It all starts when he drowns.

Winter solstice, midnight. Lir takes a breath. Yet, even if his exhale is sharp, his mouth continues to taste of salt. Death. The impending doom that awaits him.

The faraway sound of siren-song fills his ears. He swallows his regrets. He shouldn’t have neared the shore. Despite how the low the tide was, Lir should know by now that it always finds a way. They always find a way.

Something is howling. Perhaps it is the wolf his people warned him of last week. He doesn’t know. Lir doesn’t know anything anymore. He is dragged under, quickly, until everything—every sound—is muted; all except for the noise of bubbles, that pop against his limbs.

His fight against the waves metamorphosizes into one against his lungs. They want to give out on him and break, to release him from these growing pains. Lir coughs. He tries to rip through the water’s strength by clawing at the ocean’s depths. They are desperate, feeble attempts at keeping his body alive, and nothing more than that. Because no matter what he does, Lir sinks, deeper, with each passing second.

He manages to open his eyes one final time.

His skin is turning blue. His veins black, like in legends from his childhood, where people die yet never truly leave. Now, Lir wonders if those tales are true. But nobody is there to give him an answer. A hand. Or to pull him out of the darkness.

Lir perishes alone in cold depths, surrounded by the scent of algae, the brush of fish fins, grazing his feet.

He hurts. It hurts, he thinks. It hurts. Everywhere. Until he feels it no longer. Until he is gone, washed away like all the other souls, prisoner to the depths of this ocean that always desires too much.