The days that followed were worse.
The men worked with hollow eyes, glancing at the sea as though it might rise in her shape again. None slept easy.
And Peter? Restless. Possessed.
Every night he prowled the deck, waiting. And when she came, the air itself thickened with salt and heat.
They saw her clearer each time—hair dark as kelp, scales gleaming wet, belly glowing with impossible life. Too soon. Far too soon. Yet when Peter took her, the glow pulsed brighter, as if his seed lit fire in her veins.
By the fifth night, her laughter had ripened into sermons.
"Every drop he spills in me feeds only my womb," she moaned, her voice low and honeyed, curling into each ear as though whispered only for him. The glow of her skin painted the deck in liquid gold, her hair slick with salt and light. She moved among them like a tide—surrounding all, yet when her lips parted, when her hands wandered, each man believed he alone was chosen.
She knelt before the youngest sailor first, cupping his jaw as if cradling something precious. Her thighs parted, drawing his hand between them, pressing his trembling fingers to the soft pearl of her oyster. "Taste me," she breathed, guiding his touch deeper into the velvet folds. His gasp shattered into a moan as her hips rocked, milking his hand until he sagged, spent before he had even entered her. She kissed him then, slow and ruinous, a promise that the taste of her would never leave his tongue.
Before he collapsed fully, she slid from his grasp and turned to another. This one she pulled against her breast, arching so his lips brushed her nipple, wet with the salt of the sea. "Drink," she whispered, rocking her hips against his thigh. His teeth scraped her, his tongue circled hungrily, and when she rolled her body over him, pressing his hardness against the curve of her hip, he sobbed like a child at her mercy.
Another she did not kiss at all. She only wrapped her legs around his waist, guiding him inside her with a languid thrust. She rode him with devastating slowness, every squeeze of her inner walls coaxing his seed, every arch of her back drawing him deeper into worship. He clawed at her waist as if begging for release, but she silenced him with a single finger to his lips. When his body jerked and he spilled, she laughed—bright and merciless—as his seed vanished into her glow the instant it left him.
She gave each man a different piece of herself—an oyster to taste, a breast to suckle, a kiss to devour, her curves to clutch as they spilled helplessly inside her. To each she whispered secrets, gasps, promises that bound them tighter than chains. Threads of light coiled from her body with every moan, weaving around the crew like a net, holding them in her radiance.
Their voices rose in a broken chorus. Some wept, some laughed deliriously, some prayed with trembling tongues. She moved through them like a chalice being filled again and again, taking all they gave and keeping none. Their sweat slicked the deck, their bodies sagged against rail and mast, and still she smiled, intimate, merciless, as though she would never tire of their worship.
And when the last man fell shuddering at her feet, his lips still pressed to her toes in reverence, she lifted her head to the heavens. Her eyes burned like a storm. "More," she cried, her voice echoing across the waves. "More seed, more worship, until the sea itself bends to my womb!"
The crew, trembling and broken, could only bow and reach for her again—slaves to her glow, undone by the pleasure of her inner curves, blind to the shadow stirring in the waters below.
And her belly swelled larger.
On the sixth night, the storm came. A black tornado rose from the sea, the ship groaning in its grip. Nerissa arched, puppet-strings of light connecting her to every man aboard.
They trembled, pale and hollow, as her body writhed with labor.
Then—her womb split with smoke. Thick, black, roiling. From it clawed a shape: a Scylla, slick and newborn, shrieking as it hit the waves. And in an instant it grew—hundredfold—tentacles slamming water higher than the mast.
It seized Peter. He roared, but its grip choked him breathless. The crew could not move; they were too drained, too pale. Peter roared, shadows lashing, but Scylla's grip crushed the breath from his lungs. The tentacles coiled tighter, dragging him down like an anchor bound for the abyss.
Nerissa stood amid the ruin, her beauty sharpened by cruelty, radiant now with the feast of their strength. She laughed, the sound like broken chimes under the sea.
Peter fought back. Shadows poured from him in waves, writhing serpents of black flame biting at Scylla's flesh. They snapped, they clawed, but the monster only shrieked and squeezed harder. His power was swallowed, smothered, meaningless against the ancient beast.
Nerissa glided closer, her gaze fixed on Peter as though she alone could see what truly throbbed within him. Her voice was a whisper woven with venom:
"You hide a treasure even greater than the seas…"
Her fingers, sharp as coral, plunged against his chest. Peter howled as light burst through him—silver-gold at first, pure and blinding, but immediately shrouded, devoured by veins of crawling darkness.
In Nerissa's hand pulsed a crystal, shaped like a heart, its glow trembling as if it beat with its own life. Each throb pushed against the black encasing it, like a star smothered in coal.
Peter hung limp in Scylla's grip, lifeless, his body dangling like a broken puppet.
Nerissa cradled Peter's heart in her hand. It was no flesh-and-blood thing but a crystal, radiant as a lantern caught in her grasp. Yet its light did not shine freely—black gunk oozed across its surface, slick and alive, smothering the glow until it vanished. Then, with the next pulse, the darkness peeled back, the light bursting through once more. Cover. Uncover. Cover. Uncover. A heartbeat made visible.
Her eyes widened, bewitched by the anomaly.
"A demon lord," she whispered, voice trembling with awe. "And yet… something more."
The Scylla's tentacle swayed lazily, dangling Peter's lifeless body above the sea, but all eyes were fixed on the impossible rhythm in her hand—light and shadow warring for dominion, neither yielding. And in that rhythm, the world seemed to hold its breath.