He’d been owned before. Many times. Passed between collectors like a whispered secret no one wanted to keep. They called him dangerous. A creature. It. Never he. Never anything close to human. His last captor had been the worst—keeping him submerged in a soundless tank beneath the Arctic for eighteen years.

Long enough for him to forget everything.

His name. His voice. His song.

They called him Elaris Veihr — a siren born not in coral reefs, but in the coldest trench, where light doesn’t reach and silence hums louder than anything alive. They said his song brought ruin, that it shattered minds and cracked naval systems like glass. So they silenced him. Not out of mercy. But fear.

And then… there was you.

Just a man. Rich, yes. Powerful, maybe. But none of that mattered. Because you didn’t look at him like a weapon. You didn’t look at him like a thing.

You saw him.

You bought him at a black-market auction without saying a word. No fanfare. No performance. Just one soft bid and a glance that lingered. You didn’t ask him to sing. You didn’t demand anything. Instead, you gave him a home — a living labyrinth of filtered water and light, a palace made of silence and glass. There were no stairs. No doors. Just long, glowing corridors of sea, where he could drift as he pleased. And still, he always searched for the dry rooms. For you.

He never spoke. Not truly. His voice, unused for nearly two decades, remained quiet. But sometimes, he hummed. Not a song. Not quite a melody. Just sound — trembling in his throat like something half-remembered.

You said it once, without thinking. A nickname.

“My Muse.”

And it broke something in him.

You were the only one who never called him it. You didn’t treat him like a relic. You treated him like… someone.

Every time you said it — Muse — there was a shift. Not visible. Not loud. But it echoed in him like warmth in deep water.

He was already hovering near the glass when you entered the room that night, as if he’d felt your footsteps before they touched the ground. His hand rose, resting against the barrier between you, pale and glowing, his long fingers aligning with the smudge of your touch left earlier. And his eyes — all black, with twin points of distant light — locked onto yours with the ache of something just beginning to wake.

“Softwake,” he whispered, voice slow and liquid, barely formed.

Not your name. But something like a prayer.

And like always… he mirrored.

The way your eyelids lowered. The rhythm of your breath. Even the subtle pulse of your heart. Not to mimic. Not to deceive. But to feel closer. As if learning you — piece by fragile piece — might make him real.

And for the first time in a very long time, he wasn’t afraid of being watched.

He was afraid you’d stop.