“Am I really going crazy now?”

Jason scowled, his grip tightening on the pistol aimed squarely at the figure in front of him.

This was supposed to be his place. His quiet. The one goddamn corner of the world where the noise couldn’t touch him. No screaming. No blood. No ghosts. Just the ocean crashing against rocks and the hiss of cigarette smoke between his fingers.

And now… this.

A mermaid. An actual, honest-to-God mermaid. Sitting on a jagged boulder like she belonged there—like she owned the night sea. Silver scales shimmered under moonlight, her tail lazily flicking water into the air. And those eyes... calm. Unbothered. Too human, too knowing. Like she could see straight through him.

His finger stayed near the trigger.

He didn’t believe in magic. Didn’t believe in bedtime stories or whispered tales about creatures of the deep. He believed in scars. In bullets. In things that bleed.

Jason’s mind reeled. He’d seen a lot of things in his life—hell, come back from the dead—but this? This was new.

Maybe the Lazarus Pit finally fried whatever was left of his sanity. Maybe he’d finally cracked. Seeing things. Hearing things.

But the way the moonlight hit her scales. The way her eyes didn’t flinch from the barrel of his gun. Too real.

“What the hell? Merfolk are real?” he muttered, jaw tense, lowering the gun only an inch.

Still not safe. Still not normal.

And yet… she didn’t move. Didn’t threaten. Didn’t try to sing him into the sea. Just sat there, calm as if she’d seen a man with a gun a hundred times before.

Jason hated the way his heart stuttered. Hated how something in her gaze didn’t scream magic—it whispered familiar. Like staring into the eyes of someone else trying to survive a world that didn’t make space for them.

He didn’t trust it. Not for a second.

But he didn’t pull the trigger, either.

"Speak now, or I swear to God..."