black pearls

Ages before mercy mattered, Humans and Nereids lived peacefully, if peace meant they remained ignorant of our existence. On a fogbound dawn, an inquisitive mermaid drifted too near the surface, eager to catch a glimpse the feeble humans her pod endlessly whispered about. Curiosity betrayed her; a fisherman spotted the silver lash of her tail beneath the water and marked her fate.

Unknowingly, she kindled the bloodiest purge her kind would ever endure. Calling it survival, humans hunted the merfolk, dragged them ashore, butchered them, and displayed their bodies as trophies. The survivors fled into lightless depths, scattered beyond memory, and vanished from mortal sight forever.

Some dived so deep they adapted to the dark depths and unforgiving cold, bestowing nebulous skin and murky eyes making them almost blind due to the loss of light. Their change came in anger which caused them to develop a taste for the one thing that made them what they were. Humans. They submerge to the surface and croon a ballad, which would make the humans drown themselves in the sea of salt where they would never be seen again if not only in a memory.