Chapter 3 - The Law of the Foam
The council of Orena convened beneath the great whalebone canopy, the air heavy with an anxious, vibrating tension. Without Lyra's song, the outer reef was already dying, the white rot of the bleaching coral spreading like a plague across the eastern district.
The Arch-Weaver looked at Lyra, his clouded eyes filled with a profound, solemn sorrow. He adjusted his heavy cloak of woven sea-kelp, his hand resting on a massive shell that recorded the ancient laws of their race.
"The magic that stole your voice is old, Lyra," the Arch-Weaver said, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble that shook the small fish in the room. "It is the curse of the Sea Witch, Vespera, who resides in the sunken ruins of the Sunken Cathedral. She drinks the voices of the gifted to maintain her own twisted immortality. But the law of the sea is absolute, and it cannot be altered by our tears."
He pointed his long, skeletal finger up toward the surface of the water, where the pale, distorted circle of the moon was visible through the ripples.
"A siren's body is held together by the frequency of her magic," the Weaver continued, his voice dropping to a somber whisper. "Without your voice, the elemental balance of your form will dissolve. You have until the night of the full moon—the night of the celestial eclipse, three days from now. If your voice is not returned to your throat before the moon reaches its highest point in the sky, your scales will shatter, your blood will turn to brine, and you will forever turn into sea-foam, scattered across the waves without a soul."
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Lyra felt the water around her turn to ice. Sea-foam. She had seen it happen once before to an old singer who had lost her magic to age. The woman had simply faded away during a high tide, leaving behind nothing but a cluster of bubbles that popped against the rocks of the shore.
She looked at her tail. The grey rot had already climbed up past her waist, turning her beautiful seafoam scales into brittle, colorless plates. She didn't have time to mourn. She swam forward, slamming her fists onto the whalebone table, her eyes burning with a fierce, desperate determination. She would not disappear without a fight.
