Satyr’s Children | Book 1: Siren
Ali felt as though her throat had been scorched by burning coals. Every swallow brought a sharp, searing pain. Her brother was covered in blood, limp in her arms, his breathing as faint as a guttering candle in the wind.
She had no idea how she had been brought to the Guild infirmary. In the fragments of her memory, there seemed to have been a pair of powerful hands gripping her shoulders, slowly dragging her backward, forcibly separating her from Triton.
When she saw her brother again, they had been placed in the same medical ward.
Ali was placed close to the door. The external wounds on her body had mostly healed, while the rune-inscribed gauze wrapped around her throat like a gentle shackle, repairing her damaged vocal cords. She unconsciously swallowed the honeyed water mixed with herbs. The warm, soothing liquid slipped down her injured throat, offering a tiny measure of relief.
Triton, meanwhile, lay on the bed farther inside the room. Thick bandages had wrapped his head into a strange, unfamiliar shape, and his face was deathly pale from blood loss. Now he was sunk deep in an uneasy sleep, sustained by the effects of drugs and magic.
Ali had been told that overusing the Edict Song had severely overtaxed her body. To ensure that her vocal cords can recover completely, she would have to remain silent for several days.
But a physical prohibition didn’t seem to restrain a mind still reeling from terror.
At night, she would scream herself awake from nightmares. During the day, even the faintest sound from outside the medical ward would make her jerk upright, her heart pounding violently in her chest.
Triton had been unconscious for an entire day.
During that time, the Guild physicians came and went, activating arrays of various colors across his body and hurriedly recording their findings in their notes.
Argentum had come as well. He spent a long time speaking with Solin at Triton’s bedside.
Ali could not make out what they were saying. All she could do was hold her breath and watch her mother and the mysterious silver-haired man intently with her bloodshot, mint-green eyes.
Solin had long, curly black hair as full and dark as a clot of storm clouds, with a pair of white horns coiled at the side of her head like little buns—the unmistakable marks of a Satyr. Her velvet-soft goat ears drooped gently on her cheeks, covered in a fine layer of down.
Her eyes were a deeper teal compared to Ali’s mint green, like a quiet, still lake. With their rectangular pupils, they often gave her expression a naturally dazed quality; especially when she smiled gently, her inhuman features blend with her softness, creating a unique, eerie sense of beauty.
Then there was the fluffy tail she always kept carefully hidden beneath her long skirts. When Ali and Triton were little, their favorite game was to see who could surreptitiously pluck a strand of fur from their mother’s tail without being caught. Perhaps that was why their mother always wore long skirts that concealed it? Ali wasn’t sure.
Over the past year, whenever she and Triton were not accompanying their father on field missions, their mother would bring them along to her office at the Guild.
Solin always assigned them strange little tasks: translating a paragraph of an ancient spell, searching in the library for some extinct monster based on a written description, or attempting to diagnose some bizarre illness… They were certainly less grueling than fieldwork, but spending an entire day with their eyes buried in mountains of books and scrolls could be exhausting as well.
Even when they completely botched their “homework,” their mother never scolded them. Instead, she would stubbornly “force” them to finish the task in the end, then spoke with a small, satisfied smile, “See? Things like this aren’t so hard once you get the hang of them. Look—you managed it!”
Mr. and Mrs. Featherflight had always treated their two children fairly. Yet Ali sometimes felt that their mother harbored a small, secret preference for Triton, who resembled her more closely and possessed more distinctly Satyr-like features.
Now, Solin was lost in thought beside her son’s bed.
One of Triton’s horizontal-pupiled eyes, so much like her own, was tightly shut; the other was completely covered beneath layer upon layer of thick bandages.
From the physicians’ hushed conversations, Ali had pieced together a horrifying picture.
Beneath the bandages was a circular wound with jagged, horrifying edges. Another grotesque gash slashed diagonally down from above his brow, tearing brutally through his right eye before ending at his cheekbone—the mark left by his own shattered horn.
If Argentum had not brought some rare and exorbitantly expensive arcane medicine into the treatment, Triton would almost certainly have lost most of the sight in his right eye, leaving him to spend the rest of his life under the shadow of that mutilation.
And even with successful treatment, Triton might suffer sudden attacks of headaches and vertigo for a long time to come, along with lasting sensitivity to light and sound, emotional instability, and other aftereffects.
Triton’s horns were longer and more elegantly curved than Solin’s rounded horns: proud, beautiful white horns like scimitars, characteristic of a handsome young Satyr. Now one of them still stood lonely atop his head. The other lay lifelessly beside his bed.
Satyr horns were hollow, with the portion connected to the skull containing a bony core rich in blood vessels and nerves. The horn itself was a sheath of keratin—the same protein found in fingernails and hair—that covered the bony core. It was this living, blood-supplied core that continually stimulated the outer sheath to grow.
The core of Triton’s right horn had been severely damaged by the impact, but it had not completely died. With the aid of healing magic and his own vitality, it would eventually recover. But the medicine used to stimulate granulation tissue, encourage the reconnection and repair of blood vessels and nerve endings, would cause Triton excruciating pain. Before the treatment began, he might need powerful sedative or numbing potions.
As though sensing Ali’s gaze, Solin looked up toward her daughter.
“Not sleeping well here, little mermaid? You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.” A tired smile tugged at her mother’s lips. “Your father said you woke up several times last night and barely got any proper sleep. Would you be more comfortable resting at home, then?”
Ali glanced at the unconscious Triton and shook her head firmly.
“Of course. I’m worried about your brother too. I can’t put my mind at ease until I see him wake up with my own eyes.” Solin nodded in understanding, her voice gentle. “If you’re tired, sleep a little longer. I’ll stay here and keep watch.”
“Mm.” Ali answered softly, then sighed and curled herself into a ball beneath the blankets.
Later, drifting between sleep and wakefulness, she vaguely heard her parents speaking with the Apprentice Trailblazer named Claret Morningdew.
Perhaps I should have recognized them much sooner.
Amid the chaos of her thoughts, Ali dredged up the fragments of memory she had previously overlooked, slowly piecing them together into a series of increasingly clear images.
Argentum had always been a long-term retainer of House Morningdew, so it only made sense that he would also serve as tutor to the Morningdew children.
And unless there was something fishy about their identities, why would ordinary Apprentices have the need to conceal their appearances beneath heavy hooded cloaks?
In an operation within the Forbidden Zone, where every ounce of weight had to be carefully accounted for, what ordinary party could casually carry expensive, heavy banquet food like manchet as everyday provisions?
And when Triton recounted what had been written in the message book about “Bert,” those two Apprentices had listened with unusual concentration.
Right. There had also been that footprint, that unnaturally neat rectangular impression.
From what she could recall, the tall male Apprentice had lifted his foot and showed her the shoes he had called “Yeelan court boots”: black uppers over white soles, leaving footprints in the mud like stamps pressed onto paper.
Wasn’t that strange? Why would a Yeelan boy travel with House Morningdew’s party, walking alongside the Lord’s daughter? What kind of noble status would grant someone that privilege to…
Wait.
Ali’s eyes snapped open. Her mint-green pupils contracted sharply.
That boy… He could only be Zhao Yixian—the fiancé of Julchen Morningdew, the younger brother of Zhao Yunyao, a noble from the Yeelan Empire.
“…Ali?” Triton tightened his arms around her slightly. “What’s wrong?”
Ali lifted her face. Her brother’s bandage-wrapped face, with only one eye exposed, came into view. On the fabric across his chest, there was a small dark patch dampened by her tears.
Was this the time to tell him what she had discovered?
“Mm. Looks like you can’t talk for the time being…” Triton thought for a moment, his gaze settling on the bandages around his sister’s throat.
“How about this? I’ll ask questions, and you can answer with a nod or a shake of your head… If you don’t know, or you’re not sure… just squeeze my hand.”
Ali nodded.
“So…” Triton cleared his throat. “My right eye… was originally beyond saving. But Sir Argentum… somehow managed to save it, didn’t he?”
Ali gave him a positive response.
“The treatment… must have been terribly expensive.” Triton’s voice grew quieter, unmistakably troubled. After a moment of hesitation, Ali gently squeezed her brother’s hand.
“I suppose… I’m lucky that I even managed to survive…” The one-horned Satyr boy spoke softly, his gaze involuntarily drifting toward the white broken horn resting on the bedside table. “I wish I knew what that ‘birdman’ and the mist woman… were trying to do to me.”
Ali remembered the “birdman”, especially that pair of horrifying wings.
The moment the mutated Fallen Hound’s overwhelming force sent Triton crashing to the ground, blood gushing from the shattered base of his horn, Argentum reacted at once and tried to rush to him. But just before he could take another step, a powerful gust carrying a heavy stench of decay and malice swept through the area without warning. Withered grass flattened beneath it, and loose stones rolled across the ground.
Argentum came to an abrupt halt, as though he had collided with an invisible wall. He quickly retreated half a step, placing his two Apprentices behind him for protection.
Ali followed Argentum’s silk-covered “gaze” toward the source of the wind.
Then that presence descended through the distorted air.
It—or rather, he—looked slim, his silhouette vaguely revealing the lean frame of a boy. Yet the enormous wings behind him billowed like black sails filled by the wind, shielding their owner as he slowly descended.
The alarm bells were already ringing in Ali’s mind. Every instinct screamed at her to run, urging her body to put as much distance as possible between herself and the danger.
But she drove her boots deep into the earth beneath her feet.
No. She couldn’t leave. Triton was still there.
Yet she could not force herself to take even a single step closer.
And so she could only watch helplessly as the boy’s black wings spilled outward like ink, completely obscuring Triton’s body.
No… Those were not wings any ordinary living creature should possess.
Thick, pitch-black corruption writhed like a living thing across the pale skeletal framework of the wings on the boy’s back, gathering and shaping itself into the form of feathers. Yet it could not hold that shape for long. Unharnessed streams of ominous, viscous black fluid kept dripping from the wings, their shape constantly collapsing and reforming.
“…Ali, do you remember the ‘undying antlered man’ in the cloak we saw before reinforcements arrived? I… wasn’t just hallucinating, was I…?” Triton asked with hesitation. “You know… before he left, he spoke to me.”
The first thing to reach Ali’s senses was the overwhelming smell of blood. That scent—interwoven with old snow, ancient forest, dust, musk, and metal—had already been burned permanently into her memory.
Then… what?
A crimson halo whirling through the beast pack with a shrill whistle. Blood splashing across a face like a waterfall, then flowing backward into those hideous wounds. A head crushed to pieces between enormous jaws. A new head blooming from the severed neck like a rose…
Amid all these images, which had been a moon reflected in water, and which were fragments of reality that had truly happened?
But if Triton had seen him too… Then all of that probably had been real.
Ali nodded at her brother.
“He asked me… if I knew Solin Moirav.”
—Mom’s name?
Ali’s eyes widened.
The strange, undying, nightmare-like entity’s final words before vanishing was a question about their mother?
A chill crept up her spine.
The horror she felt now was far more concrete than her earlier fear of the “birdman” or her brother’s injuries. It was more… personal.
She tried desperately to recall the face hidden beneath the antlered man’s hood. When his new head had grown back, she thought she had briefly glimpsed through the glare of the blood, a head of dull, yellowish hair and a face that was recognizably human.
Ali tried to connect that unfamiliar image with the gentle mother who had just left the room. But between the two seemed to stretch an abyss that could not possibly be crossed.
How could this be? Why? Who was the antlered man? What was his relationship with their mother? Was he an enemy—or someone she had known long ago? Had he appeared there by chance, or had he come deliberately? And when he asked about her, had it been out of goodwill? Or had he been an attempt to threaten her with something Ali and Triton couldn’t possibly understand?
The Siren girl clutched her brother’s arm tightly. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out, only several hurried breaths were forced through her throat. The runes on the bandages around her neck began to glow more intensely, further suppressing every attempt she made to speak.
So Ali pointed insistently toward the door, then at herself, then at Triton, and shook her head hard, trying to convey through her chaotic gestures:
DON’T tell Mom and Dad! Not yet!
She had no idea who, or what, the “antlered man” really was. But instinct told her that whatever secret lay behind that name might be even more dangerous than everything they had just survived. Until they figured out the truth, dropping this bombshell on their parents—especially on their mother, who was directly connected to that name—after they had only just endured the horror of their son’s near-fatal injury was unthinkable.
Triton stared blankly at his sister, looking like a wild animal that had just taken a Daylight spell right between the eyes.
Well, of course. How could she expect her brother, fresh from a life-threatening injury, to process this much information all at once?
But he knew she was afraid.
“Ali… you’re shaking.”
Triton called softly, his voice slightly breathless. He took hold of her hand that had been clutching tightly around his arm. Rather than trying to pry her fingers loose, he simply rubbed the back of her hand awkwardly with his larger palm.
“Ali… don’t be scared…” The boy murmured, his horizontal pupils making his gaze always seem slightly unfocused. As he anxiously struggled to find the right words, his hands moved on instinct, guided by nothing more complicated than the instinct of an older brother. “I’m here. It’s okay… Everything will be okay…”
He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but the movement of his facial muscles tugged at the wounds around his temple and eye. He winced involuntarily, baring his teeth in a grimace that was both comical and heartbreaking.
“See… I’m okay…” Triton spoke in halting fragments, as though worried that even this much reassurance might not be enough. He propped himself up on one arm, stretched his neck as far as he could, then turned his head slightly and pressed his unharmed left cheek against his sister’s forehead. “Both of us… had survived.”
No. That’s not what I meant!
Ali cried out inwardly in frustration. It was not that kind of reassurance that she needed at the moment!
And yet her body clung to that awkward warmth, refusing to push her brother away.
If only she could speak… She still had so many tangled clues, so many worries she desperately needed to share with the person she trusted most. She didn’t want to just sit there and passively accept his appeasement.
“Ali…” Triton’s voice pulled his sister back from her messy thoughts. His cheek still pressed gently against her forehead.
“I heard Miss Claret say that a medicine called ‘Primordial Growth Factor’ can make my horn grow back the way it was… Otherwise, under conventional treatment, the new horn would not only grow slowly… it would most likely be severely deformed too—discolored, twisted, segmented, and fragile. It might even break again… Is that so?”
Ali nodded.
“And the other option is… using a metal brace and magic to put the broken horn back in place, so it can grow together with the fracture… like reattaching a finger that’s been cut off. But the fracture line would always remain… and there’d still be a chance of it coming loose again, right?”
“… Mm.” Ali answered softly.
“So unless this ‘Primordial Growth Factor’ gets involved… there’s really no way for my horn to return to how it was. Is that it…?” Triton touched his nose to hers, his voice as gentle as a soft sigh. “Then, Ali… tell me, what exactly is the ‘cost’ they were talking about?”
Ali hesitated for a moment before slowly raising her hand. She pointed toward the snow-white broken horn on the bedside table.
Look, Trit. The cost is right there.
Claret Morningdew wants your horn, as though she’s claiming a trophy to repay the debt owed to House Morningdew. Perhaps because her family once sheltered our mother, and because Sir Argentum saved your eye this time, they now think it only natural that they should take the very thing that represents your honor and sacrifice as repayment in return. I’m not sure whether it is that they want to test that mysterious medicine on you, or whether they have some other ulterior motive toward our family.
Trit, I know we’re supposed to be grateful. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re being held hostage by all these layers of “gratitude.” You saved Miss Claret without even knowing who she is. Your courage and kindness were completely genuine, without the slightest attempt on any sort of calculation. And the person you risked your life to save was the lord’s daughter. From my perspective… healing your eye and your horn should have been the least House Morningdew could do. It was their responsibility, their duty.
Think about it. They’ve already lost Bert. If it hadn’t been for you, they would have lost a daughter too!
“Then, Ali… do you think I should give them my horn?”
The Siren girl instinctively shook her head, then stopped, as though reconsidering it.
She took Triton’s hand and, with one finger, slowly wrote a word on his palm.
No.
Trit, I don’t want that girl to take away a part of you that was never hers to exchange for anything—not your body, and not the honor you paid for with blood.
But…
Ali gave him a bitter little smile and added a few more words.
But it’s up to you.
After all, you are the one who must live with the pain of losing your horn and face whatever happens afterward. The horn grows from your head. You are the one who will have to bear the rumors, the strange looks, and even the risk of it breaking again someday.
And I, even as your twin sister, have no right to make a decision like that for you.
When she finished writing, she pressed Triton’s hand firmly against his chest.
Just follow your heart, Trit.
Whatever you choose, I’ll always be here by your side.
