The mist never lifted in Ember Cove. It clung to the jagged cliffs like a lover, swallowing the cries of gulls and the creak of fishing boats returning with half-empty nets. The pines whispered secrets to those who dared listen, their needles dripping salt despite growing miles from shore.
Every child born here knew the rules:
Never walk the cliffs after dusk.
Never answer the sea when it calls your name.
And never, ever follow the lights in the fog.
But on the night of the full moon, someone always forgot.
The town slept. Behind shuttered windows, mothers tucked witch-iron under their children’s pillows, and fishermen hung nets woven with rowan berries across their doors.
Some things never change. As Lira read the news headlines, they hadn’t found Micah Brewer’s body. Just his boots, placed neatly at the cliff’s edge, filled with seawater and bioluminescent algae.
"Riptides," the sheriff had said.
"Wolves," muttered the minister.
Lira knew better.
She’d seen them as a child, wading through the moonlit shallows—women with skin like polished abalone, their hair swirling in the current like ink spilled in water.
They’d been singing, their voices weaving through the pines in a language that made Lira’s teeth ache.
Sirens.
That was many years ago. One of her many memories of her childhood, raised by her grandmother.
But Gran was gone now. Drowned, they said, though they hadn’t found the body. Just her oilskin coat snagged on the rocks below the lighthouse, the pockets full of blackened pearl buttons—ward against siren song.
The time had come for Lira to return home to a place she'd tried so hard to forget. Ember Cove.
She had left the moment she turned 18 and vowed silently to herself that she’d never come back. But life often plays out in a way to make us eat our own words when it comes to our destiny.
The sea always knew when a Voss woman returned to Ember Cove.
Lira felt it the moment her boots hit the dock—a vibration in the salt-crusted planks, as if the lighthouse perched on the cliffs above had sighed. The townsfolk turned away as she passed, their whispers slithering like tide over stone.
The townsfolk pretended not to watch as Lira climbed the moss-slick steps to the cliffside cemetery, her boots crushing seashells left as offerings.
Gran’s coffin was already in the ground by the time Lira reached the cemetery, the soil too waterlogged to hold its shape.
Lira didn’t cry. Gran had warned her as a child about tears here. "Salt calls to salt," she’d say, pressing a thumb to Lira’s cheekbone when she scraped her knee as a child. "The drowned things in the cove will taste your sorrow and come crawling."
That day it rained the way it always did in Ember Cove—like the sky was trying to wash the town into the sea.
No priest had come; in Ember Cove, the Voss women were buried with only the sea as witness. As the first shovelful of mud thudded onto the pine box, Lira swore she heard a woman’s laughter ripple through the downpour—a sound like breaking glass and whale song.
This voice somehow familiar but she had yet to learn why.
The lighthouse groaned when Lira stepped inside, its bones settling like an old woman stirring from sleep. Salt crusted the windows—not from the sea, but from the tears of every Voss woman who’d ever lived within these walls.
Gran’s funeral wreath still hung on the door, kelp strands rotting into the shape of a noose.
That night, Lira burned Gran’s last jar of beach rose tea in the lighthouse hearth, the petals curling into ash. The fire spat blue sparks, and for a heartbeat, the wind carried a melody—not the groan of the tide, but a voice, honey-sweet and humming the lullaby Gran used to sing.
As she tried making herself at home, there in the lighthouse, Lira found an old leather bound book, within it the hand written pages of what was Gran’s water-stained diary: inside the pages were damaged. Some pages were torn out, some illegible from water causing the ink to run. But one part seemed to have been spared. It contained a story of her ancestor Selene and her family's connection to the lighthouse.
"The beacon isn’t just a light, child. It’s Selene’s last spell—a prison of glass and grief. The curse was made after she carved out her own heart and sealed it in the lantern’s flame. But magic like that doesn’t fade. It festers.”
Lira’s ancestor— Selene Voss—was a powerful witch who grew up in the same childhood home next to the lighthouse. It was there she met the young Nyxara before she became the siren's Queen.
They’d once been sisters in magic, Nyxara and Selene. They met long ago in the waters near the lighthouse, quickly their souls were intertwined by a deep bond of magic. They shared secrets, practiced spells together, and respected the forces of nature above all else.
The siren had taught her to weave moonlight into nets, to sing the tides still. In return, Selene had given Nyxara the one thing sirens craved: a mortal heart to cherish hers.
Before the mentioned “curse” there was the name, written over and over again. Lira felt she recalled it from somewhere but couldn't place where. Nyxara.
The diary said Nyxara was once a powerful sea priestess from another world, a young siren from the Kingdom Luminara in the Monniverse... She was blessed by the ocean’s magic and sworn to protect its balance.
Once she found her way into our world and met Selene, her life would change forever.
She eventually abandoned her Kingdom. For her human obsessions.
Nyxara had a fatal flaw—her fascination with human souls. She believed that mortal emotions were the strongest magic of all, capable of shaping fate itself. She sought to harness human souls to gain immortality.
The lighthouse lantern flared as Lira read aloud her ancestor’s words:
"I drowned my heart in these stones so Nyxara would never claim another Voss. But the magic demands balance. For every soul the sirens take, the lighthouse steals a piece of ours. That’s why you hear them singing. They’re calling home what belongs to them."
Lira closed the book, for now. She had much to ponder. Her mind was racing with thoughts of her family's past.
The present-day beacon light swept over the cove, its beam cutting through the fog. For a heartbeat, Lira saw them from out the window—pale figures wading through the black water, their hair streaked with luminescent algae, their mouths stretched in silent screams.
Sirens.
And leading them, waist-deep in the surf, a woman with eyes like drowned stars. She knew it was her. Nyxara lifted a hand, and the lighthouse flame guttered. The siren wasn’t monstrous. She was magnificent. Moonlight slid off her shoulders like liquid silver, her hair a living tapestry of seafoam and stars. When she smiled, her teeth were pearls.
"Little Voss, come meet your destiny" the wind sighed.
Lira slammed the shutters closed. The diary fell open to its final page:
"The curse breaks two ways: drown your heart as Selene did, or find the thing Nyxara wants more than revenge. But beware—the remembers everything. Even love."
Outside, the beacon light swept over the cliffs, painting the rocks the color of bone. Somewhere in the pines, something shimmered.
Lira bolted the door and poured herself a whiskey, Gran’s favorite.
The first sip tasted like the sea.
The second tasted like blood.
Chapter Two: The Drowning Dream
Lira woke with a gasp, her throat burning as if she’d swallowed seawater.
The dream clung to her like the cove’s mist—thick and unshakable.
She could still feel the cold press of the ocean floor beneath her bare feet, the black sand shifting like a living thing.
And him—the man with the sea-green eyes and the scar like a cresting wave, his voice rough as wind over rocks. "You shouldn’t be here."
She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heartbeat thundered against her ribs, out of rhythm with the lighthouse’s pulse. The taste of blood lingered on her tongue.
The beacon’s glow through the salt-crusted window was wrong. Not the usual gold, but a sickly green, flickering like drowned fire.
Lira threw off the quilt (Gran’s quilt, still smelling of beach roses and brine) and padded to the window. Outside, the predawn fog rolled in, swallowing the cliffs. But there—between the pines—a shimmer. Not the soft glow of foxfire, but something sharper.
Something watching.
She yanked the curtains shut.
"Little Voss."
The voice wasn’t in the room. It was inside her skull, honey-sweet and razor-edged. Nyxara.
Lira grabbed the whiskey bottle from the nightstand and took a swig.
The third sip tasted like rust.
Something was pulling her towards the Cellar.
The lighthouse had secrets.
Gran had always said so. "Stones remember, child. Even the ones that weep."
Barefoot, Lira descended the spiral stairs, her fingers trailing the walls. The stone was damp, the mortar between the blocks crusted with what looked like salt—but when she scraped a nail over it, it flaked away like dried blood.
At the base of the stairs, a door she’d never noticed before. Warped oak, the handle wrapped in fishing net and rowan twigs. A witch’s ward.
Lira hesitated. Then she tore the net away.
The cellar air was thick with the scent of kelp and candle wax. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with jars of preserved things—sea glass, shark teeth, a dead seahorse suspended in amber liquid.
But it was the chest in the corner that drew her.
Iron-bound. Locked.
No—not locked. Sealed. The latch was fused shut with a lump of blackened silver, the shape of a heart pressed into it.
Selene’s heart?
Lira reached for it.
A hand closed around her wrist.
It was Kael.
She knew him instantly. The man from her dream.
Up close, he was taller, his shoulders blocking the dim light from the stairs. His eyes weren’t just green—they were the color of storm-lit waves, pupils slit like a shark’s. That scar curled over his collarbone, pulsing faintly, as if something moved beneath his skin.
"Don’t." His voice was low, urgent. "That isn’t for you."
Lira wrenched free. "Who the hell are you?! "
"Kael." He didn’t offer a last name. "And you’re going to get yourself killed."
Behind him, the cellar door groaned shut on its own.
A beat of silence. Then—
"You’ve seen her," Kael said. "Nyxara."
It wasn’t a question.
Lira’s pulse jumped. "How do you know that?"
Kael’s jaw tightened. The scar rippled, and for a second, his teeth looked too sharp.
"Because she’s been waiting for you. And now that you’re here, the lighthouse is waking up."
Outside, the waves crashed against the cliffs like a hammer striking stone.
Somewhere, a woman began to sing.
The sound wasn’t human. It was the cry of gulls mixed with the creak of a ship’s hull, the sigh of tides dragging souls under.
Lira’s bones vibrated with it.
Kael grabbed her arm again, his grip bruising.
"Don’t listen."
But it was too late. The song slithered into her ears, twisting into words:
"Little Voss… you want answers. Come to the water. Bring the heart, and I’ll give you the truth."
Kael snarled. Literally snarled, his canines glinting. "She’s lying."
Lira stared at him. "What are you?"
The scar on his collarbone burned suddenly, glowing blue. Kael hissed in pain—then went rigid.
Because the singing had stopped.
And in the silence, a new sound:
Knocking.
From inside the iron chest.
