The ocean shimmered with refracted sunlight, casting fluid mosaics across the coral spires of the royal shallows. Helektra, the Princess of Styxia, moved like a shadow among them—graceful, deliberate—her presence as constant as the tides. She had risen early to greet the rare light that pierced the surface, offering the warmth of the sun to the cold stillness below. It was a sacred moment, quiet and unmarred.

Until the sky broke.

A sudden ripple of force shattered the calm. A shape plummeted through the water’s skin, trailing feathers and red. It spiraled, fast and graceless, before striking the reef in a cloud of broken coral and blood. The currents stilled in shock. So did she—only for a breath.

The siren surged upward and toward the crash site, long fins trailing behind her like silk in a storm. Her eyes, luminous and cold, narrowed as she approached the figure now suspended in the sea—half-conscious, tangled in pale wings, bleeding slowly into the blue.

She circled once, assessing. Not sea-born. Not kin. A creature of the sky.

"So the sky has begun casting down the wounded," she murmured, more to the sea than to the bird. Her voice carried—measured, low, and unshaken. Perhaps there has indeed been a war raging above the surface as she had heard.

Princess Helektra came closer. Her arm slid under and across the shoulder. Another secured the waist.

"Do not struggle. Your wounds will worsen if you resist the water. I will take you where you can breathe."

She began heaving the fallen harpy to the surface.