The tide was calm.
Sea God Island lay draped in a thin mist, and though the sky bore no clouds, no sun dared pierce the veil. It was not the kind of silence that invited peace—it was the kind that lingered before an answer, the kind that filled lungs before a scream.
Hai Shen Ling stood barefoot at the edge of the Eastern Reef, where the sharp, coral-strewn shelf fell into an unfathomable trench. He had stood there for hours, unmoving, unblinking, not even breathing. The water lapped around his ankles with patient rhythm, touching and retreating as if unsure of his permission to stay.
The ocean had not spoken to him in six days.
It was a silence that felt like betrayal.
It had once hummed within his bones. Now it slept, or perhaps withheld. The echo of the Leviathan had left its mark, embedding a deep chord within him—yet now even that voice had faded, as though it, too, awaited something more.
Yin Shu approached quietly behind him. He had learned not to break the stillness with words unless summoned. This time, however, the worry in his chest pressed him to speak.
"She's worried," Yin Shu said, glancing back toward the distant cliffs. "Bo Saixi. She hasn't said anything, but I see it in her eyes."
Shen Ling remained still. "It's not coming."
Yin Shu stepped beside him. "What isn't?"
"The sea. The voice. Everything. It's…" he exhaled, a slow release that trembled, "gone. Like it took something from me and left."
"No," Yin Shu said, gently but firmly. "You gave. That's different."
Silence stretched again. The ocean said nothing.
Then, with a sudden shudder, Shen Ling turned away. His movement was slow, deliberate—like a man retreating from prayer unanswered.
"I need to see her."
Yin Shu blinked. "Bo Saixi?"
"No," Shen Ling said, eyes narrowing. "Sea Woman Douluo."
The sanctum of Sea Woman Douluo was deep beneath the temple—an ocean cavern filled with glowing anemones, strange kelp that sang when touched by current, and relics older than even the sea charts could remember.
She was waiting, her robes drifting around her like seafoam, her hands clasped in front of her heart.
"I was wondering how long you'd take," she said.
"You knew I'd come?"
She nodded. "The sea may rest, but it never sleeps. Its silence now is not abandonment. It is invitation."
He frowned. "Invitation?"
"There are doors beneath the water that cannot be opened by force. Not even by song. The Siren soul you carry is more than melody. It is memory."
She turned, gesturing him to follow. "Come."
They moved through a winding tunnel until they reached a sealed stone gate. Across its surface were carvings—not words, but waves, spiraling inward like a whirlpool frozen in time.
"This was placed here by the first generation of Sea God priestesses," Sea Woman said. "It predates even Bo Saixi. We do not know what lies within. Only that it calls once every few generations."
"It's calling now?" Shen Ling asked.
Sea Woman Douluo smiled faintly. "Not to us. To you."
He stepped forward. The stone thrummed faintly beneath his palm.
Then, without effort, it parted.
The chamber beyond was an airless cavern submerged in water—but the water was not wet. Shen Ling passed through it as one might pass through mist, every step pulling him deeper into memory.
He floated downward, though his feet still touched something solid. Around him, lights flickered—no, fragments. Images.
A woman stood at the edge of a cliff, her voice rising into storm. Her eyes were black pools, her hair a cascade of moonlit water. From her throat came a song that shattered ships.
A temple sank.
A child with scales on her skin cried alone in a cave while waves soothed her lullaby.
A chorus of Sirens, bound in chains of coral and silence, wept into the ocean until their tears became whirlpools.
Shen Ling gasped, staggering. The images pulled at him—not memories, not illusions, but truths etched in current.
And then a voice. Not spoken, not sung. A presence.
"Why do you seek the sea's secrets?"
He turned. There was nothing behind him but the glowing mist.
"I don't seek," he said. "I was called."
The presence exhaled. The entire cavern rippled like a dropped stone.
"Then remember."
He was no longer in the cavern.
He stood on a warship, under a blood-red moon. Sirens circled above, their voices sharp as blades. Below, spirit masters screamed. Water rose in tendrils to crush hulls and drown fire.
He turned—and there she was.
The First Siren.
Not beautiful in the way humans understood. Her face was too smooth, too still. Her eyes were wells of sorrow. She held no weapon, but her voice carved silence into fear.
And beside her, a shadow.
The Sea God.
Not the trident-bearing figure from murals. A cloaked man, face hidden in hood, watching the slaughter with a calm sadness.
She sang. He wept.
They stood as enemies, but their hearts beat in harmony.
"Why?" Shen Ling whispered.
The vision shattered.
Back in the cavern, Shen Ling fell to his knees.
Sea Woman Douluo rushed to him, eyes wide.
"What did you see?" she asked.
He looked up, eyes gleaming. "She didn't fight the Sea God. She loved him."
Sea Woman blinked. "What?"
"The First Siren. She sang to end war. He answered with peace. But the world misunderstood. They chained her voice. And buried the story beneath silence."
His hands trembled. "That's why I couldn't hear the ocean anymore. I wasn't listening with sorrow. I was waiting for guidance. But this isn't guidance. It's grief."
Sea Woman Douluo placed a hand on his back.
"Then sing for her."
He nodded.
And for the first time since the Leviathan, Hai Shen Ling began to sing again.
Not to command.
Not to awaken.
To mourn.
The walls responded. The waves answered. And far above, at the surface, Bo Saixi lifted her head as the sea stirred.
The silence had ended.
The air in the cavern shifted. It was subtle—less a breeze than a ripple in temperature, like a current of memory sliding across Shen Ling's skin. Sea Woman Douluo stood beside him, her hand still resting gently on his shoulder, and for a moment, neither moved. His song had awakened something—but what, neither of them knew.
The echo of his voice still lingered faintly in the chamber, like the scent of rain in dry soil, but it had changed. Beneath it was another resonance, fainter, deeper, and ancient—like bones stirring under the weight of earth.
Sea Woman Douluo was the first to speak. "You didn't just sing for her, Shen Ling. You sang with her."
His eyes met hers. "She responded."
The kelp lining the walls began to shimmer, shedding threads of soft light that spiraled upward like smoke. The stone carvings, once cold and inert, now pulsed with faint warmth.
A voice—different from the first—sounded again in Shen Ling's mind. Not a presence, this time, but a whisper, feminine and melodic:
"You remember our name, but not our pain."
He stepped forward instinctively. The cavern rearranged itself—the passage he had entered now faded into mist, and a new path revealed itself ahead. It led downward, deeper than before, into blackness pierced only by light that flickered in time with his heartbeat.
"I must go," he said softly.
Sea Woman Douluo nodded. "This is your memory to walk."
As Shen Ling descended the spiraling staircase of living coral, he passed through veils of water that did not wet his skin. Each veil shimmered with faint images: sirens bound in chains, children born with gills hidden behind their ears, songs rising from temples now buried beneath the sea.
He paused at one veil longer than the others. It showed a siren with no face, standing upon a jagged outcropping. Before her knelt a man in Sea God priest robes—older than any record in Sea God Island's halls. She reached out a hand toward him, but before their fingers touched, she dissolved into foam.
A chill passed through Shen Ling's spine.
This was not myth.
This was history.
At the bottom of the descent, he entered a vast dome-shaped cavern unlike the others. This one had no carvings, no flora—just silence. In its center stood a mirror, waist-high and perfectly still, its frame made of smooth, dark pearl.
He approached it cautiously.
As he gazed into it, he did not see his own reflection.
Instead, the surface rippled and formed into a woman—not the First Siren, but one far younger, her features softer, her voice trembling as she whispered something he couldn't hear.
Suddenly, the chamber darkened. A shadow passed across the mirror's surface.
A chain coiled around the woman's neck.
Another wrapped around her wrists.
Her mouth opened to scream, but no sound came.
Then, the mirror cracked.
And in that moment, pain surged through Shen Ling's body.
He clutched his chest. It wasn't his heart—it was his spirit. The Siren martial soul inside him pulsed violently, as though tearing against something it could not break.
A scream—not his—echoed through the cavern.
Not a voice of the past.
Not a voice of memory.
A voice alive.
A call now.
Shen Ling opened his eyes. The mirror had gone dark. The chamber was cold again.
But the pain in his chest had changed. It was no longer sharp.
It was longing.
He turned.
The path back had reappeared. But it no longer felt like a retreat.
It felt like a summons.
As he ascended, voices stirred again. Whispered names. Forgotten prayers. Songs with no singers. Each echo urged him onward—not downward.
When he emerged from the veil and returned to Sea Woman Douluo, his eyes were shining—not with light, but with remembrance.
She placed her hand gently on his cheek. "You know what it means now, don't you?"
He nodded.
"The Siren martial soul isn't a weapon. It's a lament. A story silenced too soon."
"And I'm the one who must tell it."
Sea Woman Douluo stepped back. "Then prepare yourself. Because when the sea truly speaks, it doesn't whisper."
A tremor rolled through the cavern floor.
The ocean was beginning to stir again.
And this time, it would roar.
The tremor that rolled through the sea cavern was not from tectonic strain, nor a beast stirring in the abyss. It was something far older, more sacred—a ripple in the fabric of memory, born from truth demanding to be heard.
Hai Shen Ling stood still, hands trembling at his sides as the sensation washed over him. Sea Woman Douluo watched him with a careful gaze. The time for guidance was past; now, he had to listen.
Again, the voice—not from above, not from within, but from everywhere.
"Your voice carries our sorrow. But will it carry our name?"
A silence fell so complete that even Shen Ling's heartbeat seemed to hush.
"Then tell me," he said aloud to the chamber, "what is your name?"
There was no response.
Instead, a passage opened at the far end of the room. This one glowed not with soft sea-light, but with the deep indigo of the abyss. No coral lined the walls. No fish darted through. This was a corridor of silence, carved in reverence.
Shen Ling stepped forward without hesitation.
The deeper he went, the more the water grew heavy—not wet, not crushing, but emotionally dense. Like swimming through sorrow thickened by centuries.
Memories clung to him like seaweed.
He passed an altar submerged beneath layers of crystalized salt. Around it were the remains of coral instruments—harps made of bone, lyres woven from shell-thread. None were intact.
Another chamber showed a mural of Sirens gathered around a glowing pool, their mouths open in song. But the mural had been slashed across with claw marks, as if someone—or something—had tried to silence even the painting.
Then finally, at the end of the corridor, he found the source.
A great circular chamber, perfectly spherical and utterly still.
In its center: a conch shell the size of a throne.
As Shen Ling stepped inside, the shell vibrated—not audibly, but through the soul. It recognized him.
He approached, breath shallow. And as he placed his hands on the smooth surface of the shell, the truth flooded in like a tidal wave.
The Siren soul was not born of a single entity. It was the echo of a people—a lost race whose entire culture revolved around memory and melody. They were peacekeepers, singers of history, memory-bearers who used song to preserve knowledge.
But when the Sea God rose, his teachings clashed with the Sirens' truths.
They had sung of chaos and evolution—he demanded order and structure. Their songs included sorrow and pain—he sought to drown pain with power.
The Sea God had not destroyed the Sirens. He had tried to protect them—by erasing their past and silencing their grief.
And so the Siren soul, once shared among an entire race, became fractured, inherited only by those born of sorrow.
Shen Ling was not a bearer by blood.
He was a bearer by resonance.
The orphaned. The abandoned. The child cast to sea with no name.
He was the perfect vessel for a song that had lost its singers.
His hands pulled back from the shell.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, unbidden. But they were not his.
They belonged to them.
"Then let me be your voice," he whispered. "Let me remember for you."
The chamber pulsed with light.
A deep, sonorous chord filled the space—a tone that vibrated not in air but in soul.
And with it came the name:
Aeloria.
The first Siren. The last Queen of Song. Her name was not forgotten—it had been waiting.
In that moment, Shen Ling's Siren martial soul changed.
It unfolded—not as a serpent or specter, but as a figure robed in song-light, shimmering and translucent. A woman with eyes like the abyss and a voice that could shape tides.
Aeloria's spirit did not possess him.
She stood beside him.
And together, they sang.
Their voices rose—not in power, but in truth. And across the entirety of Sea God Island, the ocean stirred. Creatures deep beneath the trench lifted their heads. Coral glowed in unison. And every titled Douluo standing watch outside the sanctum felt the weight of an ancient lament.
Bo Saixi, standing upon the central platform, whispered as she stared eastward:
"The sea has spoken."
When Shen Ling finally emerged, his steps were lighter.
Sea Woman Douluo bowed her head. "You remembered her."
"I did more than that," he said. "I became her echo."
His Siren soul now shimmered beside him like a halo—not haunting, but whole.
And in his heart, the Voice of the Abyss harmonized with a new soul skill—one born not from beast, but from truth.
Soul Skill: Song of Aeloria – The Reclamation Hymn.
A technique that weaved past and present, letting Shen Ling temporarily channel the songs of fallen Sirens. It was not a skill of destruction—it was a song of restoration. Confusing enemies by overwhelming them with memories not their own. Weakening those who denied their past. Empowering allies who had suffered.
The sea had remembered.
Now, the world would too.