Letis trembled in the corner of the cave, bound by rotting seaweed that reeked of decay.

Dark red blood dripped steadily from beneath her bound wrists, but she couldn’t even scream. Her tongue had already been cut out.

The untreated wounds continuously regenerated pain. Endless terror consumed Letis.

‘Why did this happen to me…?’

No matter how many thousands of times she looked back, she felt nothing but wronged.

“The liver of a bottom-dwelling anglerfish is incomparably better…. What do you say, would you like to hear about it?”

Who knew those words would be an invitation leading her to hell….

Her tear-filled eyes blankly scanned the dark cave. The pressure crushing her body was considerable, and the water temperature was hot, though she couldn’t tell how far down they had come.

The cave’s environment, which could not be called comfortable by any measure, was choking Letis. As her clouded eyes swept around, she saw the form of a human carelessly discarded.

Letis couldn’t tell if that human was dead or alive. The only thing certain was that it had been lying there on the floor since she was brought to this cave. The witch had abandoned it without so much as a glance.

‘But why me….’

Letis stared at the old woman chanting suspicious spells in the distance with eyes that seemed mad with indignation.

The old woman who had lured Letis with promises of good things….

Though she had felt suspicious, how could she have known the hag was Echidna.

The woman who had schemed to claim Triton and his glory. The witch who had brought about her own destruction through desires beyond her station.

Echidna’s story was so famous that there wasn’t anyone in the sea who didn’t know it. She had been famous even before, when she displayed contemptible arrogance claiming divine lineage.

Believing in her fair face and that single bloodline, she looked down on nymphs and merfolk as if she were sea royalty herself. There weren’t many who liked her.

There were some mindless ones bewitched by her beauty, but far more who disliked her.

That’s why news of her downfall spread quickly and was forgotten with a casual click of the tongue. No one sympathized with her.

And so, while they thought her existence had been completely erased from this world….

‘To think she returned alive from the labyrinth….’

And transformed into such a completely blackened, corrupted witch at that….

She had heard that the human woman Triton brought had Echidna’s golden dagger, but she couldn’t have imagined that woman would still be alive.

No, in truth, there was no need to think about such things. She and Echidna had no connection, no relation at all.

So Letis couldn’t understand at all why she had been captured here, and why that woman had cut off all her fingers to use in strange sorcery.

“Huu…. hic hic….”

She sobbed while biting down hard on her blood-filled mouth. With a mouth that could no longer form proper words, all that could come out were cries.

But perhaps that sound irritated Echidna, who had been muttering strange sounds inside the red magic circle, because the chanting suddenly stopped.

An bizarre silence pressed down on the dark cave. The only sound was Letis’s uncontrollable sobbing.

The corners of Echidna’s wrinkled mouth slowly turned upward.

The old woman rose from where she had been crouching in the magic circle and approached Letis. Terrified, Letis scooted backward on her bottom.

But there was nowhere to retreat as there was a wall behind her.

“You said you wanted to become a shining being above the sea, didn’t you?”

“Uu, uu…. uuuu!”

Letis begged to be spared with her voiceless throat. She prostrated herself, pleading desperately with hands that had only palms left, all fingers cut off.

“Oh, how pitiful. Are you afraid of me?”

Echidna looked down with emotionless eyes at the fear and despair on that tear-stained face, muttering as if in sympathy.

However, her eyes gleamed cruelly, showing not a grain of sincerity.

Echidna lifted Letis’s chin with her single remaining finger, the rest having been sacrificed for spells, and whispered:

“I owe you much gratitude.”

“Uuu… huuu…. uuu!”

“Though you may be a deity of the lowest rank, you are still of divine blood…. You’ve been a great help in completing my spell. So I shall grant your wish….”

A glimmer of hope briefly shone in Letis’s eyes, as if thinking Echidna’s words meant she would be spared.

Echidna loved such looks. Eyes that yearned for the unattainable, sparkling with foolish hope.

She too had once had such eyes. Not with this hideously aged, sagging face burning with revenge, but with a young and pretty face beautifully sparkling with hope.

‘But… that me died back then. Crushed most cruelly.’

A dark blue light flickered at Echidna’s fingertip as she held up Letis’s chin.

“You said you wanted to become a shining being above the sea, didn’t you?”

It was what she had mindlessly babbled while being enchanted by Echidna as she walked herself down to these depths.

When asked why she sought poison, she had answered it was for revenge against the woman who had trampled her dreams. When asked what that dream was, she had said this:

That she wanted to become a shining being floating high above the sea. To become one of the moon goddess’s halo, receiving praise and envy from all….

To think she was a wench who worshipped the moon goddess, Selene. It was the moment when an even darker, crueler shadow was cast over Echidna’s heart as she lured Letis.

“Uu, uuuuuu! Uuuuu!!!”

Though Letis shook and resisted as if sensing tragedy, it was futile.

The moment the dark blue light rising from the fingertip of Echidna – a devoted follower of Hecate and wielder of dark powers – seeped into Letis’s forehead.

“……!”

The nymph’s huddled body began to shrink. Without any dramatic sound, just smoothly, as if the moisture filling her body was draining away….

“I don’t know if you’re aware, but the moon shines brightly because it’s draped in night’s curtain. It’s because of darkness that she can shine.”

The shrinking body stopped transforming when it became about the size of a thumbnail. Echidna blew a breath toward Letis, who had become a small black insect, advising in what she knew to be her kindest voice.

“Do you want to shine? Then…. remain in darkness.”

The air bubble created by Echidna’s breath enveloped the insect and floated up. A tiny, seemingly powerless bubble crawled its way up toward the sea’s surface.

“…Well, you probably can’t hear me anymore.”

Echidna’s gaze followed the air bubble skyward.

Far, farther. High, higher….

After rising for a long while carried by the air bubble, the trembling insect finally reached the surface.

The bubble burst with a pop, and at last the insect that had been shaking in fear flew up above the water’s surface with wet wings. Then the light sac attached beneath its round bottom emitted light.

A single small, humble firefly rising above the vast sea….

It flew vigorously toward the moon hanging high above, but its wingbeats were too weak to reach the sky’s moon.

The firefly climbed high for a long while, briefly twinkling like a star in the darkest dawn, but just before Apollo’s rise, it fell toward the sea as if returning home.

Like ending a very brief but intense journey, the body smaller than a pebble dropped into the vast sea with a plop.

Never to rise again, sinking very, very deep….

***

Something that sounded like both a storm and waves knocked at Livia’s hazy consciousness. Though she didn’t want to wake because her body was so exhausted, her consciousness floated to the surface on its own.

‘Don’t want to wake up. Just a little longer like this….’

The floor undulated gently as if floating on water. The fabric pressed close against her back and b*ttocks was so smooth, she wondered if this was how expensive silk worn by royalty felt.

“…Mm, nice.”

Though her whole body ached as if she’d been beaten, every sensation touching her body was satisfying. So she might have unconsciously muttered something like sleep-talk while rubbing her cheek against the pillow her head was resting on.

If she hadn’t felt something squirming between her legs then, she might have forcibly pulled her increasingly wakeful consciousness back below the surface of sleep and stayed asleep for a long, long time.

“……”

Her eyes flew open without her meaning to. She blinked her bleary eyes several times to survey the scene before her. The sound of roaring waterfalls, humid air, the squelching floor… and someone’s arm and hand that she was clearly resting her head on.

Without a doubt, it was Triton’s hand. The hand was larger than most men’s and stretched out freely, yet smooth and white without a single scar.

As she grasped the situation, the previous night flooded back into her dull mind. A night spent crying, sobbing, begging, panting…. A night holding something unbelievable inside her body.

“It will get better. No, I guarantee you’ll come to like it, Livia.”

“How is my human so good at adapting…. Haa, no matter how I look at it, you seem to take it better than when it was just one….”

Though she wanted to believe it was a dream, the memory of being held by him was too vivid. So vivid that even now her lower half felt hot and overwhelming, as if his member was still inside her body.

When she shifted her hips uncomfortably, something coiled between her thighs squirmed in response.

‘N-No way….’

Just as she tried to look down with trembling eyes, the hand wrapped around Livia’s waist firmly kneaded the valley between her br*asts. Triton whispered in a low voice by the ear of the startled Livia.

“If you move now, I feel like I’ll split apart right away….”

Livia’s body instantly froze stiff. She couldn’t believe it. The sea god’s shamelessness was beyond shocking, to the point of being appalling.

Was this man saying he had actually slept all night with his member inserted in her womanhood?