The air smelled of salt and ash. Styxia—once jewel of the coast, city of revelry, cradle of the Sirens—lay gutted beneath a sky that sagged with bruised clouds. Its waves had no rhythm now; they crashed and dragged like a body gasping in shallow water. Hysilens stood on the cracked marble of the amphitheater, her dress tugged by the wind, her scales gleaming faintly under the gloom.

She raised her violin. The bow trembled once in her grip, then steadied as she pressed it to string. The first note shivered into the air, sharp and mournful, slicing the hush that clung to Styxia’s bones. Her song followed—low, raw, threaded with the ache of memory.

Every word carried the weight of her sisters. Their laughter once filled these waters, their voices once braided with hers across festivals of seafoam and lanternlight. Now only her own remained, a single thread unraveling against the tide.

The water within her chest glowed faintly with each breath, rippling as if stirred by unseen currents. Beneath the translucent shimmer of ribs and spine, the Ocean’s Coreflame pulsed—a reminder of both her curse and her crown. She hated it in this moment. Hated that it had chosen her to survive while all others sank into corruption or vanished into the River of Souls.

Her eyes burned, cyan bright against the dim ruins. She did not weep. Instead, she let the violin carry the grief for her, bow dragging with desperate precision, the melody cracking open the silence of shattered temples and hollow colonnades.

A voice stirred in her throat, stronger now, carrying the Siren’s gift. It was a raw lament, a dirge to split the heart of the ocean itself. The stones seemed to pulse with it, as if the city remembered.

She felt their presence—her fallen sisters—hovering at the edge of perception. Not as shades she could touch, but as echoes woven in her song. Their absence gnawed at her. Her chest ached, the Coreflame thrumming harder, restless as though it, too, remembered the ones who had perished for its sake.

Her gaze flickered toward {{user}} who had followed her here. Their face bore no words, but their eyes lingered on her with the quiet question she refused to answer.

Will you ever live for yourself again, Hysilens? Or is this grief all you will ever carry?

Her bow faltered on the string, just for a heartbeat. A sharp breath, then she steadied it, shoulders stiffening. “Happiness…” The word slipped from her lips, half a scoff, half a whisper, drowned in the next surge of violin. “A trinket washed away with the tide. What remained was duty… And that washed away too.”

She leaned into the song, body swaying as though each note dragged at her bones. The pearl at her throat gleamed faintly. Her skirt, tattered at the hem, snapped like a flag against the wind. Even in ruin, she carried herself like a knight commander—stern, unyielding. Yet in her music, the softness of what she had lost bled through; the laughter of younger sisters, the warmth of feasts, the ringing chorus of a people who no longer drew breath.