[Don’t be afraid, my child.]
Lamia gently embraced Everly, her long serpent tail softly brushing against the back of her hand in comfort.
It was a deeply familiar embrace—tinged with the salty, briny scent of the sea.
Everly’s nose stung, and tears once again welled up in her eyes.
But there was no ti for her to cry.
Almost the mont Lamia appeared, the gigantic humanoid fish monster sensed the unusual presence of the siren. It raised one of its forelimbs and pointed straight at the embracing mother and daughter. Its mouth opened, and from deep within its chest ca a roar like countless war drums beating in unison.
“ROAR!”
“ROAR! ROAR!”
The white monsters surrounding them received the command. Thousands of them surged up from the sea, echoing their master. They lifted their grotesque heads and unleashed wave after wave of deafening roars toward Everly and the siren.
In the next instant, towering waves surged and water splashed violently. Led by the humanoid fish monster, countless bloated, corpse-like sea creatures kicked their webbed limbs and shot forward like a barrage of arrows, launching an all-out attack on the mother and daughter.
The siren released Everly from her embrace. With a flick of her long tail, she faced the oncoming swarm, spreading her arms and slightly tilting her head upward.
A dazzling, radiant light burst forth.
Everly looked up in shock and saw a figure—both familiar and unfamiliar—rising from Lamia as its center.
It was an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
She wore a crown and held a scepter. Her upper body was human, while her lower half was a serpent’s tail adorned with erald-green scales.
Her face was flawless, as if blessed by the goddess of beauty. Her skin was fairer and smoother than milk, and her crimson eyes shone like two flawless red gemstones. Her long, black, seaweed-like curls cascaded over her shoulders, partially veiling her chest.
Although the woman’s upper body was completely bare, not a single thread upon her, no one who witnessed this scene felt even the slightest trace of inappropriate thoughts. What surrounded her was a radiant brilliance that combined both motherhood and divinity.
Her imnse form hovered between illusion and reality, her towering figure nearly piercing the storm clouds above. With her coiled serpent tail shielding Everly, she bent slightly forward, lowering her upper body in fury—like a dragon guarding a hard-won treasure—glaring down at the monsters that filled the entire sea. Then she opened her mouth and unleashed an earth-shaking scream:
“AAAAAA———!”
The drawn-out shriek was like a howling hurricane, like a raging thunderstorm, like the most cruel and terrifying punishnt nature could inflict upon ignorant humanity. Invisible sound waves shattered the falling rain, drove back the roaring winds, and even the surging waves bowed obediently before it.
As the vibrations resonated with the tides of the sea, strange patterns appeared on the ocean’s surface. They were not ripples stirred by the wind, nor splashes from leaping dolphins, but whirlpools—one after another—spinning madly.
The ruler of the sea had been angered. The once gentle and tolerant waters shed their softness, revealing their rciless, ruthless side. Countless whirlpools roared and devoured everything around them, dragging each white monster down alive.
Those creatures that had filled Everly with terror and despair now seed as fragile as paper before the whirlpools. They struggled in panic and unwillingness, shrieking and fleeing, yet none could withstand a mother’s wrath. The grinding currents tore off their limbs, crushed their skulls, and shredded their bodies into pieces.
At the very center of the white monsters’ formation, the largest whirlpool—like the world-devouring serpent of myth, Jörmungandr—bit down on the charging fish monster. From its edges extended countless thick columns of water, coiling around the humanoid fish creature’s limbs and neck, pinning it firmly in place so it could not move.
[Do not—co near—my—child!!!]
With an angry roar in Ancient Greek, the siren’s phantom raised the golden scepter high and brought it crashing down toward the trapped humanoid fish monster.
Everly saw the wave.
A colossal surge—taller than any skyscraper she had ever seen, wider than the sprawling Iramore Mountains—ca rushing in from the distant horizon like a massive wall edged in white. It blotted out the sky, blocked the sunlight, and carried with it an imasurable, boundless force, pressing down like a giant hand toward the fish monster at the center of the whirlpool.
But the creature was no ordinary being. With a powerful heave, it broke free from the water columns binding its limbs and raised its arms upward, bracing the massive wave firmly upon its shoulders. From its flesh burst countless black, twisted tendrils like writhing vines. Each tendril split open at the tip like a serpent’s mouth, revealing rows of venomous fangs within.
Like stains spreading through clear water, they plunged into the wave, seeping inward along the currents. With every inch they spread, the imnse wave shrank in size.
At the sa ti, dark, snake-like patterns began to creep across the once flawless, pale face of Lamia’s phantom.
The monster’s power was eroding her in return.
This was a clash waged with nature itself as the stake.
On one side of the scales stood Lamia—the daughter of Poseidon and Libya, the mythic sea demon cursed by Hera.
On the other side stood Dagon, the so-called “Father of the Deep Ones,” an evil god summoned into the mortal world through human sacrifice.
How could a siren hope to defeat a god?
The difference in power between them was vast—especially when Lamia had only just gathered enough strength to awaken from her long slumber.
Everly watched in anguish, tears streaming uncontrollably down her face.
Crack… crack crack…
Sure enough, as the corruption deepened, Lamia gradually fell into a disadvantage. Cracks began to appear in the golden scepter held by her phantom.
No—not just the scepter. Even her very form began to fracture, like shattered porcelain, lines of breaking spreading across her body.
Those black markings—each one tainted with the madness of an ancient god—were enough to drive any ordinary person insane with even the slightest contact. Yet now, Lamia’s body was already covered in them.
They wrapped around her like a massive cocoon, binding and eroding her, filling her mind with overlapping shrieks, sobs, murmurs, and manic laughter… They sought to devour her sanity and turn her into a fallen prisoner of madness.
[No… no, please, stop, Mom!] Everly cried hoarsely, the pain in her heart almost suffocating her.
Yet above the clouds, the collapsing siren lowered her head slightly. Her crimson eyes gazed at the crying girl, and slowly, she revealed a smile.
It didn’t matter… It didn’t matter how much she was corrupted. It didn’t matter if she lost her sanity. Becoming a mad creature didn’t matter either.
Because she had always been a mother driven to madness by her love for her child.
[This ti… Mom will protect you…] Lamia said, word by word, her voice filled with deep affection, love—and madness—as she made her unwavering promise to Everly.
[No—! No, don’t!]
Amid Everly’s desperate scream, the siren straightened her body. With difficulty, yet with unwavering determination, she raised her scepter once more and brought it crashing down toward the fish monster.
[Get back—into—your—deep sea!!!]
With the siren’s furious roar, the massive wave on the creature’s shoulders suddenly blazed with light, its size swelling several tis over in an instant. Like an insurmountable mountain, like the very will of the ocean itself, it descended with overwhelming force.
Ignoring the monster’s struggling and roaring, the wave crashed down, pressing it violently into the sea—downward, deeper, ever deeper—!
The colossal creature fell like a cannonball, plunging deep into the distant ocean, shaking the seabed with a prolonged, earthquake-like tremor.
Above the waves, the storm that had raged for days suddenly ceased.
Thick, inky clouds slowly dissipated, and a thin stream of warm sunlight pierced through the sky.
Under the golden light, the massive phantom of the siren shattered like grains of sand, scattering into countless tiny points of light until it disappeared entirely.
At the sa ti, in Everly’s arms, the siren had returned to her original size. Her body was broken, blood pouring freely, drifting atop the water, barely clinging to life.
[No… no, don’t…] Everly’s lips trembled, tears falling like strings of pearls.
[You can grow up safely… that’s enough…]
This siren no longer looked like the beautiful phantom. Her limbs were swollen, her skin pale and blue-tinged, her body covered in grotesque scars, like a giant corpse soaked in the sea—terrifying, repulsive, and radiating a pungent stench.
Yet Everly felt her to be so beautiful, so gentle.
[I will fade away soon… I wish I could rember you forever…]
The siren smiled sadly. Her gaze at Everly was calm, tender, and full of love. Even facing imminent death, she showed no trace of resentnt.
[Mom… Mom… no!]
Everly bent down, holding the siren tightly to her chest.
For the past eighteen years, she had often dread of the future. Choosing a university in the northeastern corner of the U.S. had been partly so she could be closer to the siren.
She had planned that if the siren remained asleep through her college years, she would find a job near Pukati to stay nearby. When the siren awoke, she would rush to her imdiately.
She had imagined countless reunion scenes, envisioned how she would interact with the awakened siren, and even fantasized about convincing her to abandon her appetite for humans… She had imagined so many things, but never had a single one of her fantasies prepared her for what was happening now.
Recalling the mory Spring that Kelly had once given her, Everly’s hands trembled as she took the crystal vial from the pouch at her chest and held it in her palm. After adding a new mory, she brought the vial to the siren’s lips.
[Drink… drink this… Mom, then… then you can always rember… that you have a child who is… living safely… living… always…] she sobbed uncontrollably, words jumbled and stamring.
Seeing the girl crying so desperately, the siren extended her bloodied claws and gently wiped Everly’s tear-streaked cheeks with the back of her hand. When Everly brought the vial to her mouth, the demon asked nothing. She obediently opened her mouth, and with a delicate nip of her sharp teeth, drank the drop of liquid from the crystal vial.
The instant the liquid touched her tongue, countless mories flooded her mind—
The fog-laden town, the frail little baby girl, the days and nights spent together in the underground stone chamber, every uttered “mama” filled with attachnt, the eye that had been dug out and taken, eighteen years of longing, and the reunion eighteen years later…
[Ah… ah…]
Lamia’s eyes widened abruptly.
The mories impressed themselves with startling clarity and depth. They were like warm hands, wiping away the despair, jealousy, madness, and hatred that had consud her mind, bringing her heart—long soaked in pain and anguish—a long-forgotten peace.
It was a peace capable of rescuing her from the endless curse.
Crack!
A sound of shattering, unheard before, rang out. The chains that had bound her body suddenly lightened. A faint golden glow illuminated the siren, and Everly stared, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, at everything unfolding before her.
The siren’s form changed.
Where the golden light passed, her swollen, rotting skin returned to a smooth, pale radiance. The centipede-like scars that had coiled across her body vanished entirely. Her terrifying, monstrous arms transford into long, graceful human hands, and even the thick, blue-black serpentine tail beca human legs.
At the mont she received eternal mory, Lamia shifted from a cursed sea demon back into a human—the forr Queen of Libya.
She coughed up a mouthful of blood, her battle wounds still present, yet for the first ti, a joyful smile lit her face.
[Thank you, my child…]
Like a carefree young girl, the young Queen Lamia spoke cheerfully. Struggling to lift her head, she placed a gentle kiss on Everly’s forehead.
[I will die soon…]
[I am going to the underworld to atone for my past sins… But you, my daughter, I, Lamia, as the daughter of a sea god, swear that in your life to co, you will receive the ocean’s boundless love…]
[Farewell…]
After speaking these final words, Lamia closed her eyes in front of Everly. Her soft body went completely limp, dissolving into a handful of transparent seawater that rged with the vast ocean.
[No————!!!]
Like a fledgling who has lost its parent, Everly let out a cry of absolute despair.
…
————————————————————————————————
Author’s Note:
Ah… this, ah…
Honestly, even back in the Banshee arc, this ending had already been decided.
Don’t hit —I can write so side stories about mother-daughter monts later. [Please, I beg you]
I always thought of myself as a moral person… but after writing the Banshee arc, I realized… I really don’t have much morality at all. [laugh-cry]
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