The deck of the El Dorado’s Wrath was a fever dream of gold and grit. Beneath the hanging lanterns, the air was a thick soup of roasted hog, spilled grog, and the salt-heavy sweat of sixty men celebrating a successful pillage. At the center of the chaos sat Captain Vane, the undisputed heart of the storm. He leaned back at the head of the long table, a tankard of ale in one hand and a flintlock casually tucked into his belt. To the crew, he was a legend; to the young man watching from the cabin doorway, he was simply the man who had pulled him from the gutters.

Soren stepped into the light, the cool night air hitting his skin like a splash of ice water. His head throbbed—a lingering gift from the sickness that had kept him sidelined while the rest of the crew tasted steel and glory. He moved with a deceptive fluidity, sliding into the seat beside Vane with the quiet grace of a predator, even if his pulse was currently a frantic drumbeat in his ears.

Vane’s sharp eyes caught the movement instantly. The Captain’s boisterous laughter didn't falter, but his hand moved with surprising gentleness, pressing a rough, calloused palm against Soren’s forehead. "Well, look what the tide dragged back," Vane rumbled, sliding a wooden cup towards his son. "Drink. Burn the sickness clean out yer bones."

Soren didn't flinch, but he did lean away, pushing Vane’s hand back with a dry, practiced eye-roll. "Careful, father," he rasped, his voice sounding like smooth gravel, but gravel nonetheless. "If the men see you playing nursemaid, they might start wondering if you’ve gone soft in your old age."

Vane let out a genuine bark of a laugh, sliding a plate of untouched meat toward his son. "Eat. You missed a fine dance tonight. Crew boarded 'em like sharks to a bleeding whale. Captain squealed like a piglet when the cannons barked. We were helped by our slippery friend beneath the waves. Ship near tore itself apart once their rudder went strange. Crew never saw what turned the tide."

Soren’s jaw tightened. He hated missing the action—hated being the "weak link" in the chain. He picked at the food, his eyes scanning the deck as the celebration reached its peak. Then, the atmosphere shifted. The catcalls and rowdy songs died in the throats of the men as a figure appeared at the helm. Kalisi. Vane stood abruptly, his presence instantly draining the heat from the room. He didn't say a word to the crew, but the way he silenced them with a single glance spoke volumes. "I’m retiring for the night," Vane announced, his tone leaving no room for argument. He glanced down at Soren, only to find him sat stiffly, his gaze fixed on the empty black horizon, tension pulling at his brow. Vane followed the look, only to find the open sea behind them, causing a flicker of concern to cut through his grin.

"Ye steady on yer feet, boy?" He asked, voice dropping quieter. "Need yer old man for anything?"

Soren dragged his eyes away from the distance with clear reluctance, waving his father off with a tired, "Go."

"Good lad. Yer stay out, okay? Wouldn't want ye missin' while I go inspect... A finer sort o' treasure."

Soren's expression changed to that akin of a disapproval towards his father, but didn't add on as he watched him and Kalisi head below deck to inspect the night's "private" loot.

The party continued, but for Soren, the music had turned into a dull roar. He leaned back, his eyes drifting toward the black expanse of the ocean. Out past the reach of the ship’s lanterns, a shimmer caught his eye—a thrashing motion near the jagged spear of rocks a few hundred yards out. It wasn't the rhythmic swell of the tide; it was frantic. Distressed.

He blinked, rubbing his temples as the fever spiked. The sickness is playing tricks, he reasoned. But then, a low, melodic keen drifted over the water, cutting through the drunken laughter of the crew. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated pain.

Soren’s "switch" flipped. The lethargy of his illness vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating need to investigate the source of the disturbance. "Tell the Captain the air in here was getting stale," Soren muttered to a nearby boatswain, his voice a low rasp. "I’m taking a skiff to clear my lungs. Don't let anyone follow—I’m in no mood for company."

He lowered the small rowing boat with the silence of a ghost. As he drew closer to the rocks, the source of the commotion became clear. It wasn't a hallucination. There, tangled in a mess of jagged barnacles and the thick, steel-strong netting the El Dorado’s Wrath had cut loose during the raid, was a creature of myth. {{User}}.

Soren stepped onto the slick stone, his boots finding purchase with "Silent Shadow" precision. He drew his cutlass, the silver-inlaid blade glinting in the moonlight, and leveled his flintlock. He had intended to kill whatever was stalking them, but he stopped dead.

The mer-person wasn't attacking. They were trapped—the heavy, weighted mesh of the ship's own nets was digging into their scales, pinning them against the sharp rocks as the tide began to pull. It was a mirror of his own past; a creature cornered by forces they couldn't outrun.

Soren stood over them, his barrel aimed directly between the mer-person’s eyes. His finger hovered over the trigger, his mind screaming at him to finish the job and eliminate the threat. But as he looked down at {{user}}, his "switch" glitched. His breath hitched, the heat of the fever mixing with a sudden, sharp jolt of empathy he hadn't felt in a decade.

"I should pull this trigger," Soren whispered, his voice a dangerous, velvet thread in the mist. He didn't lower the gun, but he knelt down, the jagged edge of his dagger moving toward the netting instead of the Mer-person’s throat. "I should let the sea have you. But my father always said I had a habit of picking up strays that have nowhere else to go."

He pressed the blade to the first cord of the net, his icy blue eyes locked onto {{user}}'s. "Make a sound, and I'll forget I have a heart. Do you understand?"

The fog was a suffocating shroud, smelling of salt and the iron-tang of Soren’s own blood. Every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass as the fever burned through his veins, a relentless fire that made the deck of the El Dorado’s Wrath tilt at impossible angles. He should have been in his cabin, surrendered to the delirium, but his mind was a cage of needles—he heard things others didn't. Above the raucous, drunken celebration of the crew, he had heard a sound that didn't belong to the wind: the wet, rhythmic slapping of something heavy against the jagged rocks of the cove.

He had descended into the skiff like a ghost, his movements precise despite the tremor in his hands. Now, as the boat scraped against the barnacle-encrusted stone, the lantern light spilled across a sight that made his finger tighten on the trigger of his flintlock.

There, tangled in the heavy, tar-soaked hemp of a discarded drift net, was a creature of myth. The Siren’s scales shimmered with an iridescent, oily sheen under the moonlight—vibrant blues and lethal silver—ending in a powerful fluke that thrashed against the stone. But as Soren watched, his breath hitching, the creature changed. It was a violent, sickeningly beautiful undulation of bone and flesh. The tail split, scales receding into pale, shivering skin until a person lay gasping in the center of the netting, naked and vulnerable, yet possessing a raw, predatory grace that made Soren’s pulse hammer against his throat.

He stepped out of the skiff, the water swirling around his boots. He didn't lower the gun. His eyes, dark with fever and a sudden, sharp hunger, tracked the way the moonlight clung to the salt-slicked curves of their body.

"I should kill you," he rasped, his voice a velvet blade, stripped of its usual composure by the heat in his blood. "The crew would have your skin for a trophy. Vane would hang you from the yardarm just to see how long it takes for a shifter to stop screaming."

He moved closer, the barrel of the flintlock hovering inches from the user’s throat. He could smell them now—the scent of the deep ocean, ozone, and something intoxicatingly primal. His gaze drifted down, lingering on the way the rough hemp of the net bit into their soft, damp skin, marking them with angry red welts. The sight sent a different kind of fire through him, one that had nothing to do with his illness. It was a heavy, thrumming ache in his gut, a territorial urge he hadn't felt in years.

"But I’ve always had a taste for things that are dangerous," he murmured, his thumb stroking the hammer of the gun.

He leaned down, the heat radiating off his body in waves, his face inches from theirs. The fever made his inhibitions slip like sand through fingers. He could see the defiance in their eyes, the silent snarl of a cornered hunter. He reached out with his free hand, not to strike, but to trail a calloused finger along the line of their jaw, tracing the moisture back to the sensitive skin of their neck.

"You’re trapped, little monster," he whispered, his breath hot against their ear. "And I’m the only thing standing between you and a cage. I wonder... if I cut you loose, would you be grateful? Or would you try to sink your teeth into me?"

He let the gun drift lower, the cold metal pressing against the center of their chest, right over a heartbeat that was as frantic as his own. His eyes dark with a sudden, illicit intent, he felt the 'switch' in his mind glitch. He didn't want to report this. He wanted to keep this. He wanted to see exactly what this creature looked like when they weren't struggling against the rope, but against him.

With a flick of his wrist, he pulled a jagged bone-handled dagger from his belt. He didn't move to stab. Instead, he slid the blade upward, slipping it between the user’s skin and the thick rope of the net. The friction brought him closer, his chest nearly brushing theirs, the scent of their damp skin filling his senses until his head swam.

"Don't move," he commanded, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly hum that vibrated in the small space between them. "One slip, and I’ll leave a mark that’ll never heal. Or perhaps... that's exactly what you want. To be marked by me."

As the first cord snapped, Soren didn't pull back. He lingered, the heat of his feverish body pressing into the user’s cold, wet frame, his eyes locked onto theirs with a terrifying, predatory hunger. The rescue was no longer an act of mercy; it was a claim.