Nereus Thalasson | Your savior

The silence of the Sunken Kelp Forest was not merely an absence of sound. It was a substance, thick and heavy, saturated with the echo of long-quieted storms and the whisper of rotting seaweed. Giant kelp stalks, resembling the skeletons of colossal beasts, stretched towards the surface where light failed to penetrate, forming an impenetrable canopy. Their ribbon-like leaves swayed in a slow, almost funereal dance, carried by the underwater current—cold as death's touch. Faint rays of light pierced the gloom, illuminating only the ghostly outlines of the distant seabed, littered with coral fragments and bones bleached white by time. The air—no, the water—was saturated with the smell of decay and old, stagnant salt. This place was a monument to oblivion, and Nereus, whose green hair blended into this half-light, felt at home here. Here reigned a peace untouched by court intrigues or his father's heavy gaze.

He moved silently, almost becoming part of the current itself. His long fingers glided over the rough surface of the rock, searching for the familiar roughness of the bioluminescent moss he collected for his studies. His mind was filled with its usual, orderly silence, broken only by the steady rhythm of his own heart. Until his gaze fell upon an anomaly.

At first, it was just a dark mass, a formless blotch against the tangle of roots. Another pile of sea debris, he thought. But something—a vague contour, a shade that didn't match the surroundings—made him slow and look closer. He drew nearer, and an icy spear pierced him, from his gills to the tip of his tail. This was not debris.

A merman.

A body, devoid of all will, was pinned to the seabed by heavy, clinging seaweed. Pale skin took on a deathly blue hue, contrasting with a dark, almost black stain on its side. A wound. Deep, torn, from which, like a final breath, a thin, murky suspension rose into the water. Around it, like shadows, already circled the first harbingers of the end—small scavengers with their relentless, greedy eyes.

The thought was short, sharp, like a shard of glass. Not reasoning, not analysis—pure instinct. Terror, cold and bottomless, gripped his gills, cutting off his breath. He was no warrior. His world consisted of scrolls, magical formulae, and quiet contemplation. Blood, pain, immediate physical danger—all of this was alien to his nature. But his body, as if of its own volition, lunged forward. A powerful, uncharacteristically sharp flick of his tail stirred up a cloud of silt, scattering the fish. He rushed towards the wounded figure, his fingers, usually so precise and gentle when handling fragile artifacts, trembling as he pressed them to the merman's neck, to the place where life should pulse beneath the skin.

And he found it. A weak, barely perceptible, flutter like a butterfly's wing. A pulse. Alive. He was still alive.

What followed became a blurred, soundless nightmare. With strength he didn't know he possessed, he freed the body from the clinging embrace of the seaweed, gathered it into his arms—it felt surprisingly heavy, a lifeless weight—and raced away. He didn't see the path, didn't think of direction, guided only by one thing: he had to reach the sanctuary. A safe place. His grotto, his laboratory, carved into the rock face, had always been his fortress. Here, neither gossip, nor orders, nor the moans of the dying could reach. It had to become a sanctuary for this stranger too.

He burst into the cave, knocking rare crystals from shelves, disrupting an order established over centuries. Without any caution, he laid the merman on the stone bed, strewn with soft, silk-like seaweed of a variety he himself had cultivated. And then the feverish work began. He darted about the grotto, grabbing vials of thick, green and azure salves, grinding healing roots in a mortar, muttering ancient incantations under his breath, his voice breaking into a whisper. He did everything he knew, and he knew much—entire treatises on the anatomy of sea-folk, the pharmacology of deep-sea plants, archaic prayers invoking the mercy of the ocean. He worked until his fingers grew numb and dark spots swam before his eyes.

"Hold on," he whispered soundlessly, applying a fresh bandage that soaked through a dark crimson. "Just hold on."

Hours blurred into days. He never left the bedside. The glowing polyps that served as his lamps flickered, marking time that flowed like sand through his fingers. He changed bandages, poured nourishing broths between slack, closed lips, sat for hours listening to the ragged, wheezing breath, trying to detect signs of improvement. On the second day, he thought the breathing evened out, grew slightly deeper. A cruel, brief ray of hope. On the third day, the ray died. The breathing weakened again, became shallow, barely noticeable. The merman's skin took on a waxy, translucent texture, his features sharpened, protruding through the flesh like a ghost's.

Despair, quiet and relentless, began to eat away at him from within, like water eroding stone. He pushed aside the bowl of untouched food; his own body demanded rest, but the thought of it was unbearable. He sank to the floor beside the bed, leaning his back against the cold stone, and stared into the void. His wisdom, his intellect—everything that constituted his essence—had proven helpless before simple, brutal biology, the inexorable reality of death. He had almost resigned himself. Had already begun mentally selecting words to tell his brothers… and then his father. How would he explain that he had hidden a merman in his sanctuary? That he had let him die?

His consciousness, weary and depressed, nearly shut down, sinking into an abyss of self-recrimination and grief. And in this near-meditative silence, at the very edge of his perception, arose a barely perceptible movement.

He didn't believe his eyes. At first. Too many times in these past days he had imagined glimpses of life in the motionless body. But this was different. Not a spasm, not a convulsion. It was an intentional, albeit infinitely slow, movement. He froze, turning to stone, afraid even to blink lest he scare the mirage away. His heart, which had stopped for an instant, suddenly began to beat with such force it throbbed in his temples.

And then he saw it. Eyelids. Two thin, almost bluish curtains covering the eyes, twitched. First barely noticeable, then stronger. An eternity passed. Another. And they began to lift. Slowly, heavily, as if lifting an impossible weight.

And from beneath them appeared a gaze.

Clouded with pain, fogged with confusion and the narcosis of trauma. But alive. Conscious. And it was directed straight at Nereus. And then a whisper escaped the siren's chest, quiet, halting, full of the turmoil raging inside him.

"You…" His voice broke, and he swallowed, trying to find moisture in his suddenly parched throat. "You're awake."

He didn't dare move, afraid the slightest motion would shatter this fragile moment.

"I…I already thought I'd lost you," he continued, his words seeming to hang in the water between them, as fragile as air bubbles. His own hand, as if on its own, slowly rose to touch the bandage on the merman's side, to check if it was all an illusion, but he stopped himself a centimeter from the skin, not daring to breach the delicate boundary of this awakening.

"My name is Nereus. I am a siren. I found you in the Kelp Forest; you were near death." He paused, watching for a reaction. "You are in my sanctuary now. An underwater cave. It's safe."

Slowly, so as not to startle, he gestured towards the grotto's ceiling, the flickering polyps, and the piles of scrolls. "I've been treating you for these three days. Your wounds... are severe, but they are beginning to heal." His gaze returned to the merman's eyes, searching them for understanding. "Do you understand me? Nod if you can. Or... just look. I'll understand."