Hook approached Peter's cabin. The door groaned when he pushed it open, and the air that escaped was cold, damp, and metallic—like the breath of some drowned cave. Shadows slicked the walls, dripping as if the timbers themselves were rotting.
And there, at the center, floated Nerissa.
Her head and body hung apart, suspended in the dark, her lips locked in a delirious smile. Her eyes glowed faintly, fever-bright, as if she were lost in some eternal rapture. From her parted lips came soft moans and laughter, sweet and broken all at once.
Below her, a chest pulsed. From her pale throat, drop by drop, the blood she had stolen over countless eons seeped into it, thickening into rubies—dark, wet, and alive with a violent crimson glow. The blood that she devoured for centuries of mortal lives.
Hook gripped his sword tighter. He had watched enough sorcery in his time, but this—the monstrous tide of illusions—was beyond him
"Peter," he said at last, voice low, though the cave-like chamber seemed to devour it whole.
"She has been in this state since you took her up the crow's nest. Since that night, neither I nor the crew dared set foot past this door. You ordered us so. You told me only to enter when we neared the borders of Morina Bay…"
He paused, eyes lingering on the floating siren, on the grotesque beauty of her trance. "So, tell me, boy. How does it feel?"
A chair scraped in the dark. Peter leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes aglow with a feral light. "It feels," he murmured, "like having a songbird caught in my fist. She sings, yes—but not for herself. For me."
He rose, and the air thickened, shadows curling tighter around the floating siren. Peter's gaze sharpened, cutting into Nerissa as if peeling back layers of her soul.
"Everything she's lived these nights—the men worshipping her, the flood of seed, the endless feast of desire—none of it ever touched the deck. Not a drop of it was real." His smile widened, cruel and knowing. "I built it for her. An illusion. Her own fantasies made flesh and looped back upon her until she could no longer tell the taste of truth."
Hook's jaw tightened. "Then she is trapped in her own hunger."
Peter's grin curved like a blade in the dark, devilish and knowing. He let out a slow, almost satisfied sigh.
"Oh, I've been enjoying this, Captain. Tell me—how often does one weave a web to trap a spider? Very uncommon, wouldn't you say? But I did it." Peter's smile deepened, feral. "I slit her open with shadow and poured her into the longings of every man aboard. His voice dropped, velvety and venomous. "With my Shadow Reverse, I turned her tricks inward. Every illusion she planted for your men, every filthy desire they poured into her, spun a thread around her own throat. And she—" he leaned closer, lips twitching in dark amusement—"she tangled herself so deeply in their lusts that she forgot the most important thing."
His eyes gleamed, flicking up to Hook.
"You. The Captain of the Jolly Roger. Absent from her little playground of dreams. And she did not even notice." Every face she touched belonged to men aching for her… except yours. That absence gnawed at her, and still she couldn't see it.
Peter laughed low, cruel, almost thrilled at the irony.
"That, Hook… is the beauty of my woven illusions."
Hook's eyes narrowed, finally steadying on the boy. "Then why the blood? Why drain her, boy? Why collect it like a miser's coin?"
Peter extended his hand. The wound on Nerissa's beheaded neck, glistened, and from it, drops of dark crimson fell—not liquid, but crystallizing midair, hardening into glimmering rubies that chimed like glass as they tumbled into the waiting chest at his feet.
Each drop burned brighter than the last, turning the ship's cabin-turned-cavern into a shrine of scattered jewels.
Hook's voice was rough, half awe, half dread. "Blood turned to stone. To treasure. What in hell's name are you forging?"
Peter's eyes glowed in the half-light, his grin neither boyish nor kind.
"A key," he whispered. "One that only her suffering can buy."
"You entered this cabin—that means we are near Morina's Bay. Once this Rubaya chest is filled, I'll summon her kin and bid them carry her back to recover. And once we reach Morina's borders…"
His voice dropped to a silken threat, "…no siren, not even she, will ever breach us again."
He brushed a ruby between his fingers, its dark gleam catching the lantern light.
Hook's fist slammed against the table, rattling the lantern and making the chest quiver with its dark cargo. His voice cracked like a whip across the cabin.
"Enough of your riddles, boy! I am the captain of this ship, and I'll not have shadows and secrets steering her course. What is this Rubaya's Chest? Why must it be fed with this siren's blood—turned into cursed rubies? And what in the devil's name awaits us at Morina's Bay? I demand to know what happens upon my ship—or what fate you'd drag us into!"
Peter didn't flinch. He tilted his head, that devil's grin stretching slow and sharp. When he spoke, his voice was calm, almost cold, like ice whispering across steel.
"This is Rubaya's Chest," he said. "Forged in Arcticova—a land of eternal frost where wizards bled themselves into wood and spell to make it. It swallows any liquid that dares fall within, turning it into crystal—pure, preserved, eternal. A single shard could keep a wizard sated and swollen with power for weeks."
His gaze drifted to the glowing rubies within the chest, then back to Hook, eyes glinting with mischief and menace.
"These blood rubies are not for me. They are a tribute—an armada of sustenance—for Makhiha, the Vampire Queen of Morina's Bay. Each gem will keep her kin full for a week, perhaps two. Enough to silence their hunger… enough to let us pass through their waters alive."
His devil's grin flickered again, but when Hook turned away, Peter whispered to himself, voice low enough for none to hear:
"And perhaps… I may extract the answers I seek from that queen—about the Jhakumi Shell. A shell said to summon the mightiest Scylla… and bind it as a slave for eternity."
He believed the words lost to the dark, but the bond he had unknowingly tied with Nerissa twisted otherwise. His illusion tethered to her subconscious like a thread of shadow, and through it, her mind quivered awake.
Nerissa heard it.