The scream was heard in the morning.
Half the nearby passengers froze before they even understood what had happened. A woman walking along one of the upper balconies had seen something she was never supposed to see. The sound she made was enough to send servants running, guards turning and security channels lighting up across Cornvelia almost at once.
Veneri was nowhere near the balcony when it happened. He was enjoying the ship, enjoying the rare privilege of a normal day. By the time he reached the scene, a cluster of staff, authorities and shocked onlookers had already formed a tight ring around the balcony entrance.
Agnar and Eunecia were there too and so was Agnar's wife, who had clearly been drawn in by the commotion the moment the ship's internal alerts started going off.
She was a tall woman with the same strong family bearing as Agnar, though less exaggerated in height and bulk. Her name was Cornelia, which fit the ship's name so well it felt almost suspicious. She had a steady face, dark hair pinned neatly back and eyes that moved from person to person. She didn't need to raise her voice. The room already knew she was important.
In the center of the balcony lay the body.
She was a young woman, beautiful by ordinary standards. It wasn't the kind of beauty that made people stop breathing, but the kind that made people glance twice and remember the shape of her face. Her throat had been slit cleanly. Blood had soaked part of the balcony stone and dried in dark streaks around her neck and collar. A dagger lay in her hand, also bloodied, as though she had used it on herself before dying.
The authorities were already examining the scene.
Two of them stood over the body with hard faces and serious hands, while a third crouched near the railing, checking for signs of struggle, prints, residue or Tether or Technique interference. Another was speaking quietly with witnesses. They were all taking it very seriously. A death on a ship like Cornvelia was the sort of thing that could turn into a liability disaster very quickly if handled badly.
Agnar stood with arms folded at the corpse and the blood. Eunecia was beside him, visibly shaken but trying not to show it too much. Cornelia looked from the body to the officials and then to her husband.
"What's going on?"
One of the authorities turned towards her and gave a formal bow.
"Madam Cornelia, a body was discovered on the upper balcony. We're determining whether this was suicide, murder, or some kind of technique incident."
Cornelia's eyes went to the young woman's throat, then to the dagger.
"And what's your current conclusion?"
"The wound suggests a self-inflicted cut, but the placement is unusual. We're investigating."
Agnar grimaced and looked toward Eunecia.
"How did no one notice before now?"
Eunecia looked pale.
"I don't know. A passenger found her during a stroll and screamed. We were notified immediately."
"And the scream was enough to trigger half the ship's staff."
"The upper decks were nearby," Agnar said. "It spread fast."
Cornelia's gaze returned to the body.
"What do we know about her?"
One of the authorities answered.
"Young. No obvious signs of a struggle. Dagger in hand. Throat slit. We haven't identified her yet."
"Passenger?"
"Likely."
"Likely?"
"We're still confirming."
"Then confirm faster."
The staff member swallowed and nodded. That was when Veneri arrived. He didn't push through the crowd. He simply approached them. Several heads turned as soon as he stepped into view. He was three meters tall, composed and unfazed by all this. One of the authorities immediately lifted his hand.
"Sir, this area is restricted."
"Let him through."
The authority looked back.
"Master Agnar—"
"I said let him through."
Veneri gave Agnar a short nod and stepped past the officials. Cornelia's gaze turned to him, then to her husband.
"Who is this?"
"A guest, Veneri."
"The one who helped you with an Enchantment?"
Veneri gave a slight inclination of his head.
"That would be me, Mrs..."
"Cornelia."
One of the authorities looked displeased that Agnar had just bypassed their authority so casually, but before they could complain, Veneri was already crouching beside the body.
"May I inspect her?"
The lead investigator hesitated. Cornelia beat them to it.
"Go ahead."
The authority gave a reluctant nod.
"Do it briefly."
Veneri ignored the tone and leaned closer to the corpse. His eyes moved over the wound, the angle of the blade, the stiffness of the body, the blood pattern, the position of the fingers, the railing, the floor and the exact placement of the dagger. He didn't touch anything yet. He just looked. For a long moment, nobody spoke.
"This is strange."
The authorities immediately looked annoyed, because that was not a helpful opening. Veneri pointed at the woman's throat without touching it.
"Immortals don't just die from a cut throat."
The nearest authority frowned.
"It could have been deep enough."
"No. Even if she didn't heal fast enough or didn't heal at all, it wouldn't kill her by itself. We don't need to breathe the same way mortals do."
That got their attention. Cornelia's eyes narrowed.
"Explain."
Veneri stood slowly, still looking at the body.
"For immortals, the important organs are different. The brain, the heart, the reproductive organs, and the skeletal system. Those are the ones with the strongest relation to the soul."
One of the authorities blinked.
"The reproductive organs?"
Veneri looked at him like the question itself was obvious.
"Yes. They're tied to inheritance, lineage and the soul's ability to pass itself onward through bloodline continuity. The brain relays and shares information with the soul. The heart is tied to the spirit of the soul. The skeleton acts as the foundation that keeps the soul's bodily structure coherent. If those are destroyed with soul damage, then yes, that can kill an immortal. In wars, they use this information to target immortals and kill them."
The room had gone very quiet now. Agnar's brows were up. Eunecia was watching him with open interest. Cornelia looked less surprised than the others, but only a little. Veneri turned back to the corpse.
"If any of those organs had been damaged, I'd expect to see the effects. A wound to the brain would show signs of soul collapse in the head. The heart would leave a different pattern. The skeleton would show structural damage. Even the reproductive organs would show a soul-related injury pattern if soul damage had been involved. "But this is just a cut throat."
One of the investigators frowned.
"You're saying she didn't die from it."
"Correct."
The lead authority looked irritated now.
"Then what killed her?"
Veneri didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached out and placed two fingers just above the woman's chest, not touching the body itself. A faint pulse of Soul Energy moved through the air. Then his expression changed in a way the others could immediately see..He drew his hand back.
"The Soul Energy of her dead soul is gone."
"Gone where?"
"Not dispersed. Gone. It's like it was siphoned out of her."
The authorities exchanged looks. Veneri's gaze lifted from the body, then shifted past the assembled faces as if he were looking at something just beyond the visible world. His eyes narrowed and the room around him felt suddenly more still.
"In fact, I can see her right now."
"What?"
"Her soul is still here. It's not where it should be, and it's not fully at rest. Someone removed the Soul Energy from it, or interfered with it so aggressively that the body died after the soul was already disrupted elsewhere."
That made the investigators look unsettled. Cornelia's voice turned quieter.
"You... can see the soul?"
"Yes. It's not hard for me to do so."
Agnar's eyes narrowed. Eunecia's mouth was slightly open. The authorities looked between one another like they were all trying to recover from the fact that this stranger had gone from "guest who paid a ridiculous fee" to "man who could apparently see dead souls" in the span of thirty seconds. Without making any dramatic announcement, he looked at the corpse one last time and turned away.
"I'll leave this to you. Ask her questions while you still can."
One of the authorities frowned.
"Ask who questions?"
Veneri gave them a faintly tired look, as if the answer was obvious and the problem was theirs for not keeping up.
"The soul. If you can reach it. I'm going back to enjoy the cruise."
Cornelia stared at him. Just then, they felt some sleep of energy entering their eyes and just like that, they could see the soul of the woman in floating above them, looking scared. The lead investigator looked like they wanted to ask a dozen follow-up questions and couldn't decide which one would make them look the least foolish.
Veneri ignored all of it. He stepped away from the body, glanced briefly at Agnar and then walked away.
------
Later that same night, nine more corpses were found scattered around the Cornvelia.
The ship's atmosphere curdled almost instantly. One body could be brushed off as a gruesome accident. Two might spark worried gossip over breakfast. But ten young women, all with their throats slit in the exact same brutal fashion?
The wounds had been made with whatever was closest at hand: glass shards, dinner knives, the snapped tip of a decorative dagger, even sharpened cutlery or random broken items that had no right to become weapons. It felt almost insulting, like the killer was deliberately making the deaths look sloppy, accidental or self-inflicted.
Veneri didn't bother rushing to the scenes this time. He stayed exactly where he was, leaning against the railing of an upper balcony. Biolumine remained curled beside him in her sleek black cat form, pretending to be not interested while her ears stayed perked toward every distant shout and hurried footsteps echoing from the lower decks.
He let out a slow breath and smiled faintly into the darkness.
"This is the work of something powerful, or something that really wants everyone to think it's powerful. And it's only targeting women."
"Sea monster?"
"Maybe. Probably not your average one. Either way, I'm done pretending this is none of my business. I'm going to spend the night looking around. With Codex's invisibility enchantment, I can move through this entire ship without anyone noticing. It should give plenty of time to figure out what the hell is actually going on here."
"You are?"
"Yeah. I care about Agnar's family. They helped get me on this ship in the first place. That's enough reason. Otherwise… I don't really care who lives or dies. I'm here because this was supposed to be my vacation after a century of war and I'm not letting some murder nonsense ruin it."
Biolumine made a dry, rasping sound that might have been a laugh in her human shape.
"That's your moral position?"
"Yeah."
She accepted it with the weary patience of a creature who had long since stopped expecting sentimentality from him. A short while later, under the cover of night, Veneri activated the invisibility enchantment from his Codex. One moment he was there; the next, he simply wasn't. The ship continued its restless life around him.
He scouted deck by deck, corridor by corridor, balcony by balcony. The pattern became obvious almost immediately. Every victim had been a young woman, still carrying that particular untouched vitality even among immortals.
That meant they're virgins.
They weren't ancient either. They were relatively young and full of life that hadn't yet been dulled by centuries. And every single one had died near the balconies overlooking the ocean. What amazed him most was the negligence. There were no scouts, dedicated guards or anyone properly watching the blind angles or the edges where the ship met the sea. Whoever was responsible had either exploited the gaps perfectly or planned around them from the start. He kept circling back to those outer balconies. That was when he found it.
A woman stepped out onto one of the quieter balconies. She wore a simple black nightdress that clung loosely to her body. She stopped near the railing and gazed out over the dark water. A pleasant sound could be heard.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't even traditionally melodic. Veneri felt it enter his mind but thanks to his immunity to mental attacks, it didn't faze him. However, it did make the ambient souls around the ship feel drowsier. The rhythm spread like a sedative through the nearby decks. It was not enough to knock everyone out but enough to lull them into a vulnerable haze.
The woman swayed slightly as the song began to enthrall her. Veneri's eyes narrowed. This song was directed to her that made resistance feel pointless and desire take over.
A siren rose from the edge of the balcony. Its lower body was still oceanic. It had a sleek, powerful tail shimmering with scales while its upper half was bare and strikingly beautiful. Her full breasts were exposed without any covering. Her face was captivating as well. The tail shifted, reshaping into strong human legs as the siren stepped fully onto the stone. In seconds, it had become a man.
The woman in the nightdress moved towards him. She ran the last few steps and kissed him deeply. The siren-man kissed back with his hands sliding over her body. They sank down onto the floor of the balcony, out of the main walkway's sight but still visible from Veneri's vantage point.
Biolumine, who had followed silently in her cat form, watched from the edge of the darkness with pure disgusted curiosity.
"Ugh, do sea creatures just fuck immortals that easily?"
Veneri didn't look away.
"She's enthralled."
The scene unfolded with eerie intimacy. The woman wasn't resisting. She was lost in it. Her hands explored him as much as his explored her. Clothes slipped away. Their bodies moved together on the cool wood, with the siren controlling the pace with expert precision while the woman moaned softly, completely caught in the amplified pleasure. It looked consensual in the moment. Veneri frowned.
"This is strange."
"Why?"
"Because if the siren wanted intercourse, it could do this in daylight with actual consent. With that face and body, it could walk around the ship as a normal passenger and flirt. Half the women here would probably throw themselves at him so why the song? Why the secrecy?"
Biolumine's ears angled back.
"Master, Sirens are the succubi of the ocean. They're built around overwhelming sexual emotion. They can amplify pleasure when they choose to. That part is normal."
"Then the killing is the real problem."
"Obviously."
The climax built. The male siren lifted the woman slightly with their bodies still joined. Then he pressed a dagger into her hand. In her entranced state, she brought it to her own throat without hesitation and cut herself. Blood spilled hot across their skin while they continued moving together. The woman didn't scream or fight. Her face showed no terror but stunned, overwhelming ecstasy, as if the peak of pleasure had swallowed everything else.
The siren drank from the wound even as they finished. Veneri watched with detached understanding. It wasn't just blood. The intense sexual pleasure—body and soul intertwined—opened the victim's essence wide. The siren was feeding on Soul Energy through that opening, drawing it out at the moment of ultimate surrender.
The woman finally went slack but her expression remained one of deep satisfaction. Veneri clicked his tongue.
"At least her first time was good."
Biolumine shot him a sharp look.
"That is not the right reaction to what we just saw."
"It's the accurate one. I've been with enough women to know. All ten bodies had throat cuts, but there were other marks too like bites and traces in the right places. This one knows exactly what he's doing. This is amazing siren work."
The siren released her once the feeding was complete. It transformed again—this time back into female form and her tail reappearing—and slipped over the edge into the sea with barely a splash. That was when movement stirred elsewhere on the ship. Veneri scoffed quietly.
"It's not just one. She wouldn't have pulled this off ten times in a single day. This is a group. Several sirens are working together. They're satisfying their own desires while draining souls through the act."
Veneri stood invisible in the shadows for a moment longer as the rest of the Cornvelia began to stir toward the new discoveries.
"Huh. Now this is definitely going to take longer than it should."
Biolumine gave him a long, flat stare.
"You're still treating this like an inconvenience."
"It is an inconvenience. How am I supposed to enjoy my vacation if this keeps happening?"
She made a sound that was almost a sigh.
Unfortunately for the sirens, his vacation wasn't going to be ruined by a pack of horny oceanic predators.