Meanwhile, in a dimly lit private cabin tucked away in one of the ship's more luxurious corridors, Eunecia lay sprawled across her wide bed. Her chest was rising and falling in heavy, satisfied breaths. Sweat glistened on her skin, making the sheets stick to her curves. Whatever happened last night left her limbs heavy and her mind pleasantly fogged.
The man who had just been on top of her pushed himself up from the mattress. His muscular frame was slick with their combined sweat as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His body began to shift right before her eyes. His shoulders narrowed, her hips widened and chest swelled into full breasts. Long hair cascaded down her back as she stretched languidly, completely naked and unashamed.
Eunecia sighed heavily, running her hand through her damp hair.
"I'll never get used to that soul pleasure. It hits so deep every single time."
The siren woman scoffed with a lazy grin, turning to look at her. Her bare breasts swayed with the movement.
"It's one of our best benefits, darling. Most people go their whole lives chasing a fraction of what we can give. Consider yourself lucky."
Eunecia forced herself to sit up, wincing a little at the pleasant ache between her thighs. She gathered the tangled sheets around her, covering her breasts and lap as she leaned back against the headboard.
"Speaking of benefits… why the killing? Our deal was simple. You and your sisters could come aboard, slip into cabins or corners and relieve those endless desires of yours. You can make love to whoever catches your eye, amplify the pleasure and feed lightly. But I said not murder. These are my passengers on this voyage. It's supposed to be symbiotic that doesn't leave bodies piling up."
The siren sighed, running her fingers idly along the edge of the sheet near Eunecia's hip. She didn't bother covering herself.
"We can't exactly stop it right now. The ruler of the oceans is getting agitated. Ancient rivalries are emerging. Sea monsters are giving him hell down there, pushing against boundaries and testing his patience so we need more energy to fight. The Siren Queen's the lucky one. She gets to spend her existence getting railed senseless by him whenever he needs to blow off steam, then brags about every detail to the rest of the pod. The rest of us have to hunt our releases where we can. The Soul Energy… it helps stabilize things."
Eunecia shook her head, though her eyes lingered on the siren's body.
"Still feels like crossing a line. We had an understanding."
The siren's expression softened into something almost playful. She crawled a little closer on the bed.
"Enough about that for now. You still chasing that handsome guy with the white hair?"
Eunecia's cheeks flushed, but she nodded without hesitation.
"Yeah. I am. I'm beautiful. Plenty of men on this ship would drop everything to get between my legs. But him? He has zero interest. I flirted hard that first day but he just… brushed it off like it was nothing."
The siren's hand slid under the sheets to rest warmly on Eunecia's thigh. Her thumb stroking lazy circles that sent little sparks up her skin.
"Men like that are rare. Usually it's one of two things. He's not into women at all, or he's got access to women far more beautiful and skilled than you. A few of my sisters spotted him the first day. They want him so badly. They want to sing him into a trance, strip him down and drain him nice and slow while he's buried deep."
Eunecia's eyes flashed with sharp possessiveness. She grabbed the siren's wrist, stopping the wandering hand.
"Warn them off. Don't even try. He's mine. I called dibs."
The siren smiled and leaned in to nip lightly at Eunecia's neck.
"I'll relay the warning to my sisters. But fair heads-up, he's too powerful. One of us tried a light enthrallment but it work at all. He's immune. Brushed it off like a breeze."
Before Eunecia could respond, the siren gave her a firm push, toppling her back onto the pillows. The sheet fell away, exposing her flushed skin again.
"I'm not satisfied yet, darling. You keep passing out all the time from the action. It's not good for business, dear."
Her body pressed down. Her soft breasts were warm against Eunecia's with one thigh sliding between her legs. Eunecia gasped at the contact, still sensitive from before.
"I have to leave soon… people will notice if I'm gone too long…"
But the siren was already shifting back into the strong, male shape. He captured her mouth in a deep, demanding kiss. His tongue teased hers as his hands pulled her closer.
Eunecia wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed in defeat.
"Just five more minutes…"
°°°°°°
Veneri caught the siren during a routine sweep along the quieter side corridors of Cornvelia.
When he found one of them in the middle of a fresh enticement, leaning in close to a young woman with that soft voice already starting to dull her thoughts, he didn't waste time. One moment the siren was mid-transform, the next she was on the floor.
The woman she had been luring stood there blinking in confusion, half-drugged by the song and not yet fully aware that anything had happened. Veneri didn't give the moment time to become a scene. He simply caught the siren, sealed her in a quick layer of crystal so she couldn't shift or flee and had Biolumine help him carry her back to his cabin before anyone in the hallway could fully understand what had happened.
By the time they got inside, the woman had already wandered off in a daze, still confused. Veneri didn't care enough to chase after her. He had the one he wanted.
The siren woke up inside his cabin with crystal wrapped around her from tail to neck, pinned in a half-glittering prison that left only enough room for her face and eyes to move. She looked at him first and Biolumine, who was still in cat form and sitting with the sort of patient.
"You're really good."
Veneri leaned against the table with his arms folded.
"I know."
That earned him the slightest narrowing of her eyes.
"So that explains why I couldn't enthrall you yesterday. You're immune."
Veneri gave her a flat look.
"Or I'm part sea creature. My mother is an oceanic being."
That shut her up for half a second, which was enough for him to decide this was going in the right direction. He stepped closer and looked down at her. He'd learned long ago that there were very few ways to talk a depraved siren into honesty. Violence worked sometimes. Threats worked too but the cleanest method was usually to make them uncomfortable enough to stop.
"Why are you doing this?"
The siren's tail shifted inside the crystal but she didn't answer right away.
"If you're making love to young women, that shouldn't be a problem. So why kill them?"
Biolumine's ears flicked, but she stayed silent.
The siren glared at him with a guarded look.
"Do you care?"
"No."
That was blunt enough that it almost made her laugh.
"I want to get to the other side of this voyage in one piece and enjoy what's left of my vacation. I don't want to hear about murders unless they're relevant."
"Then why ask?"
"Because you're making this vacation annoying."
She gave him a long, tired stare.
"I can't tell you."
Veneri sighed. Then, almost as if he'd been waiting for that answer specifically, he activated his Boon, Ethereal Beauty.
The air around him seemed to align itself to his presence and suddenly every line of his face, every movement, every angle of his posture turned into something almost offensively attractive. He never liked using it. It always felt like cheating in a way. He didn't enjoy using it with others except his beloveds.
The siren's expression changed at once.
The siren was still in her right mind. She just looked at him and found it suddenly harder to remember why she was supposed to resist. It was the same effect that made so many people stumble around him, but on someone like her it looked even more ridiculous because she clearly knew exactly what was happening and hated that she could feel it. Veneri stepped closer and lightly touched her under her chin.
"Do you know anything?"
The siren swallowed. He brushed a thumb against her cheek deliberately. The effect nearly broke her composure.
"Stop that, please..."
Veneri frowned a little, annoyed by how easy this was working.
"Wow. You siren give in so easily when someone shows you a bit of fake affection?"
The siren looked away, breathing a little harder now.
"You're cheating."
"I'm talking."
"That's cheating too."
"If this were my beloveds, I'd need my Love Divinity and probably a miracle to make them cooperate, and even then they'd be enjoying it too much to count as cooperation. You, on the other hand, are enchanted by my face and trying very hard not to admit it."
She went red, which only proved his point. Biolumine, watching from the bed, looked like she wanted to roll her eyes so hard they'd fall out. Veneri ignored her. The siren finally gave up the pretense of dignity.
"Fine. Fine. I'll tell you."
"Good."
"The ocean ruler is fighting a sea monster."
That got his attention. She kept going before he could interrupt.
"If the ship keeps moving at this pace and speed, it'll end up too close to the battle. We'll be caught in the crossfire. That would get everyone killed, including us. The ruler wants to use the ship as a distraction so he can kill the sea monsters more easily."
"And the murders?"
The siren gave a tired, ugly little laugh.
"They need more Soul Energy for the fight."
Veneri stared at her for while. They were feeding themselves and the ship's hidden war at the same time, using the women and the soul output from the intense emotional and physical climax. The sirens were fighting for survival and the price was passengers who never even knew they were being converted into battlefield resources.
He took a slow breath and let it out.
"This just got more complicated."
The siren's shoulders sank as much as the crystal prison allowed.
"You think?"
------
Vastarael flew above the Cornvelia Ocean with Biolumine in her giant raven form. The two of them flew above the oceans.
Aira clung to his waist in humanoid form now. Her tail was gone and replaced by two legs so she could keep up without being thrown off by the speed. Her arms were wrapped around him and she didn't seem bothered by how fast they were moving. If anything, she looked relieved to finally be out of the ship.
Vastarael didn't look at her at first. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon and let the wind hit his face. The night air was cold enough to feel like a different world from the ship. Only when Aira started speaking again did he fully shift his attention.
Along the way, he'd learned that her name was Aira and that she was a Siren. More than that, she was one of the ones stuck in the Cornvelia Ocean. The ocean itself was not one body of water but four major regions, two ruled by sea monster kings and two ruled by ocean rulers. It was a constant shifting war zone, packed with tens of thousands of oceanic races. All of them were doing what creatures trapped in a dangerous realm always did: survive, adapt, and kill anything that made survival harder.
"In the Timeless Realm, anything oceanic that's forgotten by time gets sent to Cornvelia Ocean. They live there, or try to. But there's always fighting. If you're weak, you either find a way to cooperate or you get swallowed by someone stronger."
That was why the Merfolk were on the ship in the first place. They weren't strong enough to defend themselves alone. So they coexisted with immortal sailors and navigators, trading their knowledge and their service for protection. It was less ideal than it sounded but more practical than extinction.
Vastarael listened without interrupting.
The Siren Race, she said, was androgynous. All sirens were born female but they could shift into male or female forms at will. Their voices were their weapons and not just metaphorically. If they were strong enough, they could enthrall whoever listened. They also fed on Soul Energy. That part, at least, didn't surprise him at all.
"Soul Energy is used by more than just your kind," Aira said when he asked her about it. "Necromancers use it. Other races use it too but the Aeterium, one of the Four Ancient Races in the universe, are the pinnacle when it comes to soul control. Not like there's any that exist here anyway."
He gave a small hum of acknowledgment, not bothering to correct her or say more.
Then she told him about the emotional structure of sirens.
"We run on desire, love, lust, need and obsession. Those are the strongest emotions for us."
Then she mentioned the Siren Queen.
She was known to be the very first siren. She was older than most remembered lineages and powerful enough to rule the Siren Race across the known worlds. She has existed for hundreds of thousands of years and is married to one of the rulers of the ocean, which was probably the only reason the siren clans had managed to survive in the Cornvelia Ocean without tearing each other apart completely.
Vastarael stayed quiet after that, but not because he lacked an answer. Aira, apparently taking his silence as permission to keep talking, moved on to the war itself.
The war between the sea monsters and the oceanic beings had begun a hundred years ago, she said, when the Divine Anchor decided to attack the Immortal Anchor. It had been a demand wrapped in an ultimatum. They wanted hundreds of thousands of immortals to join their war or else they would subject everyone to Decay. The Immortal Anchor's factions had responded the way desperate powers always did: they sent soldier after soldier, hundreds of thousands from each faction, until the total climbed into the dozens of millions.
Vastarael's face didn't change.
He already knew the scale of the war. He had lived it. He spent ninety years inside it, turning it from a battlefield into a graveyard. However, hearing the numbers spoken aloud by someone who had no idea what he really was gave the whole thing a different kind of weight.
And then the Prism Madonna came.
"The Prism Madonna killed them all in ninety years. Nobody knows where she came from. One day she was just there and by the time the war had changed enough for people to notice, she'd already annihilated both sides, about one hundred and fifty million by estimate, maybe more. Nobody's sure anymore."
Vastarael kept his gaze forward.
Biolumine, flying ahead in raven form, looked over one wing at him. Aira continued, not noticing the small shift in his expression.
"The Divine Anchor hasn't moved against her, which is probably smart. Anyone capable of destroying that many immortals in less than a century is easily among the top five strongest beings in the Immortal Anchor. Nobody sane wants to test that."
He was the one who had spent ninety years butchering camps, harvesting souls and turning soldiers into crystal and ash. He was also the reason Aira was currently talking to him like he was some mysterious outsider instead of the person who had murdered the very armies she was describing.
And on top of all that, he had his staff.
Calimostria sat in Fool's Copy with millions of souls still bound inside it. All of them were refined and converted over decades into high-quality reserves. If he ever stepped fully into the Divine Anchor, that thing would make him a target for every pantheon with eyes. He knew that already.
Aira looked up at him, finally noticing how silent he'd gone.
"What?"
Vastarael gave her a blank, calm look and shook his head just enough to suggest he was listening.
By the way, souls didn't simply pass on in the Timeless Realm. They are consumed by Decay and faded out of existence over time. It was one of the ugliest facts about the Timeless Realm and one of the reasons he had spent so much time refining the souls he collected. If they were going to be trapped, then at least he could make them useful instead of letting them rot into oblivion.
He stayed quiet and let Aira keep talking for a little longer as they flew on through the dark.
The sea below was broad. The wind moved around them in cold currents and the clouds above were beginning to part to let strange pale light leak through. Vastarael looked ahead, still silent. Then, far off in the distance, the sky ahead of them changed.
A flash of light split the darkness over the ocean. A whole section of the horizon emerged. Aira stopped talking. Biolumine's wings began to glide.
They were already in the war.