The Sea King stood motionless, his trident trembling faintly in his grasp. Around him, the aged Grand Matron, the mermaid princesses, and the assembled nobles of the court seemed carved from coral, their expressions frozen in stunned silence.
The grandeur of the deep-sea palace, with its towering spires of pearl and vaulted arches woven from kelp, felt eerily hollow. Even the distant rumble of undersea volcanoes and the soft swirl of currents against the palace walls grew unnervingly distinct. Aurora, though she had anticipated Rhine's audacity, found herself breathless.
How reckless… how brilliant, she thought.
Ariel's fate had always been a solitary wager—a fleeting chance at an immortal soul or dissolution into sea foam. Yet Rhine's proposition unfurled like a tidal wave, threatening to drown the old order. If successful, his scheme might ripple far beyond Ariel, offering every merfolk in the seven seas a path to transcendence.
"An immortal soul… for all our people?" the Sea King murmured, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and dread. Beside him, the Grand Matron clutched her staff, her gills flaring as if straining to absorb the magnitude of the idea. Such a vision had never dared flicker in their deepest dreams.
"But Ariel's task alone seems impossible!" the Sea King protested, his tail flicking agitatedly. "A mermaid winning a human's love? History knows no such tale!"
Rhine's smile was calm, yet his eyes burned with conviction. "Which is why we must unite," he replied, gesturing to the court. "This is no longer Ariel's lonely quest. It is the kingdom's. With your resources and our human ingenuity"—he nodded to Aurora—"we might yet rewrite the tides of fate."
Neptune's gaze swept the chamber, lingering on his daughters' hopeful faces, and the nobles' hesitant nods. Desperation hung thick as brine. To them, Rhine and Aurora were not mere allies but lifelines thrown into a drowning world.
"Sorcerer," the Sea King said at last, "Ariel's fate rests in your hands. You alone can walk among the humans. Command us—whatever you require, the sea itself shall provide."
Rhine bowed, the weight of their hope settling on his shoulders. "Then let me show you her progress."
From his robes, he withdrew a silver mirror, its surface etched with runes that glowed faintly in the bioluminescent haze. A single iridescent scale—plucked from Ariel's tail days earlier—hovered above it. As Rhine chanted, the mirror's glass rippled like water, revealing glimpses of the mermaid princess in her human guise…
——
In the sun-drenched palace of the Western Asia Kingdom, whispers slithered through marble halls:
"The prince rescued a girl from the shore—a beauty with no past…"
"They say she resembles the maiden who saved him from the shipwreck…"
Prince Eric pushed open the door to Ariel's chamber, his boots echoing on polished stone. The boy prince, barely sixteen, bore the golden complexion of one raised on decks and dunes, his eyes the deep brown of storm-tossed timber. A crown of windswept curls framed features so finely wrought, that he seemed plucked from the pages of a bard's romance.
"Who are you?" he asked, voice softening as he approached the bed. "Where did you come from?"
Ariel's sea-blue eyes widened. Memories of her sisters, her father's wrath, and the Grand Matron's warnings surged within her. What can I say? That I traded my tail for legs? That my voice nearly drowned in a sea hag's bargain?
Yet thanks to Rhine, her tongue remained unbound.
"I… don't remember," she whispered.
The prince's smile faltered, a shadow crossing his face. So close, he thought. Her eyes, her face—almost hers. But the voice…
"No matter," he said briskly, offering his arm. "We'll uncover your past together."
As they strolled through colonnades draped in silken banners, servants gaped. Ariel moved with liquid grace, her steps so light she seemed to glide above the tiles. The prince's gaze lingered on her.
"You dance as if born to the waves," he marveled. "Like some foreign princess stepped from legend."
Ariel's laugh caught in her throat. If only you knew.
He clothed her in silks that shimmered like abalone and braided her hair with jewels from sunken galleons. When palace singers performed at dusk, their melodies twining through jasmine-scented air, Ariel tugged Eric's sleeve.
"May I sing for you?"
The lead singer—a woman whose voice had once bewitched courts—narrowed her eyes. "Song requires training, child. Not mere… enthusiasm."
Eric waved her silently. "Sing," he urged Ariel, blind to all but the ghost of another girl's face.
And sing she did.
Notes cascaded like moonlit surf, each syllable a siren's call refined by centuries of ocean hymns. The prince's breath caught—not from the voice's beauty, but its difference. This was not the ragged lullaby he'd heard on the storm's edge, the one haunting his dreams.
Wrong, he realized, heart sinking. Her voice is perfection… yet it's not hers.
Ariel watched his smile tighten, oblivious to the truth crashing through him:
The girl who saved me sang like a human. This one… sings like the sea itself.
——
In the mirror's depths, the Sea King's court erupted in dismay.
"He suspects!" cried a mermaid princess.
Rhine silenced them with a raised hand. "All proceeds as foreseen," he said, though his knuckles whitened around the mirror. "Now comes the tempest."
Aurora met his gaze, the unspoken truth hanging between them:
For the sea's salvation, a prince must drown in revelations.