Horizon || ATEEZ

leave me to the mercy of the sea, I guess

This is it.

This is your end.

How pathetic – being ambushed by sirens and having your own ship sunk. Now left to the mercy of the sea as it seems to beckon to you, encouraging you to plunge yourself in and just end it there – let the cold fathomless, empty depths of that murky darkness embrace you and take you below, never to be seen again.

It certainly isn't how you imagined you would go.

Your throat is parched, lips cracked and leeched of the exuberance of moisture. It's taking you all your effort not to scoop up some of that cool seawater surrounding you and slurp it all up – because you know the dangers of temptation. And once you start you'll never stop. You'd drown in the cravings for more, more, because, in the end, seawater has no vitality. Living with it, the miles upon miles of endless blue desert being your only sight for five years has at least taught you that.

How had things come to this?

One moment, you're happily celebrating the fruits of your latest hunt, with glasses of wine, hearty cheers and raucous praise, and in the next, you're fighting for your life, swinging your sword wildly as sirens come at you like never before.

Speaking of which, something had been wrong when the attack had taken place. Severely wrong.

These sirens, though they had those distinctive jagged teeth, wild yellow eyes, and telltale mottled and flaky blue skin, they'd also had legs.

That wasn't right.

Sirens were water dwellers, beasts from the deep, and they were meant to stay in the deep.

Yet these sirens had emerged, breathing air like it was their natural source, running on legs like they'd owned them all their life. Of course, your crew had been severely underprepared.

It was a massacre – dozens of your loyal men and women and those in between dead in seconds. It was as bad as if you'd chucked yourself and your crew into the water and left your fates for the gods to decide.

They broke the ship's hull with some kind of unholy, unnatural strength they'd never held before, and The King's Wrath, your one and only home for five years, had sunk faster than a rock.

It was an unexplainable, sudden occurrence, and you don't like it – at all. You, despite all of your experience and ferocious combative ability, had been outmatched during that battle.

Yet somehow, here you are, the sole survivor of the crew aboard The King's Wrath.

It doesn't matter, anyway.

You're practically dead – no water, no food, no supplies, nothing. Just the little items you'd kept on your person before the attack. Even then, most of it had been washed away by the waves, leaving pathetically little left; your sword, your compass, and your silver necklace, looped around your neck like a vice as the little opal embedded in it floated beside you.

It's been like this for days, and the hunger is slowly gnawing away at your insides, swamping them with a dull, thumping pain as you try in vain to ignore it.

You're going to die, pathetically and alone, but for some reason you don't feel so against it. It is peaceful here – perhaps the afterlife will be too.

Then, a giant shadow looms over you, and a little hope dares worm its way inside your heart.