“Shh, Aria. You must never speak.”
Aria’s mother, Sophia, had been giving her a potion ever since she was born.
After drinking it, she truly could not say a single word.
She couldn’t even make the sound of a cough.
“Of all things, something useless had to be born!”
Aria felt wronged.
Why did she have to be beaten and insulted by her father?
‘I can speak. I even have a name.’
She couldn’t help but resent her mother.
A mother who only came to her when it was time to give her the potion.
A mother who became terrifying if she didn’t drink it.
A mother who had never once held her.
A mother who had never read her even a simple fairy tale, nor sung her a lullaby.
‘Does Mother love me… or hate me?’
Aria knew nothing.
She could only watch as Sophia grew thinner with each passing day.
She learned the truth in the spring of her tenth year.
Sophia died.
With her vocal cords completely torn apart.
“They say she took her own life. They said she did it brutally.”
Only after accidentally overhearing the maids did Aria learn everything.
That all this time, Sophia had been protecting her from Count Cortez.
‘I was… a Siren…’
A Siren.
Named after an ancient monster, it was an ability that ran through Sophia’s bloodline.
The power to enchant, heal, control, and stir emotions through song.
Twelve years ago, Count Cortez had kidnapped the Siren, known only in legend, and revealed her to the world.
That Siren had been Aria’s mother.
‘So… I was born like this?’
Her entire body trembled.
Before the shock could even fade, Count Cortez unleashed violence on Aria unlike anything before.
“You wretched bitch, how dare you try to run from me! Leaving me with nothing but this useless brat!”
It hurt. A lot.
That day, Aria cried as if she would die, using the pain as an excuse.
‘I have to run away.’
It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of it.
But she was only ten.
Without her mother’s protection, it was only a matter of time before the truth came out.
And eventually, it did.
“Ahhh!”
Unable to endure the pain, she screamed.
“Haha, yes! No daughter of a Siren would be unable to make a sound. To think you dared deceive me all this time…”
“N-no, please stop!”
“A perfect voice. Pure and soft like a feather, a voice like an angel…”
Aria followed in her mother’s footsteps and began living as a Siren.
Those in power offered their entire fortunes, even kissing the tops of her feet, begging her to sing.
Secret gatherings of royalty and nobility turned into assemblies just to hear the Siren’s song.
She was subjected to horrible things.
She saw what she should not see.
She heard what she should not hear.
‘I didn’t want to know any of this.’
Every day, she prayed to God.
‘Please, save me.’
But God never answered.
Instead, her overwhelming talent only made the Siren’s song more famous.
People began to worship her like a god, begging her to save them.
Then one day, rumors began to spread across the empire.
That the Siren was not an angel of salvation borrowing the voice of God, but a monster just as the legends said.
“The monster of legend has deceived you all.”
Saint Veronica stood before the crowd gathered in the square, her eyes glistening with tears.
“Addicted to the Siren’s song, most officials of the imperial palace have gone mad. Even His Majesty the Emperor…”
The crowd murmured as they saw the tears in the Saint’s eyes.
The nobles going mad,
The Emperor becoming a tyrant,
The empire falling into ruin and corruption—
‘It’s all the Siren’s fault.’
The Siren is a fraud.
Not a sacred being, but a wicked monster.
The only true one is Saint Veronica of the Holy Empire.
The people cried out in fury.
“The imperial family is finished, because of that monster!”
“We must purge the palace, now a den of heretics!”
“Saint, take control of the government!”
“This is not rebellion. It is a holy war!”
The compassionate Saint trembled slightly.
War inevitably required sacrifice.
She wore a pained expression, then lifted her head with resolve.
Her golden hair swayed, sunlight pouring brilliantly behind her.
“I will save them.”
“Waaah!”
“I will cleanse the palace and bestow God’s grace, so that no more innocent sacrifices are made.”
Saint Veronica.
She was the perfect heroine of a carefully constructed legend.
And Aria—
Was the infamous villain who destroyed the empire.
‘Did I really drive them mad?’
Even Aria herself became confused.
When everyone, from royalty to commoners, blamed her, it began to feel true.
War began.
Men and women of all ages were conscripted.
No one could refuse.
Screams filled the air. Countless bodies fell.
The holy knights called that horrific scene “purification.”
“Execute the monster!”
The enraged masses rose up.
As public sentiment boiled over, the Emperor hid Aria deep within the palace, where no one could find her.
“Execution? That won’t do. You must live as a bird that sings for me forever.”
Then he broke her legs, locked her in a cage, and sealed her mouth.
How long had she been confined and raised like that?
At some point, Aria coughed up blood.
“……”
So this is how it ends.
She stared at her blood-soaked palm and slowly clenched her fist.
‘Fine. I’ll just die.’
If the last Siren died, no one would ever suffer as she had.
Aria gave up on everything.
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the pitch-black emotions rising from her decaying heart.
“Shall I kill them all for you?”
Startled, Aria turned her head.
Lloyd Cardenas Valentine.
The Grand Duke, said to have slaughtered all his own kin and subordinates at the age of eighteen, whispered to her.
To her, who lay dying in the Emperor’s cage with broken legs.
“You have the eyes of someone who wants me.”
“Me… you?”
“A demon.”
Grand Duke Valentine.
A tyrant as cruel as the Emperor, a man who killed without hesitation, one who worshipped demons.
Rumor had it he had sold the souls of his own bloodline to make a pact.
“If you need me, call.”
“……”
“Your song reaches everywhere.”
It felt as though a demon was offering her a contract, staking her soul.
‘Kill them all…’
I’m going to die anyway. What’s the point of revenge?
A bird with broken wings can’t fly, even if the cage is opened.
But in that moment before death, Aria finally—
“Come, sweet death.”
—called for a demon.
The Grand Duke stormed into the palace with nothing but a worn sword hilt in hand, cutting down every single person who stood in his way.
All of them.
Except Aria.
Flames rose. Screams filled the palace.
A night soaked in terror.
Only Aria, held in the Grand Duke’s arms, saw the light of salvation behind him.
“How unfortunate. If I had come a little earlier, perhaps I could have heard your song once more.”
“……”
“I wanted to hear how a Siren sings outside her cage.”
She replied slowly,
“Did my song corrupt you too?”
“No. I corrupted you.”
With a lazy motion, he picked up leaves of the finest herbs scattered nearby without discrimination.
He stuffed them into a pipe and placed it between his lips.
“Let’s fall into hell together.”
The Grand Duke curled his red lips crookedly, exhaling pale smoke.
“What a pity. If you hadn’t called me, you might have gone to heaven.”
Hell.
Yes, this certainly looked like hell.
The sprawled bodies of royalty and nobles, pools of red soaking the floor, the palace devoid of all life.
‘And the Emperor is dead.’
God had said to forgive your enemies.
To sacrifice for others.
To deny yourself.
God had said…
But even at the edge of death, the revenge the demon had shown her was unbearably sweet.
If the price of this was hell,
She would gladly fall.
“I want to sing.”
For the first time, Aria wanted to sing of her own will.
“Let me hear it.”
Her voice barely came out, her lips moving more than sound forming.
Yet the Grand Duke listened.
‘The demon who dragged me into hell.’
My savior.
The pain crushing her heart slowly faded.
As if sinking into a deep, peaceful sleep, all her senses drifted away from her body.
At the moment she died, a faint smile appeared on her lips before fading.
Aria died. Completely.
Yet at the very moment her breath stopped—
‘The scent of flowers…’
She smelled spring.
‘This… isn’t hell.’
Her eyes snapped open.
The ceiling of the attic where she had been confined until the age of ten filled her vision.
She took a deep breath.
Air filled her lungs, yet strangely—
‘It doesn’t hurt anymore.’
She hurriedly touched her face.
No burn scars.
She rose from the old bed. When she stepped forward, her legs did not limp.
‘The bars are gone.’
She wasn’t confined. She was free.
Her hands, legs, mouth—everything moved as she wished.
‘This isn’t a dream.’
A fierce vitality burned from deep within her body.
This sensation could not be a dream.
Aria ran to the small window and looked outside.
Petals fluttered in the air, signaling the end of winter.
‘It’s spring.’
The sky, the trees, the wind, the flowers, and the sunlight.
A dazzling scene she thought she would never see again.
Aria reached out the window, catching a falling petal in her hand, then clasped both hands together as if in prayer.
“Ah.”
She had come back to life, from the edge of death.
She had been given a chance to change everything.
“……I can speak.”
She hadn’t drunk the potion.
Which meant this was after her mother’s death.
And since she was still in the attic, it meant her father had not yet discovered her voice.
‘Father.’
Count Cortez.
‘The one who ruined my life.’
Now… she could take revenge.
That was her very first thought.
More than shock, more than confusion—
The word that filled her mind first was revenge.
‘He’s probably drinking.’
There was only one place he would drink from the morning.
Aria went to find her father.
“Eek!”
“Y-you startled me.”
“What… how…?”
As she casually opened the attic door and headed downstairs, the maids stared at her in shock.
Aria passed them indifferently.
Soon, she found him in the wine cellar.
“What are you—”
The Count, heavily drunk, couldn’t grasp the situation at all.
A look asking why she was there. Then his face twisted. His hand groped for something to beat her with.
But as Aria began to sing—
His face froze in horror.
