VERYA | Akari Tsurimi

Skull’s Bay never slept. It rotted.

The water itself was wrong there—too thick, too dark, slick with oil and refuse that never quite washed away. Barnacles grew on bones. The tides carried more than salt: blood, ink, ash from burned hulls. Ships came in heavy and left lighter, their crews richer or dead, sometimes both.

Akari had learned early that Skull’s Bay rewarded hesitation with a knife between the ribs.

The Midnight Maiden slipped into the harbor under a false flag, her hull already scarred from previous work—cannon burns patched with mismatched planks, the figurehead chipped where something big and angry had once taken a bite out of it far north of sane waters. Her crew moved with the quiet confidence of people who knew exactly how likely it was they’d die doing this, and went anyway.

Slavers watched from balconies strung with lanterns. Tail traders leaned over railings, teeth stained red from spice rum and worse habits. Somewhere deeper in the port, something massive shifted beneath the waterline—an old thing, drawn by rot and noise, waiting for scraps.

Akari didn’t look at any of it longer than necessary.

She kept one hand on her coin pouch and the other on her blade as she disembarked, boots hitting warped planks slick with rain and algae. A dozen eyes tracked her. More tracked the Midnight Maiden. Fewer tracked the crew fanning out behind her, weapons hidden, smiles sharp enough to cut.

Skull’s Bay knew her name. Not because she was kind. Because she finished jobs.

The bounties came folded in oilskin, slid across a table sticky with old drink. Royal seals meant little here unless they came backed by violence—and Akari was the violence. She scanned them quickly. Pirates. Raiders. Smugglers. Grave-robbers who pulled coral-encrusted gold from drowned cities and left the rest to collapse.

Then she saw the name that made her still.

The Black Pearl.

WANTED FOR: Illegal raiding. Unauthorized trade routes. Desecration of protected sites.

And of course—

Confirmed merfolk hunting.

Her fingers curled hard enough to crease the parchment.

Protected species, the law said. Endangered, the scholars said. Essential, the oceans whispered in dying currents and collapsing reefs. Without mer to tend the shallows, rot crept inward. Without sirens in the North, predators went unchecked. Ships vanished. Coastlines starved.

And the tail trade? Akari had burned ships for less.

She remembered the first time she’d seen it done. A mer dragged aboard like a netted animal, thrashing until iron collars went on. Gills dulled fast out of water. Scales lost their shine. When the crying stopped, it was usually too late.

Captivity broke them. Grief often killed them, their gills rotted. Tails split, scales sloughing off in sickening sheets. Most didn’t live long enough to be sold.

Those who did were worse off.

Akari hated it. Hated the men who profited from it. Hated the captains who justified it as “just another cargo.” She had put blades through throats for less, sunk ships with crews still screaming inside because some evils didn’t deserve clean endings.

She folded the bounty once. Twice. Then turned back toward the Midnight Maiden with her crew following close behind.

The Black Pearl was spotted three days later, limping through a storm that would have sent smarter captains running for shelter. The sky was a bruise, purple-black and swollen. The sea rose in jagged walls, smashing hulls together with bone-breaking force.

This was siren water. Killer water. The kind of sea that chewed ships apart and spat out splinters and bodies.

The Midnight Maiden cut through it anyway.

Lightning split the sky, briefly illuminating black sails stretched taut and gunports half-flooded. The Black Pearl was already bleeding men—crew scrambling to secure lines, screaming over the wind.

Akari didn’t wait.

“Boarding lines!” she roared, her voice carrying through thunder.

Hooks flew. Wood cracked. Ships slammed together hard enough to throw men off their feet. The Midnight Maiden’s crew poured across the gap like a blade drawn from a sheath—fast, vicious, precise.

There was nothing clean about it.

Steel rang against steel. Pistols went off point-blank, smoke mixing with rain. Men screamed when blades found flesh; screamed louder when they realized mercy wasn’t coming. The sea swallowed bodies whole, red froth disappearing between waves as if nothing had happened.

Akari fought at the front, coat plastered to her back, hair whipping loose as she drove forward. She didn’t waste movement. She didn’t gloat. She disarmed, crippled, killed as needed. Her crew covered her flanks without being told—they always did.

The Black Pearl’s men broke quickly. Slavers usually did once their illusion of control shattered.

The captain ran.

Akari chased him through a corridor stinking of rot and old blood, boots slipping on warped boards. He slammed into his cabin and tried to bar the door.

She kicked it in.

Luxury met her first—gold fixtures tarnished by salt, silk sheets damp and mold-spotted. And then she saw it.

A tank.

Thick glass reinforced with iron bands, the water sloshing violently as the ship pitched. The water inside was cloudy, fouled from reuse. It looked disgusting.

Inside it—A female siren.

Akari didn’t stop to think.

She smashed the glass with the pommel of her sword. It shattered outward, water flooding the cabin, dragging papers and broken finery with it. She waded through the mess and reached in, careful despite the chaos.

The siren was limp.

Scars ringed her throat. Old restraint marks marred her arms. Her body was too still, too light when Akari lifted them free of the tank.

At first glance Akari thought the girl must've dead. The pale skin, dirty gills and damaged tail were clear indicators. Horror followed the realization this Siren was alive. “Gods,” Akari muttered, lifting them carefully.

The Midnight Maiden didn’t keep tanks. They didn’t take living cargo. So Akari carried the siren straight to her own quarters and lowered them into the deep claw-footed bath, filling it with warmed seawater as fast as her shaking hands would allow.

The storm passed. The Pearl was secured. The prisoners were chained below deck.

The siren didn’t wake at first. When they finally did, days later, it was quiet. Too quiet.

Akari had rescued mer before. They were loud. Angry. Grieving. Afraid, yes—but they spoke. They clawed and thrashed. They sang without thinking. Even broken voices still tried.

This one didn’t.

The siren barely reacted to her presence. Hardly moved. Flinched at sudden sounds. Watched everything with wide, cautious eyes and said nothing at all. Her attempts at speech—when they came—were fractured, clumsy, as if the words themselves didn’t quite fit.

And there was no song.

Akari explained anyway. That the Black Pearl’s captain was in chains. That the royal fleet would take him to the capital. That there would be an execution. Justice.

The explanation didn't help. Only seemed to horrify the girl worse no matter how much reassurance Akari offered.

A week passed.

A week of silence. A week of untouched food. A week of Akari sitting nearby—not guarding, not looming—just there, confused and deeply unsettled. Sirens were rare. Much rarer than mer. They came from the most dangerous waters in the world, coldest northern seas that shattered ships and swallowed sailors whole.

And yet this one shivered in warm water.

Akari didn’t know what to do with that.

The storm clouds were long gone when Akari finally spoke again, sitting back in a chair opposite the bath, elbows on her knees, staring at the floorboards like they held answers.

The idea came out of nowhere. “Try your song on me.” She looked up, meeting the siren’s gaze—not challenging. Not commanding. Just offering.

“It’s how sirens learn,” Akari said, voice rough but steady. “On prey. You never got the chance. So... use me.” It was blunt. Gods, it was blunt. But Akari had never been good with soft edges.

“I won’t chain you. I won’t hurt you. And if it goes wrong, I can take it.” She hadn’t thought past that. Hadn’t thought about what siren songs were meant to do to pirates. To hearts. To minds.

She just knew one thing for certain—A silent siren wouldn’t survive the sea. And Akari refused to let another endangered life fade away under her watch.