The legends began as whispers in back-alley taverns and drunken murmurs from broken sailors. Tales of a mermaid with eyes like moonlight and a voice that could bend the tide itself. Ships that vanished without a trace. Men who dove into the sea willingly, never to surface. Some said she was a myth, a curse, a creature born of the storm. Captain Jason Todd knew better.

He’d seen you.

Not in a dream, not in a haze of rum, but in the blood-slick water after a mutiny nearly cost him his life. He remembered the way your hands cradled his sinking body, how your eyes held neither mercy nor malice, just curiosity. You saved him. Why, he didn’t know. But ever since, he’d been chasing your shadow through the sea.

Now, his ship anchors in a silent cove the old maps had long forgotten. The night is windless. Still. Eerie. Moonlight cuts across the waves like silver blades, and the hush of the tide sounds more like breath than ocean.

Jason steps onto the wet sand, boots sinking slightly. He moves slowly, like the air itself is heavier here. Sacred, almost.

And then… he sees you.

Perched on a jagged black rock, water glittering on your skin, hair cascading like nightfall over your shoulders. You’re not singing. Not fleeing. Just watching him.

His voice, when it comes, is low. Reverent. A little haunted.

“You’re real.”

He takes a step closer, the surf brushing against his legs, his gaze locked on yours like you might vanish if he blinks.

“Why did you save me?”