Satyr’s Children | Book 1: Siren
Triton’s consciousness slowly rose from the depths of a heavy sleep.
He opened his eyes and, to his surprise, found that the bandages over his right eye had been removed. Sunlight blazed outside the window, draping the gauze curtains and windowsill of the Guild infirmary in dazzling white light.
The treatment is… over?
He hesitantly raised a hand and touched the newly grown horn on his forehead. The curve was familiar, yet there was a subtle sensitivity.
He slowly turned his stiff neck, intending to tell his family that he was awake, but the sight of his sister beside him startled him.
Ali was sitting in a chair at his bedside, leaning forward with both hands clenched tightly around her knees.
She looked terrible. Hair on her gray-black bob stuck up in every direction, dark circles beneath her eyes, and her mint-green irises webbed with red veins. Triton could not tell whether she had spent the entire night without closing her eyes, or whether she had only just finished crying.
“… Ali, what’s wrong?” Triton asked with a dry voice.
Before he could say anything more, Ali sprang from her chair and grabbed his wrist, hard enough to make him gasp.
“Dad! Mom! Trit’s awake!” She shouted toward the door, speaking so quickly it was almost frightening, then she immediately tugged hard on him. “Come on, can you stand? We need to go home. Now. Right now!”
“Home?” Triton’s mind was still foggy. The aftereffects of the regeneration ritual had not completely faded, and forcing himself to think sent a dull ache through his skull.
“I… I just woke up. What happened? Is it about the ‘Bert’ mission—”
“It’s not about the mission!” Ali cut him off, fumbling as she searched for his shoes. “It’s something more important! We have to talk at home. Not here…!”
… What happened?
An indescribable sense of unease seized Triton. He knew his sister well. Ali was impulsive, but she would never lose her composure like this without a reason. Enduring the soreness and weakness that still weighed on his body, he let his sister dragged him out of bed.
Back home, Ali seemed to shed all her defenses at once. After making sure the front door was securely closed, she collapsed onto the rug in front of the fireplace like all the strength had suddenly left her body and began to sob uncontrollably.
“What’s wrong, little mermaid?” Solin gently wiped away her daughter’s tears. “What happened? What did you encounter at the bathhouse yesterday?”
“Triton, are you able to hold up here? Shall we move the conversation into the bedroom?” David pulled over a chair and sat down beside his son.
“No need, Dad. I can stay here…” Triton managed to prop himself up beside his sister. Almost all the strength he had regained from sleeping through the day had been spent on the journey home. He even felt as though the horns on his head were heavier than usual.
Ali’s lips moved soundlessly a few times. Her gaze wandered over her parents’ faces and finally settled on Triton.
“I… I met Maria.”
“Maria?” Triton froze for a moment. A hazy image of a blue-haired, pink-eyed Siren surfaced in his mind. “Maria from House Faience? You two haven’t seen each other for so long—”
“Her parents are dead.” Ali lowered her head, tears glimmering on her long lashes. “They died at the Guild infirmary not long after we graduated. She spent every coin they had trying to save them.”
How could this have happened…?
A heavy sadness settled in Triton’s chest. If he remembered correctly, Maria’s parents were pure-blooded Sirens from the royal capital. They were both so powerful. How could they…
“And then? What happened next?” David seemed to sense that something was wrong and pressed her for more.
“She… has to support her little brother, and fulfill her parents’ last wish to take him back to the royal capital…” Ali twisted the hem of her clothes between her fingers, her voice growing quieter and quieter. “She’s going to marry a… a Siren man forty years older than her.”
“What?!” Triton and David blurted out in shock at the same time.
“Go on. What happened after that?” Solin gently wrapped an arm around Ali, concern filled her eyes.
“I tried to talk her out of it… I told her that man was suspicious. He claims to be so wealthy, yet he wouldn’t even give her enough money for one last visit to the ‘Artisan’s Bath,’ and there was no way to verify his identity… But she said… she said this was her only chance…”
Ali choked up again.
“So… so I told her. I told her…”
She swallowed hard.
“I told her that I love her. Not the way you love a friend.”
The room fell silent. The only sound was the wind blowing outside the window.
Wait…
A sharp pain throbbed through Triton’s head.
He vaguely remembered how close Ali had been with Maria, that girl was a senior one year above her back when they were at school. When Ali first told him about Maria, she had gone out of her way to explain that Maria was a pure-blooded Siren from the royal capital, completely different from the children raised in the Northwatch. She was almost too kind for her own good, she said. So kind that others were always taking advantage of her.
And as another child of the Siren, Ali had been furious on her behalf.
“It’s so embarrassing!” Little Ali huffed indignantly at her brother. “Sirens aren’t gullible idiots! I refuse to acknowledge that she’s a Siren! She’s so stupid! I hate her!”
Back then, Triton and Ali had been a pair of little troublemakers at the Guild school. They had never gone out of their way to torment anyone, but whenever some child came looking for trouble, the two of them had a way of making sure they had learned their lesson.
And apparently, when it came to Maria’s case, Ali had once again demonstrated her admirable talent for “persuading people with kindness,” until the little pack leader meekly apologized to her senior.
Triton had never witnessed the incident himself, but he could guarantee that his sister’s entire process of “reasoning” with the other child had gone wonderfully smooth. He was guarding the door outside the room, while all he could hear from inside were intermittent, high-pitch squeals of pain.
After that incident, Maria seemed to become an entirely different person. The tension between her brows eased. She smiled more often. And she spent more and more time with Ali.
On the way home from school, Ali would let go of her brother’s hand and run off laughing with Maria to the baths. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would sneak out through the window to “go play with Maria,” leaving Triton to keep watch. More than once, the twins ended up getting scolded together because of it.
By the fifth time Triton got detention for acting as Ali’s “accomplice” at the Guild school, he had finally lost it.
“Honestly, Ali. If you like Maria that much, why don’t you just let her be your sister? You’re both Sirens, and you’re both girls anyway! Why don’t you just go home with her?”
“Nope.” Ali pouted and wiped a smudge of dirt from her face with her sleeve. “If I got to choose a sister, I definitely wouldn’t pick Maria.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t bear to bully her.” The little mermaid flashed a sly smile, baring two rows of sharp teeth. “You know I like you the most, Trit. That’s why I only pick on you!”
“That’s not how you’re supposed to show someone you like them! Ali, you’re cra—hey! Cut it out! It tickles!”
Those carefree days of bickering and playing together had passed by in a blur, until Maria graduated and severed all contact with Ali without warning.
Triton did not particularly like remembering that period of time.
At first, Ali had simply been frantic, running around everywhere like a cat on a hot stove, searching for Maria. When she discovered that Maria had moved away without a word, Ali became moody and volatile. During the day, she took her frustration out on her brother; at night, she curled up beneath the blankets and wiped her tears alone. Then she sank into a long period of listlessness, unable to bring herself to care about anything.
Without ever discussing it, the family had stopped mentioning the name “Maria” tacitly. And so, little by little, the missing Siren girl faded from the memory of House Featherflight.
But now she’s back with a marriage contract that would bind her to a man older than her own father.
“You…” Triton opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say.
His thoughts were a tangled mess, and his head was unbearably heavy. He felt as though he had been strapped back onto the stone chair from the treatment room. The itching, burning, tearing sensations that had tormented him then surged back alongside a phantom pain, as if countless ants were gnawing at his bones.
But… If enduring another ten rounds of horn-regeneration surgery could take even the tiniest amount of his sister’s pain away, Triton would willingly do it.
“I told her… there might be another way to get back to the royal capital. We could figure something out together. She doesn’t have to do this… But that’s not the point! Maria is in serious danger! That old man is definitely hiding something! Trit, Dad, Mom… What am I supposed to do? How can I save her from that marriage?”
“You did the right thing, Ali.” Solin gently pulled her daughter closer. “I’m glad you told us—your family—about this as soon as you can. That’s a wise move.”
“And your instincts are probably correct. A man of unknown background who uses marriage as a bargain is surely capable of sinister motives. But whatever you do, don’t draw any suspicion. Until your brother has recovered and we have a clear understanding of who we’re dealing with, there will be absolutely no direct confrontation nor attempt to take Maria away by force—that would only put her in even greater danger.”
“First, we need to find out who this Siren is. His name, what he looks like, where he usually spends his time.” David’s brow remained tightly furrowed, but his earlier shock had already switched to calm deliberation. “I’ll keep an eye out in the Guild, then. There aren’t many pure-blooded Sirens settled in the Northwatch, and some of my father’s old friends who are still alive might be able to help.”
Indeed, David’s father—Triton and Ali’s grandfather—had also been a pure-blooded Siren. The old man’s surviving acquaintances were, at most, only a generation older than Maria’s fiancé, so there was a chance that some of them may have known this man.
“Has Maria passed the Trailblazer Rank Examination?” David asked. “We need to know whether she has at least the basic ability to protect herself. And we also need to find out how big the ‘net’ controlling her really is. There is no way this fiancé is the only person involved.”
“I don’t know…” Ali lowered her head in frustration. “She’s eighteen. She was so good at school… If she needed to earn money to support her brother, then she should have… passed the examination by now, right?”
“But, but apart from that, I had made an arrangement with her!” Her voice suddenly became urgent, as though she had seized hold of a thread of hope.
“She told me where that man lives. She said she would hang a strip of cloth of a particular color from the window at least once a week, so I’d know whether she was safe or needed to meet with me urgently… She also said that although she probably couldn’t work as a Trailblazer anymore, her fiancé wanted his future wife to have a ‘respectable, less dangerous job’…”
Her voice began to tremble.
“So… I might still have a chance to see her. And as long as we are still able to see each other, we still have a chance to save her, right…?”
“I won’t let that bastard take Maria away…” Triton reached out and clasped his sister’s hand tightly. “I’ll… get better as quickly as I can. Once I’m recovered, I’ll go to the Guild hall, to the markets, anywhere I can, and help you keep an eye on that Siren…”
But he faltered halfway through.
Sure, they had to save Maria from that firepit of a man. But what then? Send her and her brother to the royal capital? Could the place that had driven away Mr. and Mrs. Faience (and Solin as well!) truly deserve to be the place they fought so desperately to return to? And even if those two siblings made it back to the capital, how were they supposed to survive there?
David and Solin left when Ali had calmed down for a bit, leaving the twins alone in the house.
After a sleepless night, Ali did not return to her own bed to rest. Instead, she once again chose the shelter of her brother’s embrace, falling into a deep sleep wrapped in Triton’s warmth.
Triton was exhausted, but sleep refused to come. Lying on his side, he held his sister with one arm while absentmindedly flipping through a book he had grabbed from the nightstand.
Ali’s face was buried in his neck, her gentle breath brushing his skin. Her entire body curled beneath the blanket, yet her arms and legs were wrapped around him like an octopus, tying him so tightly that he could hardly move.
Their mother had once told them that they look exactly the same when they were first placed together in a crib. Little Ali, naked and wrinkled, clung tightly to Triton, whose tiny body was just as red with eyes that could barely open. The two refused to be separated from each other for even a moment.
They had once been so alike. When they were young, even their parents would sometimes mistake one for the other if they did not deliberately look at the color of the twins’ eyes. At first, there had been almost no difference between them. They had both held wooden swords, worn little suits of armor, pored over spellbooks, learned how to smile, bow, and impress.
But somewhere along the way, Triton began grooming his hair more often, deliberately keeping it trimmed just to the level of his ears. The horns on his head grew like a tree sprout in spring, transforming from two inconspicuous little bumps on his forehead into two beautiful white scimitars. His body began desperately demanding more nourishment. He was constantly ravenous, and before long he had become taller, faster, and stronger than his sister. His voice went hoarse for a while. Then, eventually, it deepened into a low tone just like their father’s.
One day, Ali placed a hand against his neck and asked in confusion, “What’s this?”
“This is my Adam’s apple.” Triton swallowed. “I guess it is it that made my voice sound like this.”
For a brief moment, Ali looked a little disappointed. It was as though she were watching helplessly as the brother she knew better than anyone, her other half, slowly transformed into someone she no longer recognized.
In their mother’s wardrobe, there had always been a white gauze dress she brought back from the royal capital. According to Solin, it was her wedding dress. There was also a small bottle of perfume. One day, she braided Ali’s hair into several thin plaits, dabbed perfume onto the girl’s wrists, and dressed her daughter in that gown.
Ali twirled before the mirror, the dress billowing beautifully with every turn. The Siren girl marveled about how such a delicate fabric could remain so well preserved after all these years, while the perfume too, still smelled as nice and pleasant as though it had only just been purchased.
“Even the most fragile gauze and the most delicate perfume can remain unchanged forever, as long as they are carefully preserved,” her mother said softly. “But my child, time shapes you little by little—your appearance, your tastes, the things you love and the things you hate. Even if I watched you every single day without blinking or looking away, you could still become a whole new person, someone who is no longer the one you once were.”
Triton never felt that Ali had changed. Even as translucent blue-green scales slowly began to grow across her cheeks and neck, even then, dressed in their mother’s wedding gown with her hair woven into beautiful braids, she was still the same little sister of his with mischievous eyes and sharp teeth who just loves picking on him.
Ali’s love had never changed, no matter whether it was toward him, or Maria. The only ones that had changed were Triton—and everyone else in this world.
Then… was the Maria Ali had not seen for two years still the blue-haired girl from her memories, the one who had laughed and joked with her?
Would she leave you without a word again?
Would she break your heart again?
Did she love you as much as you loved her then?
And would she ever… love you the same way I always do?
The book slipped from the boy’s fingers and fell to the floor, like a white bird who broke its wings.
Triton’s consciousness tumbled through a dark, rushing current, finally breaking the surface before an unnaturally bright lighthouse.
Unfamiliar luxurious draperies. An unfamiliar old-fashioned study. Scrolls lay in disarray across the desk beside strange instruments of bizarre design.
The only familiar object in the entire room was his broken horn, resting atop the mahogany writing desk.
Where am I?
Triton tried to turn his head and look around, but his body felt as though it no longer belonged to him. He could not move.
“Still busy, Miss Claret?”
The owner of the body lifted her head and met a pair of slender eyes behind spectacles.
“String.” she replied. “Good day. Do you need something?”
“I thought I’d come by and see if I could be of any help.” Zhao Yixian tilted his head with a smile. The thin silver chain dangling from his spectacles trembled faintly with the motion. “Your sister still refuses to see me at any time other than dinner. I’m sure she’s simply too busy with her work, not that she has grown tired of me and started avoiding me on purpose.”
“… Of course she doesn’t hate you.” Claret lowered her eyes. “Sit down. I’ll have the servants bring some tea.”
“Much appreciated.” String sat down beside her, his fingers idly brushing over the chaotic pile of papers and instruments on the desk. “So, tell me, which case are you working on right now? Is it about our ‘elder brother,’ or that Satyr boy?”
“Do you remember? When we came out of the supply point that day, Sir Argentum said there were ‘faint signs of life’ somewhere nearby—‘possibly a gravely wounded Trailblazer, or the lingering soul of some other being’?”
“Vaguely.” String adjusted his spectacles. “But we were stopped by the Fallen Hounds and that stretch of ‘mobile corruption,’ so we never had a chance to take a closer look.”
“To tell you the truth, I… can resonate with Sir Argentum’s abilities to some extent.” Claret lowered her voice. “Using his ‘vision,’ I looked in the direction he indicated and saw a point of light the same color as my brother. I believe… that was ‘my brother’ we were looking for.”
“I’m utterly curious about how this ‘resonance’ you mentioned actually works, but this probably isn’t the right time to press you about it.” String accepted the teacup from the servant and gently set one before Claret. “So, what do we do next? Something of that rank appearing in the Stone Church district means the authorities probably won’t allow Apprentice Trailblazers to enter that area in the foreseeable future.”
“… Indeed.” Claret’s voice cooled down. “However, the presence of the key ‘witnesses’ from our team is still necessary. And… I already have a preliminary theory regarding the identities of the ‘Antlered Entity’ and the ‘Bone-Wing Entity’ mentioned in Mr. David’s report.”
“Oh?” String took a sip of tea, looking at her with unmistakable admiration. “You’ve made more progress than I expected. How many other special abilities does our lady possess that are beyond my humble knowledge?”
“I didn’t use any special ability…” Claret gazed into the steam rising from her cup. “At present, this remains only a hypothesis. But I’ve been troubled by the fact that the ‘antlered man’ tried to ‘communicate’ with Triton before he fled.”
“You may not know this, String, but my godmother, Solin Featherflight, has gone by many names. When she first came to the Northwatch, she was known as Solin Yarkonayev. That was the surname of the husband she had in the royal capital.”
“Do you know why she was exiled in the first place?”
“Her husband was a high-ranking angel. When their child was kidnapped by the cult called ‘Yoke of Power,’ he went into the Forbidden Zone alone to rescue him. However, Mr. Yarkonayev failed to return before the deadline. When people finally saw him again, he had come back empty-handed, stripped of all his power. His body had been ravaged by corruption, Fallen beyond any possibility of purification.”
“As a result, he was exiled back into the very place that had caused his Fall. And his Satyr wife, who carried the demonic blood, was regarded as the source of the calamity and was exiled from the royal capital as well.”
“But what if… Mr. Yarkonayev did not perish in the Forbidden Zone, but instead gained senses as keen as those of a monster—an extreme sensitivity to blood and scent—and eventually found his child and somehow managed to raise him to adulthood… Then perhaps he could now travel alongside his child.”
“Perhaps… he could even detect, in the blood of the child his beloved bore with another man, the faintest trace of a scent that belonged uniquely to his wife.”
