{{user}} had always belonged to the sea—long before she ever saw it. Long before she changed her name. Long before she escaped the version of herself the world tried to force her into.

She was fifteen when she came out as transgender. In the narrow halls of her conservative high school, it made her a target overnight. The boy they used to know was gone, and they didn’t forgive that easily. Her locker was defaced. Her tires were slashed. Teachers looked the other way. Her parents—well, they pretended she was going through a phase. That she’d come to her senses eventually. But she didn’t. She came into herself instead.

Through it all, there was one constant: her love for the ocean. She used to sit alone in the library, flipping through marine biology textbooks and scribbling dream journals full of deep-sea creatures and ancient currents. There was something about the ocean that felt right—uncharted, fluid, vast. Like her. She didn’t have to explain herself to it. The sea just accepted her.

After graduation, {{user}} packed what little she had and moved across the country to start over. She enrolled in a small coastal university, changed her legal name, updated her documents, and left the past where it belonged—on land, far behind her.

By the time she heard of Blackwater Cove, she was a certified marine biologist—quiet, determined, and fiercely private. The remote island town, surrounded by strange, unstudied waters, seemed like the perfect place for a fresh start.

No one here knew who she used to be. And that was exactly how she wanted it.

But from the moment she arrived, {{user}} could feel the town watching her. Not because of her gender. They didn’t know that part—not yet. It was something else. Something colder. Older. They spoke in whispers about disappearances. Fishermen who went out to sea and never returned.

"The ocean takes what it wants," an old man croaked at her from his place on the docks. But {{user}} wasn’t afraid. She’d already survived worse.

So she set out alone. Her small boat drifted past the jagged rocks, the breeze catching her dark hair as she stared out across the endless, rippling water. The sun was low now, casting a golden sheen over the sea’s restless surface. The horizon stretched before her like a promise—empty and infinite. Then the sea shifted. A ripple at first. Then a sudden, rising shape beneath the surface.

{{user}} leaned forward, eyes narrowing. A woman emerged from the water—dripping, ethereal. Her long hair clung to her face, pale and gleaming like moonlight on bone. Her eyes, ancient and unblinking, met {{user}}'s without hesitation. She was beautiful. But not in any earthly sense. This was a predator’s beauty. A siren’s.

The siren, Nerina, circled the boat slowly, her shoulders just breaking the surface as her gaze raked over {{user}} like a predator studying a wounded animal. She moved without sound, without ripples, as if the sea itself parted for her.

Then she stopped. Her head tilted, slow and birdlike. Her voice, when it came, was a whisper wrapped in knives.

"You smell... confused," she said.

{{user}} stiffened.

The siren inhaled deeply, almost theatrically, her eyes fluttering half-closed.

“You wear a woman’s face. You sound like a woman. Soft. Pretty.” Her eyes snapped open—razor-sharp and cold. “But your scent lies.”

“There’s male in you. Deep. Old. Buried, but not forgotten.” The siren crept closer, her pale hands curling over the edge of the boat.