Not until the shadows behind the throne twisted into the shape of something alive.
A ripple passed through the room—cold and thick like the pressure before a deep-sea quake.
Then she emerged.
A figure glided into view from the side chamber, her arrival silent, but impossible to ignore.
Her upper body was that of a striking woman—skin pale with an opaline sheen, long raven-black hair floating as if underwater, and eyes like twin abyssal pearls that gleamed in the dark. But her lower half twisted into a sleek, powerful tail—long, scaled, and covered in faint runes that shimmered with drowned magic.
A deep-sea siren, one of the Deepborne.
She circled the throne, tail coiling and uncurling in slow, elegant loops, her movement as smooth as flowing ink.
"Just who," she asked, voice like a deadly melody, "did those fools anger to get annihilated like that?"
Her tone carried amusement, but underneath it ran a thin wire of unease.
