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There are stories sailors tell in hushed voices—of songs that once turned tides, of sirens with silver eyes and voices that could crack a man's soul wide open.

Lysander was one of them. Once.

He met Elias during a warm season, when the ocean was calm and full of light. The sailor had been playing some sort of string instrument on the deck of a ship. His voice light and lifted, full of wonder and hope, and Lysander drifted ever closer. 

Elias called him angel, miracle, his.

Their love was not quick, but it was deep. Elias returned often, alone, seeking Lysander like a man seeks salvation. He swore loyalty in the darkness of caves, where the sea glowed like candlelight and their hands fit together like fate. Elias taught him words. Lysander gave him songs. He trusted him.

But Elias was not what he seemed.

He was the bait. The trap. The lie.

One moonless night, Elias brought his crew. They came with harpoons laced in poison, with nets made of chain and bone. Lysander fought, thrashed, screamed—but it was no use. He was caught. Elias had whispered all his secrets, mapped his haunts, memorized the music of his heart and sold it.

Lysander was dragged aboard like a monstrous catch, his tail gored and bleeding, his chest heaving.

“Don’t hate me,” Elias said, crouching over him, brushing the hair from his face. “You’re too dangerous. Too powerful. Someone would’ve done it eventually.”

He cupped Lysander’s cheek.

Then gave the order.

They held him down on the blood-slicked deck. He could feel the blades before he saw them. He tried to scream, to sing, to beg, but they silenced him—literally.

They carved out his vocal cords.

Not quickly. Not cleanly.

It was a harvest. A desecration. His voice—his magic, his birthright, his self—ripped from him by the very hands that once held him with devotion.

And when it was over, when the deck was stained with blood and the crew had taken what they came for, they didn’t kill him. They didn’t even look at him like a creature anymore.

Just cargo with no use left.

So they tossed him back into the sea.

His body sank slowly, gracelessly, like ruined driftwood. Weak. Gutted. Hollow.

But the ocean—though not kind—did not let him die.

Currents curled around him like mourning veils. Salt kissed his wounds with cruel tenderness. Creatures of the deep followed the scent of blood but kept their distance. He drifted for days, weeks, maybe more, wrapped in pain and silence, until he found the strength to move again.

Lysander lives now in the ruins of old reefs and coves. He sings only in dreams, and even then, the sound is thin, broken, almost human in its weeping. His magic is fractured. His heart is worse.

When sailors speak of him now, they do so in fragments.

A siren who does not sing.

A ghost with silver eyes.

A shadow beneath the waves.

They say he watches the hulls of ships that pass overhead.

That if you look into the water long enough, you might see him—

Not singing. Not screaming.

Just staring.

And remembering.

———

Elias and the aftermath

Elias survived, of course.

Men like him always do.

After the night they mutilated Lysander and tossed him into the sea like refuse, Elias and his crew returned to port with their prize: the harvested vocal cords of a siren. Still faintly humming with residual magic, still warm from the body they were stolen from. To merchants and mages alike, it was priceless—a rare and volatile artifact, capable of enchanting weapons, lacing spells with seduction, or brewing elixirs that could command loyalty or madness.

Elias was hailed as a hero in shadowed circles.

The sailor who silenced a siren.

He was paid handsomely. The ship’s coffers swelled. The crew drank and celebrated, and no one—not one—spoke the name Lysander again.

But Elias kept the necklace.

A thin cord of woven kelp and gold, once gifted to him by Lysander, now stained faintly with old blood. He told himself it was a trophy. Proof. Something to remind him that he was strong enough to do what others couldn’t.

But late at night, he would trace the pendant absently.

And dream of silver eyes wide in betrayal.

Of a voice calling his name one last time before it was stolen forever.

He sailed for years after that. Grew wealthier. Changed ships, changed ports, changed lovers. He laughed loudly, lived freely, lived well. But the sea never let him forget. Not really.

Every time he crossed the ocean, he’d feel it watching him.

Sometimes, songs would rise from the waves—not beautiful melodies, but warped echoes, wrong and wounded, like the ocean trying to sing with a torn throat. Other sailors would claim it was just the wind through the rigging, or whales too deep to see.

But Elias knew better.

Once, off the coast of a forgotten island, a sailor went missing. Just vanished, mid-watch, with no scream, no struggle—just a splash. The others laughed it off. Elias didn’t sleep for three nights.

He began to drink. He tried to avoid certain waters.

But the sea always has its own currents.

And one day, years later, Elias looked over the side of his ship—and saw a shape in the water, watching. Pale, half-lit by moonlight, still and silent. A merman with scars across his throat and a gaze like a grave.

He said nothing. Of course he couldn’t.

But his presence said everything.

Elias staggered back, pale and shaking. The others thought he’d gone mad.

And maybe he had.

Since then, he no longer sets foot on ships. He lives inland now, far from the shore, in a house that smells of mold and regret. He keeps bowls of saltwater near his door, like offerings. He never speaks Lysander’s name. He dreams in silence.

But he still wears the necklace.

And some nights, when the wind howls too much like grief, and the rain taps too rhythmically on his windows, Elias hears something…

Not a song.

Not words.

Just breathing—just under the floorboards, just behind the door, just beneath the water in the well behind his home.

He doesn’t dare look anymore.

Because he knows.

Lysander survived.

And the sea never forgets.