Chapter 03
“Voice heard in a half-dream state.”
A ghostly humming sound, as if heard submerged underwater, soon spilled out through the child’s lips.
“When I opened my eyes, it had already scattered like a dream.”
Aria’s song led the Count into the lake of oblivion.
Like the playful trick of a carefree fairy, the melody flicked and toyed with his nerves.
Pizzicato.
It felt as though, from somewhere far away, violin strings were being plucked by fingertips.
“It vanished, that mysterious night.”
At that moment, the Count sharply caught the flow of magic within the song.
This was a siren’s song.
“N-no way…”
He widened his eyes in shock.
“No, that can’t be. A mute, a useless cripple like her—how could she have hidden this until now… don’t tell me Sofia that woman….”
Then, the Count was consumed by exhilaration.
Aria’s voice was the pure, angelic tone he had dreamed of his entire life—rich, resonant, perfect.
‘But that’s not all.’
It was an unadorned, flawless voice, yet it carried a thick, nauseating scent of blood.
A voice that, once ensnared by it, could never be escaped. A toxin like an angel’s touch, leading one down the path of ruin.
He instinctively realized it.
‘Even among sirens, she is on a different level.’
This song would drive people mad. He could place nobles beneath his feet and control them like slaves.
Perhaps he could even seize the empire itself and manipulate it at will.
“Sing more! More, more…!”
The Count tripped over a wine bottle rolling on the floor and fell hard.
With bloodshot eyes, he crawled across the floor, reaching out toward Aria.
What a pathetic sight.
Aria looked down at him indifferently.
‘So this is the kind of man I sacrificed my life for. A greedy creature obsessed only with wealth and power.’
Count Cortez.
He had controlled his young daughter through violence, forcing her into anything once she lost the ability to resist.
Things beyond imagination.
In her memories, he had always seemed like a towering mountain—but now he looked like nothing more than a pitiful, aging man.
“You’ll hear my song only for tonight. It will be the first and last time.”
At Aria’s cold words, he belatedly looked as if he had realized something.
“W-wait, that song is….”
‘Yes. You know it well.’
It was the very first song the Count had taught her.
It was meant to be used when eliminating nobles who discovered truths they should not know.
“Now you will forget everything.”
“No! What are you doing!”
He shouted in panic, but Aria ignored him and began to sing again.
“The voice that felt like a mirage.
Night disappears, the one of illusion.”
All fragments of memory from what he had just seen, heard, and felt began to crumble within him.
A hazy sensation enveloped his entire body, and his memories vanished without a trace.
“It was all a dream.”
“No, it wasn’t a dream. The siren I’ve longed for is right here.”
The Count muttered desperately, trying to resist the song of oblivion.
That voice. If he could obtain it, he would gain glory, honor, power, and wealth beyond anything he had ever known.
But Aria, as if mocking his struggle, poured all her magic into the final verse.
“Ah… it was all just a dream.”
Overwhelmed by the crushing force of her magic, he staggered, veins bulging in his neck, and screamed.
“SIREN!!!”
That final, desperate cry was followed by eyes that had gone dull and vacant as if he had become a fool.
The song ended.
There was no need to listen to the late regrets of his own bloodline. She had no intention of granting him forgiveness.
Aria looked at the dazed Count and asked coldly:
“Where is the Mermaid’s Tear?”
“The Mermaid’s Tear… in my bedroom… in the drawer beside the bed… inside a box….”
“The key?”
With his mind still clouded, he fumbled inside his clothes and pulled out a small key.
Aria took it and immediately ran to the Count’s bedroom.
Inside a jewelry box, she found a pair of pearl earrings shimmering with rainbow light.
‘I found it. The Mermaid’s Tear.’
The reason she had never been able to defy her father was because of these earrings.
The Mermaid’s Tear reflects the effect of a siren’s song back onto its user—specifically songs imbued with malice that harm the listener.
Because of this, while wearing them, one could never be harmed by such songs.
‘After my mother died, I was finally able to escape his grasp.’
Ironically, the Count never stopped wearing the Mermaid’s Tear—but after discovering Aria was a siren, he began wearing them constantly again.
‘Mother….’
Aria lightly touched the locket around her neck.
‘If only I had returned a little earlier.’
But she shook her head.
If she had come back even slightly earlier or later, she would not have escaped so smoothly.
She could not be greedy. This miraculous opportunity had to be taken as it was.
Aria tucked the earrings away.
She had truly returned to the spring of her ten-year-old self.
Aria placed the newspaper she had taken from the Count’s room down and held her racing heart.
‘I thought I’d be dragged straight to hell.’
She had denied the existence of gods, yet instead of punishment, she had been given a second chance.
It was absurd.
Now she would not end up with half her face burned, nor have her legs crushed.
‘I can change the future.’
Aria felt overwhelmed.
Her entire life, defined by a childhood nightmare, now seemed trivial—pathetic even.
‘So what now?’
She fell into thought.
From the moment she was born, she had been forced to take a potion every day that stole her voice.
Because of that potion, Aria had become terminally ill.
Even returning to the past did not change that fact.
‘I’ll die around twenty.’
So what should she do with the rest of her life?
One thing was certain: no one must ever discover that she was the last siren.
‘My song drives people mad.’
A siren’s song seduces, addicts, and ultimately drives people to insanity.
Aria was thoroughly disgusted by that. She no longer wanted to drive anyone mad.
“Siren, I heard your song drives people insane.”
Then—
“So I suppose I’m fine. I was already insane from the start.”
She recalled the voice she had heard in her dying moments.
Eyes dulled to a lifeless gray. A gaze that responded only to slaughter, glowing faintly.
A half-lost, intoxicated stare wandering aimlessly through empty space.
Even the way he could not endure his own mind and clung to drugs.
‘Lloyd Cardenas Valentine.’
The Grand Duke who inherited his title at only eighteen.
In four years from now, an incident would occur in which the entire Valentine bloodline, along with their retainers and servants, would be slaughtered.
The empire would call it the “Valentine Incident.”
The only survivor was Lloyd Valentine himself.
Naturally, he would be accused as the culprit.
‘Even though he was never punished.’
People said it was the result of a hereditary madness reaching its peak in the House of Valentine.
Yet even the Emperor turned a blind eye to the strange happenings within the duchy.
In other words, House Valentine was untouchable.
‘Maybe that’s even true.’
Perhaps he truly had killed his own parents, relatives, retainers, and servants under the influence of something inhuman.
But remembering the overwhelming power she had seen before her death, it was easy to suspect him.
‘And yet… he didn’t want anything.’
Who enters a pact with a demon without desire or ambition?
He had not even been driven by anger or revenge like Aria.
Nor was he resigned.
‘He was just… empty.’
A man who desired nothing, wanted nothing—who simply offered to take revenge on her behalf.
Like a game of the devil.
She didn’t believe such a man would have caused the Valentine Incident.
‘A man who wants nothing.’
Aria wanted to kindle a spark of hope within him, who had been dyed in ash-gray emptiness.
Just as he had once shown her hope.
‘I want to become the night that lets you experience the happiness you were never allowed to have. Heaven or hell doesn’t matter—if I’m by your side.’
If he would accept her…
Could she burn her remaining life just to live for him?
Aria wondered.
If so, she would gladly become a night that illuminated him—even if it meant falling completely into ruin.
“Has the lord gone mad?”
As several maids entered the attic room, the old wooden floor creaked loudly.
Aria sat on the bed, silently staring out the window, then turned to look at them.
The maids placed a plate carelessly on the yellowed, stained blanket.
It was a foul-smelling soup that looked like pig slop.
“They suddenly told us to bathe her and dress her up.”
“Why?”
“How would I know?”
They all glanced at Aria with displeased expressions.
She was the ghost of this estate, and if anything, the Count’s outlet for rage.
So why order them to serve her now?
“Don’t tell me he’s finally acknowledging her as his daughter?”
“No way.”
“Right. He said even death wouldn’t put the shame of the family into the records.”
“Maybe he’s drunk again? Ever since the lady died, he’s been drinking every day.”
“Or maybe he’s trying to replace her… like a decorative doll to keep nearby.”
Aria had received no care at all, yet it was obvious she carried the blood of a siren.
Her hair, flowing like waves down to her waist, resembled a cherry blossom tree filling a garden with spring.
Her eyes were like pink sapphires meticulously cut and set into place.
Her flushed cheeks, tinted by the cold, looked like ripe peaches.
An undeniably beautiful child. Her appearance was so striking that it gave the impression of a spring fairy.
‘A siren.’
When describing the legendary race, everyone said the same thing:
Incomparable beauty.
Once they captured your gaze, you could not look away; once you heard their voice, you could never escape it.
‘They were once just legend.’
But when Aria’s mother, Sofia, first appeared in the world, no one could deny it.
The existence of beautiful monsters known as sirens.
‘Look at her eyes. They’re like jewels.’
One maid stared at the child sitting like a doll on the bed, almost entranced, before quickly shaking herself awake.
“But so what… she can’t speak.”
