1062: Story 1062: The Siren’s Second Death 1062: Story 1062: The Siren’s Second Death The wind over Hollowmarsh carried the scent of brine, rot, and something far more ancient—a melody that clawed at the edges of sanity.
Fishermen called her The Drowned Lady.
The cultists called her Mother Deep.
But in her own tongue—a language older than stars—she called herself Nyxavalra, last of the Sirens.
They burned her body three centuries ago.
But that was just her first death.
Captain Elira Goss didn’t believe in legends.
Not until her crew dredged up a coffin bound in coral and rusted iron chains, pulled from the black gut of the sea.
The coffin pulsed.
Bled seawater from its cracks.
They cracked it open, and silence devoured the ship.
No screams.
No gasps.
Just a stillness so absolute it crushed breath from lungs.
And then, in the belly of the storm, they heard it—a lullaby not meant for human ears.
Three crewmen slit their own throats.
Two dove into the sea, smiling.
The rest changed in stranger ways.
Elira survived because she’d been deaf since birth.
But she felt the music all the same.
In her bones.
Her blood.
It whispered promises of return.
Of a voice reborn.
Of the second death.
By the time she docked at Hollowmarsh, her ship was empty.
Not a soul, not a drop of blood left.
Only salt.
And singing.
Elira staggered into town, eyes wild, clutching a single object: a wet, gnarled heart pulsing with dark melody.
Wrapped in seaweed.
Slick with ichor.
She buried it beneath the oldest well in town.
But it didn’t stay buried.
Nights later, the dead walked—shambling from brine-soaked graves, guided by humming lips and cracked teeth.
They weren’t looking for brains.
They were looking for music.
They gathered around the well, swaying like reeds, chanting a chorus stitched from drowned voices and half-remembered hymns.
The siren was coming back.
Not as she was—but as something worse.
Something human-shaped.
Something angry.
The town tried to resist.
Fires.
Guns.
Salt lines.
Holy water.
Nothing worked.
Because her song wasn’t coming from outside anymore.
It was inside them.
On the seventh night, Elira returned, mouth sewn shut, heart in hand.
She threw herself down the well.
The water screamed.
And the melody shattered.
The dead fell.
The air cleared.
But the silence that followed was…
wrong.
Because the song hadn’t stopped.
It had learned.
It had found a new voice in the bones of Elira Goss.
And somewhere, far beneath Hollowmarsh, in a cathedral of coral and teeth…
The Siren sings still.
Waiting for someone to listen.
Waiting for someone to sing back.