The village of Hargrave knew better than to trust the sea’s whispers.

  Fishermen’s widows nailed dried starfish above their doors to ward off Neptide—a spirit said to mimic the voices of drowned kin. Jarek had mocked the superstition once. Back when his brother Arlen’s laughter still filled their cramped cottage. Before the storm stole him. Before the sea began its insidious song.

  Now, three months after the wreck of the Marlin, Jarek was a fixture on Hargrave’s beach, a solitary silhouette against the bruised horizon. He’d spend entire days huddled near the waterline, oblivious to the biting wind and the spray of the Mourning Tides. The villagers whispered about him, their pity laced with fear. “Lost to grief,” they’d mutter, crossing themselves as they passed. “The sea claims more than just bodies.”

  They didn’t understand. They couldn’t hear it.

  At first, it had been faint, a whisper carried on the wind. A fleeting echo that could easily be dismissed as the product of his grief-stricken mind. But the whispers grew stronger, clearer, more insistent with each passing day.

  “Jarek…?”

  He’d flinch, his head snapping up, searching the horizon. Nothing. Only the endless expanse of the ocean, stretching towards a sky the color of pewter.

  “Jarek, help me…”

  The voice was undeniably Arlen’s. Not a perfect imitation, but a distorted, pain-filled echo of his brother’s familiar cadence. The teasing lilt was gone, replaced by a desperate plea that tore at Jarek’s soul.

  He tried to rationalize it. Guilt, the physick had suggested. A manifestation of his own self-reproach. He should have stopped Arlen. He should have chained him to the bed if necessary. His brother had been no sailor, just a starry-eyed fool who’d signed onto the Marlin for “adventure.” Jarek had let him go.

  But rationalization couldn't drown out the sea's siren song. It resonated within him, a chilling harmony that bypassed his ears and vibrated in his very bones.

  Days blurred into weeks. Jarek ate little, slept less. He existed only to listen, to decipher the fractured messages carried on the waves. He learned to distinguish the subtle nuances of Arlen's voice, the nuances of his pain.

  “It’s dark here, Jarek…”

  “Cold…so cold…”

  “They…they won’t let me go…”

  The last message sent a shiver of pure terror down his spine. They. Who were they? What had happened to Arlen in the depths of the Mourning Tides?

  The villagers warned him to stay away from the sea. They told him stories of the Salt Groom, of spirits that lured the living to their doom with false promises and deceptive whispers. They pleaded with him to remember Arlen as he was, not as the sea wanted him to be.

  But Jarek couldn’t turn away. The sea had taken his brother, and now it was calling him. He felt an almost irresistible compulsion to answer, to descend into the depths and bring Arlen home.

  He began to dream of the sea. Visions of a vast, silent world beneath the waves, of towering coral structures and shimmering schools of fish. He saw Arlen, his skin pale and translucent, his eyes glowing with an unearthly light. He was beautiful, but a beauty that was both alluring and terrifying.

  One night, he woke with a start, his body slick with sweat. The sea's song was louder than ever, a deafening crescendo in his skull.

  “BROTHER—”

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  He could no longer ignore it. He could no longer resist. He had to find Arlen. He had to bring him back, no matter the cost.

  The next morning, he stole a skiff.

  The villagers watched him from the shore, their faces etched with pity and fear. They knew where he was going. They knew that he was walking into a trap.

  But they couldn't stop him.

  He pushed the skiff into the water and climbed aboard. The wood groaned beneath his weight, a mournful sound that echoed the cries of the gulls overhead.

  He looked back at Hargrave, a cluster of huddled cottages clinging to the edge of the world. He saw the faces of the villagers, their eyes filled with sorrow.

  He knew that he might never see them again.

  He turned his face towards the Mourning Tides and began to row.

  The water was wrong from the start.

  No gulls followed him, their usual raucous cries replaced by an unsettling silence. The wind died down, leaving the sea eerily still, a vast, oily mirror reflecting the grey sky above. The only sound was the rhythmic creak of the oars and Jarek’s ragged breath.

  The Mourning Tides loomed ahead, a jagged maw of blackened coral rising from the depths. The reef that swallowed ships and souls. The villagers had refused to search it. “The reef eats ships,” they warned. “Let the dead lie.”

  But the sea's song intensified, drowning out their warnings, filling Jarek’s mind with a single, desperate purpose.

  He reached the edge of the reef and peered over the side, his pulse hammering in his ears. The water was dark and murky, concealing the dangers that lurked below.

  Then he heard it.

  "You came."

  Arlen's voice. Not the distorted dream-echo, but real—warm, relieved, tinged with the old teasing lilt that had once made Jarek roll his eyes. He turned, his heart leaping with a mixture of joy and dread.

  Arlen sat cross-legged on the skiff’s prow, grinning. His ginger hair was crusted with salt, his freckled skin tinged blue, but his eyes—God, his eyes—still sparkled that familiar mischief-green. A crab scuttled from his sodden coat sleeve.

  “You’re dead,” Jarek whispered, the word barely audible above the lapping of the waves.

  Arlen tilted his head, his expression unreadable. “Am I?”

  The skiff capsized.

  The cold shock of the Mourning Tides stole Jarek’s breath. He plunged into the icy black, his limbs flailing uselessly against the sudden, disorienting current. Above, the overturned skiff bobbed like a broken toy. Panic bloomed, a suffocating weed in his chest. He fought against the overwhelming urge to inhale, knowing it would be his last.

  He scrabbled and kicked, grasping for anything to pull himself up. His fingers found the oar, a lifeline keeping him afloat.

  Then, a hand.

  The hand was impossibly strong.

  Jarek barely had time to register the grip before he was yanked downward with a force that tore the breath from his lungs. His world dissolved into darkness and frigid water, the Mourning Tides swallowing him whole.

  He thrashed, kicked—his instincts screaming for the surface—but the grip was unrelenting, an iron vise around his wrist. The water churned around him, cold tendrils lashing his skin as the depths yawned open like a waiting maw.

  Bubbles erupted from his mouth as he struggled, his chest burning, ribs caving under the crushing weight of the sea. Through the shifting gloom, he caught glimpses of his captor—a being of the depths, his form sleek and powerful, muscles moving beneath glistening scales that shimmered with the ocean’s shifting light. His long hair flowed like strands of ink in the water, framing a face both haunting and beautiful, sharp features carved by the sea itself. His eyes—deep, unyielding, and endless as the abyss—locked onto Jarek with a predator’s patience. Webbed fingers tightened around his wrist, cold as the current, inescapable as the tide.

  Neptide.

  The memory seared into Jarek’s mind like a curse. The villagers always spoke of the spirit of the drowned, the Lord of the Sunken, Neptide. Jarek always scoffed at their fears, mocking their prayers and offerings. But now, as the abyss tightened around him, as Neptide’s grip refused to yield, he understood. The charms, the prayers—none of it had ever been enough to keep the spirit at bay. And neither was he.

  Jarek fought harder, his nails clawing at the thing’s wrist, but Neptide did not yield. Instead, he pulled Jarek closer, his face looming from the murk.

  And then it changed.

  Arlen.

  Jarek choked on seawater as his brother’s face formed from the void. Familiar freckles, salt-rusted hair, eyes that should’ve held warmth but shimmered with something unnatural, something vast and empty.

  Jarek’s struggling faltered. A moment’s hesitation. A fatal mistake.

  Neptide took advantage.

  With inhuman strength, he forced Jarek downward, his body hurtling past jagged spires of black coral. The pressure mounted, his bones threatening to crack, his thoughts fracturing beneath the suffocating weight of the deep. The world narrowed to a singular, desperate need—air. His lungs convulsed, his body betraying him as he inhaled, salt and brine searing his throat.

  A single, final image burned into his mind as consciousness slipped—his brother’s face, twisting into something else. Something monstrous. Something that smiled as the dark took him.

  The Mourning Tides closed over Jarek’s final breath.

  And then, silence.