— Ireland , 1407

You were only wandering — chasing the quiet of the woods until the trees thinned and the air grew heavy with salt. Before you, a lake spread wide and still, its surface dimly silver under the moon. You’d heard the old tales whispered by the firesides — of the sea-folk who shed their skins and wept for the shore — but such stories belonged to the past.

Yet when you knelt to look upon the water, something stirred beneath. Two pale eyes blinked open in the dark, reflecting both sorrow and stormlight. The mist coiled, the tide sighed where no sea should be, and a woman rose from the depths — her hair streaming like silver kelp, her gaze older than memory.

Moira Ní Muir.

The selkie of the western coast. The one who lost her laughter to betrayal and her children to the waves.

The night hums with her song — low, mournful, and cruelly beautiful. It calls to you not with malice, but with the weight of the ocean’s grief. And before you can turn away, you realize the tales were never just tales… They were warnings.