Chapter Text
The news that the mermaid had begun her hunt once more spread through the village like a slow-acting poison.
To the inhabitants of this small, salt-crusted port town, there was no joy to be found in such rumors. According to the ancient legends passed down through generations of weather-beaten sailors, the mermaid was no ethereal beauty, but a monstrosity that drifted through the fog, humming melodies with no words and no end. They said her song had a physical weight to it, dragging entire vessels into the crushing depths of the abyss from which no soul ever returned. For a community that survived solely on what they could wrench from the waves, her presence was more than a myth—it was a death sentence.
Curiously, for the first month after the sightings began, the ocean remained unnervingly generous. The hauls were larger than ever, and the sun shone with a deceptive warmth. Emboldened by greed, the fishermen began to whisper among themselves: “Just a little further. The schools are thicker beyond the ridge.” One by one, they pushed past the invisible boundaries of safety, lured by the promise of a once-in-a-lifetime catch.
But the sea always collects its debts.
When an entire ship failed to return to the harbor, the illusion shattered. Fear, sharper and colder than the winter tide, gripped the town. The legendary monster had truly returned. Wives waited on the docks until their skin turned blue from the cold, but the ocean offered no closure—not a scrap of wood, not a single bone was ever returned to the shore.
Among the bereaved was a man whose sanity had begun to fray like a rotting rope. He had a twelve-month-old child, a toddler who had only just begun to find his footing. When the news came that the ship carrying his wife had vanished, the man collapsed into a catatonic fever. For days he lay bedridden, drifting in and out of consciousness, only to wake to a nightmare even more profound: his child was gone.
Despite the entire village scouring every alley and cliffside, there was not a single trace of the boy. The belief took root in the man’s twisted mind like a parasite—the mermaid had not been satisfied with taking his wife from the water; she had crawled onto land to steal his son. Consumed by a singular, burning hatred, he vowed to take the life of the beast or die trying.
Fixers came by the dozen, exorcists offered their rites, and even a priest sanctioned by the Holy See arrived to bless the waters. None succeeded. Some turned back in terror before reaching the deep, while others vanished into the mists, becoming fresh casualties to the very disaster they sought to end.
Desperate and bankrupt of hope, the man reached into the shadows, beyond the boundaries of the law. He found a mercenary of unknown nationality and shadowed origins. Pushing half of his life savings across a scarred wooden table, the man made his demand clear:
“Bring me the mermaid’s head.”
Naib Subedar stood at the prow of the weathered brigantine, his gaze fixed on the undulating grey of the sea. Under the afternoon sun, the golden scales of light on the water began to fracture. Within minutes, a heavy sea mist rolled in, turning the sky the color of cold ash.
“We can’t go any further!” a sailor shouted from the deck, his voice cracking with terror.
“I know,” Naib murmured, his voice low and steady.
He ignored the man’s panic, focusing his sharp eyes on a point roughly eight hundred yards ahead. There, perched upon a jagged, spray-slicked rock, was the silhouette of a woman. She was wringing out her long, sodden hair with a mundane, rhythmic grace. She didn't look like a siren of legend; she looked... ordinary. Too ordinary. And yet, there was a strange blurriness to her form, as if the fog itself were trying to hide her.
Naib turned to the trembling sailor. “Tell me everything you know about the mermaid. Don't leave anything out.”
“The mermaid? They say she has skin as white as a corpse and hair like tangled seaweed... why do you ask? Surely she isn't calling to you?!” The sailor crossed himself frantically. “We thought we’d be safe for a while since she just took a whole ship, but... look, you won't miss her. She’ll have a fish’s tail. You won’t mistake her for a person.”
Is that so? Naib thought. He watched the silhouette, trying to discern its true nature. The client and the villagers spoke of her existence with absolute certainty, yet their accounts were built on a foundation of whispers and shadows. The figure he saw looked painfully human, and the discrepancy unsettled him.
He ordered the ship to turn back. He needed more than just ghost stories.
Naib spent the following days treading through the underbelly of the town. He frequented salt-stained taverns, pored over crumbling records in the local library, and interviewed the elderly who had spent their lives watching the horizon. The testimonies were a chaotic mess of contradictions. A tavern owner claimed the mermaid was as massive as a whale; old fishermen sitting idly by the docks insisted she was a cunning demon that would infiltrate your dreams if you so much as thought of her.
But whenever Naib described the ‘woman’ on the rock, the room would go silent. No one could tell him who she was, or if she was even the mermaid at all.
It wasn't until he visited a mad crone living on the outskirts of the town that the narrative shifted. The old woman sat in a battered leather chair, staring into the dying embers of a fireplace. After a fit of coughing that sounded like tearing silk, she squeezed out her words.
“When I was a girl, I fell into the deep water,” she whispered. “I thought I was dead. But a girl my age... she pulled me out. She was a mermaid, no doubt about it. But no one believed me. People only have a taste for the cruel stories. They don't care if she’s kind or not.”
“So the legend existed even when you were a child?” Naib asked, leaning closer. “Do you know where it started?”
The crone narrowed her clouded eyes. “Who knows... my mother’s mother used to tell a different story. Not of a monster, but of a poor girl sacrificed to the sea.”
“Sacrificed?”
“Aye. When the catch was poor and the sea was angry, they thought the water demanded a price. They gave it a young maiden. Children these days... they have no patience for the old truths. It’s all ‘monster this’ and ‘mermaid that.’ They’ve all gone mad.”
Naib stepped out of the cramped hut, the crone's words echoing in his mind. Could a mermaid truly look like a person? He weighed the village’s belief in a fish-tailed beast against the story of a living sacrifice.
Suddenly, a voice called out his name. He jerked his head up, but the sound vanished instantly.
It was that hallucination again. He pressed his thumb hard against his throbbing temple. Since the day his mother had passed, her voice would flicker in his mind whenever his focus wavered. He had promised himself he would take care of her after the war, but after his dishonorable discharge, he had returned to a home that held nothing but dust and fading memories.
Walking, earning money, eating—it was all hollow. The life of a mercenary provided the only reason to keep moving; the familiar surge of adrenaline during a hunt was the only thing that made him feel alive. He had accepted this contract for the same cynical reasons, yet the image of the woman on the rock lingered like a splinter in his mind.
“They say the mermaid mimics those you miss most,” Naib whispered into the empty alleyway. “Are you coming to see me, Mother...?”
He walked on in silence, his footsteps muffled by the damp cobblestones. He didn't have the luxury of entertaining ghosts. The hunt had only just begun.