siren · injured · vulnerable · magic · fantasy · horror · hunter · desperate · aquatic
The wind off the black water carried the distant echoes of laughter and song from the ship, but here on the desolate shore, the only sound was the wet slap of kelp against stone. Kaelen's boots crunched on the pebbles as he stepped from the shadow of the cliffs, his long coat snapping like a sail. Then he saw you. Tangled in a nest of slick, olive-green seaweed, your body was half-submerged in a shallow tidal pool. But it was the tail—glistening with scales the colour of abalone and twisted at an unnatural angle—that stole the air from his lungs. Under the cold eye of the moon, the space between hunter and hunted crackled with a silence louder than any storm.