siren.
The sequence oscillated rapidly as if the sample could not decide what it was. Then the screen froze.
Genomic Signature Analysis Failed
Species Classification: Unresolved
Sequence Integrity: Non-Catalogued Architecture
Confidence Index: Null
System Alert: ERROR // Biological Signature Not Recognized
Silver stared at the tablet in silence.
Slowly, he lowered the sample. For the first time in the investigation, his normally detached expression gave way to genuine disbelief.
"What in the name of His Grace…" he whispered.
Silver was fully engaged now.
The detached professionalism that had defined him since his arrival was still there, but beneath it something sharper had awakened.
Excitement.
Silver loved puzzles.
And this—this hidden chamber beneath a dead volcano, contaminated with human and siren DNA, impossible genetic signatures, and evidence of a secret occupant—was the most compelling puzzle he had encountered in years.
He moved through the facility with renewed intensity.
The tablet in his hand swept across every surface. He scanned walls, conduits, and storage compartments. He reconstructed timelines, tested hypotheses, and discarded them almost as quickly as they formed.
A human living underwater. A siren sharing the chamber. Biological material that defied classification.
None of it made sense.
Silver's horizontal pupils narrowed. "Why?" he muttered. He paced. "Why hide this place? Why shelter a human? Why produce a genomic architecture that cannot be catalogued?"
He stopped.
No answer.
Frustration did not break through his composure; it sharpened it. The standard search was insufficient. It was time for a more invasive approach.
He returned to the tablet, his fingers flying across the interface with renewed purpose. He initiated a deep structural scan, switching from biological analysis to a full-spectrum material and energy signature sweep. High-frequency acoustic pulses emanated from the device, penetrating the walls, floor, and furniture.
The tablet's display shifted, showing the room as a wireframe blueprint. Hollow spaces, power conduits, and hidden compartments lit up in different colors. Most were expected. But one, a small, shielded cavity near the bed, registered as an anomaly—a dead zone in the scan.
"Ah," he breathed. A concealed safe.
He approached the bedside table, his movements now precise and deliberate. He ran the tablet over the drawer, the screen displaying the internal locking mechanism, but it was just an ordinary bedside table.
He pulled it open.
Inside lay a single book.
Silver froze.
The cover was ancient, but the title remained unmistakable.
The Black Doctrine of Conversion.
For several seconds, he did not move.
His eyes widened. Shock gave way to comprehension.
The fragmented clues that had refused to align suddenly locked into place with devastating clarity.
Slowly, he lifted the book from the drawer. A smile crept across his face, widening as realization settled fully into place, he tightened his grip on the book.
"Well, well, someone's been playing God," he whispered.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Note;
So... how about that, eh?
Silver's having the time of his life. Yen is having the worst. Such is the balance of the universe. I feel like I owe our Chieftess a big hug. And a very, very long vacation.
No worries though. This is just the start of everyone's suffering. OOPS!! SPOLIER ALERT!!!!😀😀😈