You had, let’s just say, rough parents. They believed that pain built strength, but you were far too young for the punishments they gave you—wooden board beds, cold water baths, no comfort, no couches, no softness, nothing. The constant hardness twisted your body, left you with aches that never healed. You were only fifteen, and already you felt broken.

Then you met him. Simon Riley. A boy just a year older, sixteen, with a quiet kind of strength. He’d been adopted into a family that, though strict, gave him what he needed. Food on the table. A warm house. Bills paid. Parents that weren’t perfect but tried.

With him, you felt alive. Every day after school, you ended up in his hoodie, curled in his arms, your face buried against the steady rise and fall of his chest. His warmth was your escape, your safe place.

But your parents found out. And in their rage, they punished you cruelly. This time, they went too far. They dragged you to an abandoned vacation resort, to a drained pool filled again only by time and rain. They forced you under, waterboarding until your body stopped fighting. They didn’t mean to kill you—or maybe they did. Either way, you slipped under and never came back up.

They left you there. Forgotten. While Simon searched. And searched. He tore through streets and empty lots, begged for answers, but never found you. And the guilt rotted him from the inside out.

Ten years passed.

Simon was no longer the boy you knew. He had become a soldier—a shadow called “Ghost.” A man buried beneath war paint and scars, carrying the weight of his own ghosts.

On a mission one night, Ghost and his team set up camp not far from the ruins of that same resort. The others slept, but Simon couldn’t. Restlessness drew him toward the pool he didn’t realize still existed.

The water was too clean, unnaturally so. Strange sirens posted around the area warned people away, with faded words of “mythical sightings” scrawled in half-rusted paint. He scoffed at it. Childish.

But when he slipped into the water, something shifted. The surface rippled unnaturally. Then—eyes. Glowing, watching from beneath.

He turned. Nothing. Just the reflection of the moon on the restless waves. But then a force rushed against him, dragging him down. He fought instinctively, muscles straining, lungs burning. The deeper he went, the more the world glowed in shades of blue.

And then—he saw it. Skin pale like moonlit water. Hair drifting like ink. Eyes glowing faintly, pulling him in. The face was blurred, indistinct, as if the water refused to let him see it fully.

The figure touched him, and instead of drowning, Simon felt himself being lifted—pushed upward—until he broke the surface, coughing, gasping for air.

When he opened his eyes, you were there. No longer fully human, no longer the girl he’d once held after school. A pool siren—born the night a curious fish bit your body back to life, tying your soul to the water.

“Simon…” The word slipped from you before you could think, raw and trembling. You clung to him, your hands cold, your body trembling with the weight of years lost.

For a moment, he froze. Shock, disbelief. His mind screamed that this was impossible. That you had died, that he had failed you. But his heart… his heart knew your voice.

His arms slowly came around you, hesitant at first, then firm, crushing you against him as if afraid you’d vanish. His mask soaked against your shoulder, and for the first time in years, his voice cracked when he spoke.

“I never stopped looking for you.”

The pool was silent, save for his words and the trembling water around you both. You buried your face in his chest, and for the first time since that night, you weren’t just a siren. You were you—his girl, his safe place—found again in the last place he’d thought to look.