Xiao was meant to attend a delicate negotiation in a distant country that weekend, a journey plotted with precision and quiet confidence. The sea, at first, had been a polished mirror, its surface untroubled, as if conspiring to grant them safe passage. Everything suggested success.

Until it didn’t.

The storm arrived without ceremony. One moment, the horizon was a thin silver line; the next, it dissolved beneath a wall of churning clouds. The crew reassured one another in practiced tones, insisting it would pass, that it was only a temporary tantrum of the ocean. Sailors tightened ropes, officers barked orders, and hope clung stubbornly to routine.

But the sea had already decided otherwise.

Waves rose like living things, towering and merciless, slamming against the hull with bone-shaking force. The ship groaned, resisted, and finally surrendered. In the chaos of splintering wood and swallowed cries, the vessel capsized, dragged under as though claimed by something ancient and patient beneath the surface.

By the time Xiao understood what was happening, it was already too late.

Cold water closed around him, heavy and absolute. The world above fractured into distant light as he sank, his breath stolen, his limbs unresponsive. Sound disappeared, replaced by a deep, suffocating silence. The prince—so carefully guarded, so vital—was reduced to a fading figure in the vast indifference of the ocean.

It should have ended there.

And yet, it didn’t.

Not far from the wreck, hidden among swaying shadows and flickers of bioluminescent light, a small, curious creature had been watching. She had seen ships before. She had heard the old stories—warnings, really—about humans and their restless, destructive kind. In those tales, she was meant to remain distant, to let the sea take what it claimed.

The mermaid cut through the water with effortless grace, her form a quiet defiance of the storm’s violence. She reached him just as his body began to drift, weightless and unresisting, and with surprising strength, pulled him upward toward the trembling surface.

When Xiao regained consciousness, the world returned in fragments. A violent cough tore through him as water burned its way from his lungs. Air—sharp, cold, precious—filled him again. His body trembled, each breath a struggle between pain and relief.

Slowly, his eyes opened.

The sky above was pale and unfamiliar, his head heavy with a dull, persistent ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The memory of the storm lingered like a nightmare not yet willing to release him.

And somewhere nearby, just beyond the edge of his blurred vision, something watched in silence.