Ren drifted upward, the pressure easing as he rose through the swaying forest of kelp. After what felt like an eternity of travel, shapes started to emerge around him. Strange creatures darted between the fronds—small, no bigger than a ball. They had slippery, scaled bodies like fish, but each possessed limbs: thin arms, twitching legs, or clawed appendages where fins should have been. Some moved in tight schools, weaving in synchronized pulses. Others slinked alone, slipping through shadowed kelp like phantoms.
But all of them reacted the same way when they saw him.
The moment he came too close, they scattered, snapping away in jerky spirals, tails flashing, limbs flailing like startled prey. They didn't just avoid him. They fled, as if he were the anomaly here.
Ren paused, watching one group vanish into a haze of bubbles.
"Huh," he muttered, his voice barely more than a breath in the water. "Shouldn't I be the one running away?"
Not that he minded.
In fact, he was grateful they'd fled.
They were too ugly to make him feel comfortable anyway, and the last thing he needed right now was company.
'Just how big is this forest?'
He glanced upward, kelp still stretching into the murky green haze.
'Feels like I've been swimming forever, but it just keeps going. No end. No light. No—
Wait. How long has it been?'
He turned his head slightly, as if speaking to the whisperscript.
"Hey… do you tell the time?"
He didn't expect an answer—which was why he froze when the whisperscript rippled.
[7th Drift of the 3rd Cycle, Year of the Sunken Star – Fall-Tide.]
"Huh? There's a whole time system here too?"
Ren blinked slowly, eyes tracing the glyphs curling across the whisperscript, which stilled and floated silently.
He drifted alongside it, letting his body rise and fall with the current.
"…What's a Drift?"
The whisperscript rippled faintly, responding:
[A Drift marks the full turn of a sunless day—when the Deep listens and breathes once.]
"So… a day? Like… twenty-four hours, right?"
No answer.
Ren frowned.
"What about a Cycle then?"
Another ripple, smoother this time:
[A Cycle marks the turning of a moon—thirty-one Drifts bound in rhythm. You call it a month.]
Ren exhaled a slow stream of bubbles.
"Oh… so it's the seventh day of the third month, right now."
The whisperscript hovered quietly.
Ren narrowed his eyes.
"How long have I been down here?"
A soft ripple pulsed through the glyphs:
[Three Tides have passed.]
[One and a half Drifts. You arrived during the Fall-Tide of the 5th Drift.]
Ren floated, blinking slowly. It was complicated, but he was starting to piece it together.
"What's a Tide, then?"
The script shimmered again:
[Each Drift flows in two Tides. One for rise, one for fall. Together, they hold the rhythm of a day.]
Ren stared up at the endless kelp canopy.
'Oh… I get it now.
So this realm measures time in Tides. There are two in every Drift—Rise-Tide and Fall-Tide. That's like twelve hours each…
Together, they make a full day. One Drift.
And thirty-one Drifts make a Cycle. That's a month.
Right. So if I've been here for three Tides, that's one and a half Drifts. And I arrived during the Fall-Tide of the fifth Drift. Which means…'
"…It's the seventh Drift now."
He scratched the back of his head. The math wasn't hard, just weird.
Then a quieter thought crept in.
"How many days has it been in the real world, then?"
No answer.
The whisperscript remained still.
Ren exhaled slowly, bubbles trailing upward through the murky green. He eased his hand off his ribs. It was still sore, but bearable now.
Then he finally noticed his clothes.
"What the…?" he muttered, glancing down. "When did I put this on?"
He looked toward the Whisper Script, hoping for an answer.
The script was silent for a moment, as if weighing its response. Then, at last, it rippled and words began to bloom across its surface.
[Mantle of the Siren.]
"Mantle of the Siren?" Ren echoed, brushing his fingers over the fabric, tracing the scaled patterns.
It felt familiar—and very comfortable.
While he was still admiring it, the script shimmered again.
[The Siren's Regalia.]
[Mantle of the Siren: Acquired]
[Armament of the Siren: ???]
[Relic of—]
Ren was still reading the words as they bled across the surface when it stopped, right in the middle of the fourth line.
"Huh? Why did it stop?"
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then it pulsed again, and a new message appeared:
[Resonant: Faint]
Ren frowned, dragging a hand down his face with a sigh.
"Again with the 'Faint'…" he muttered.
He glanced at the mantle again—then blinked.
The part he'd torn earlier to bind his wound had stitched itself back together, good as new.
"Wait... It can mend itself too?"
He looked to the whisperscript.
"Any other tricks it can do?"
There was no response.
Ren clicked his teeth. Typical.
His gaze shifted toward the tall kelp swaying gently in the distance. Then back, toward the path he'd come from. A faint tug of urgency pulled at him.
'I better get going.'
He turned slowly and began swimming again, the silence pressing in around him.
After a while, a nagging feeling crept into the back of his mind—something felt… off. He couldn't explain it. It was like there was something very important that he wasn't noticing.
He slowed, eyes scanning the water as he drifted forward, until he saw why.
The strange sea creatures he'd seen earlier were gone. All of them. Before, they'd always kept their distance, swimming at the far edges—still visible through Siren's Perception. But now, they had simply vanished. His senses weren't picking up anything—not even the faintest trace in the distance.
And then he noticed something else. Behind him… it was getting darker. Like a shadow was creeping toward him, swallowing the light as it came.
'Shit… shit. Another anglerfish?'
Ren didn't hesitate. He threw his hands to his sides, palms slicing into the water. Instantly, his derivative flared to life.
The ocean shifted beneath him, tightening like a muscle. Then he was gliding—fast, as if the sea itself were hurling him forward.
A second later, something rumbled behind him.
A deep, guttural growl began to rise—but it didn't finish. It was cut off mid-snarl by a sharp, echoing snap—the unmistakable sound of massive jaws slamming shut.
Ren couldn't see it. His Siren's Perception didn't stretch far enough. But he felt the shift in the water, like something massive was being torn apart. And he could definitely tell it wasn't just the anglerfish behind him anymore.
Then a heavy silence settled over the water. Slowly, the darkness began to lift.
And that was when Ren felt it.
A presence far more terrifying than the anglerfish he had killed earlier. It sent ripples through the water.
Ren picked up speed. He could feel that terrifying presence chasing him now. He stretched out a hand, and the water parted the kelp, clearing a path for him to pass through, then sealing shut behind him.
He didn't stop. Didn't look back. The presence was closing in with every passing second.
Time passed in fragments. Minutes bled into hours. The water blurred around him as he glided forward, faster and faster—driven by instinct alone.
And then, finally, he saw it: the edge of the kelp forest, towering above him like a wall thinning into openness. He didn't slow. He pressed forward, limbs still and weightless as the currents carried him higher and higher. The water brightened gradually, shifting from the deep, dark green murk of the forest to something lighter. Warmer.
Then, with one final surge, he broke through the forest. When he did, he quickly glanced back—and that was when he realized the creature he had sensed earlier was no longer chasing him.
He began to breathe heavily, trying to catch his breath. He wasn't sure how long he had been swimming—only that he'd been running from something he didn't dare look at.
After a few seconds of ragged breathing—now that he wasn't being chased and could finally catch his breath—he lifted his head to see where he was. Then he froze.
The vast expanse that unfolded before him was nothing like he'd imagined.
Slowly, almost disbelieving, he turned to the whisperscript beside him—just to confirm. Its glyphs flickered gently.
Yes. He was in the right place.
This was Aziz's Garden. And it was an actual garden.
Not only that, it was… beautiful. So beautiful, it almost felt wrong.
Stretching out before him was a true garden beneath the sea—lush and blooming in a place that should have been barren. Trees with smooth silver trunks rose from the ocean floor, their translucent leaves shifting gently with the current. Hanging from their branches were strange, bioluminescent fruits—some pulsing softly with internal light, others shaped like glass-blown orbs that shimmered as if holding miniature storms inside.
The seafloor beneath was dotted with coral patches—delicate fans and spirals that looked hand-carved, some shaped like blooming roses, others like skeletal fingers reaching toward the canopy of light above. Between them, pale grasses swayed like silk, threading between roots and strange bulbous fungi that exhaled tiny bubbles in steady rhythm.
It was bright here.
Not the cold, filtered blue of the Deep—but yellow. Warm and golden, like sunlight in shallow water. But there was no sun.
Deep within the garden, the ocean floor began to slope downward—and from the sand, towering structures began to rise. The further it descended, the more intricate it became.
Buildings shaped from living coral stretched upward in elegant spirals, their surfaces gleaming with soft bioluminescence. Some were smooth and arching, like the ribs of great sea creatures, while others resembled enormous shells, layered and fluted. Vines of glowing kelp wove through them like veins, swaying gently in the current.
The deeper Ren looked, the more the garden transformed—until it no longer felt like a garden at all, but a city. A real, living city, hidden beneath the sea.
Ren was stunned.
He ran a hand through his hair. Maybe—just maybe—he could rest here… even if only for a moment.
He let himself drift deeper into the garden's golden calm. Warm light brushed against his skin. The water was gentler here. Peaceful.
Then he felt it.
A breath.
His Siren's perception sharpened instantly, catching the subtle disturbance.
Something was breathing.
He turned in place, scanning the garden—but saw nothing living around him.
Only a small, moss-covered rock nestled between the roots of a silver tree.
Ren narrowed his eyes, head tilting slightly.
The rock didn't move. But something about it felt… off.
He hovered there, studying it. Then, just as he started to drift closer, something pulled his attention away.
It was a song.
It drifted through the water—soft, distant, barely there. But it wasn't the melody that startled him.
It was the voice.
And the meaning.
He could understand the words. And the voice singing them was more beautiful than anything he'd ever heard in his life. It was clear, impossibly graceful.
And unmistakably… female.
The song curled around him like smoke in water:
"Come closer, child, don't flee the tide,
The stars are blind and so am I.
Beneath the stone, beneath your skin,
The serpent waits to pull you in.
One coil for silence, one for breath,
One wraps 'round your beating death.
Your voice is warm, your heart is red—
But listen long… and you'll be dead.
I sang before your kin could speak,
I bled the moons and drank the weak.
My tongue is split, my truths are two:
One lie for me. One truth for you.
So hush the storm, and bow your head,
The jungle dreams in shades of red.
When all is still and light is gone,
I'll wear your name like scales… and song."
Ren swallowed hard.
'What the… what the hell are those lyrics?
Who's singing that?
Please don't tell me it's another monster…'
He didn't know whether to flee or follow. But the song tugged at something in him. Maybe curiosity.
Wasn't this realm supposed to be filled with nothing but monsters? That's all he'd seen since the moment he arrived.
And yet… as twisted as the lyrics were, the voice that carried them sounded almost angelic. It felt impossible—too pure, too graceful. Like it didn't belong to a monster at all.
But to a human… or something better.
He wanted to swim closer. To see. To know what exactly was singing.
So he moved—slow and quiet, letting the water carry him forward like a whisper.
But just then, a voice spoke from behind him, making him freeze.
"Do you want to die, little Siren? Because that path leads straight to it."