As sweet as the siren’s song was, it remained a somber funeral hymn. She toyed with him, and every fiber of his being knew he was but prey for the golden women. She seemed to glide above the vast golden tide while he drowned beneath it. With each step, she soared higher, while he sank deeper into the shifting sands.
This ascent had nothing in common with the mountains of the North. There, he had wrestled with the elements; here, he fought against a vast, living expanse of sand that longed only to consume him whole.

Yet she floated above it all — mocking, beguiling, intoxicating. She would not cease her cruel games, now that she held him helpless, curled within the hollow of her paw. Before his desperate gaze, which slowly darkened with the flicker of rising rage, a miserable, muddy puddle shimmered in mockery.
A deep, cavernous growl rumbled through his chest — a look flashing with an unspoken promise of retribution. But for now, thirst bound him more tightly than any chain, and he was her prisoner.

He hurled himself at the water, burning the last embers of his strength like a mindless beast. In moments, the puddle was no more than a muddy smear, the thick, gritty water offering none of the salvation he had so desperately sought.
Now steadier — or rather, less close to death — Julius straightened, drawing nearer to the cursed siren, looming over her with all the stature he could summon.
Weapons bared at the edge of his lips, fangs glinting, ears erect, tail raised high behind him. Yet when he opened his jaws to unleash the full force of his fury, only silence answered — the dry rasp of a throat too raw, too broken to form words. No words passed his lips, only a silent, seething rage and a man troubled by his own condition. Was it a curse? A trick of the siren?