SBACFWAV CH 03

“A song heard in a half-asleep haze.”

A dreamy humming, as if heard from beneath water, soon flowed from the child’s lips.

“Awakening, it scattered like a fading dream.”

Aria’s song led the Count toward a lake of oblivion.

With a playful, sparkling melody like the mischief of an innocent fairy, it teased and toyed with his senses.

Pizzicato.

It felt as though, somewhere far away, the strings of a violin were being plucked by fingers.

“The mysterious night has vanished.”

At that moment, the Count sharply grasped the power hidden within the song.

This… was a Siren’s song.

“Th-that’s impossible.”

His eyes widened in shock.

“No, it can’t be. That half-witted mute… how could she have hidden it all this time… unless Sophia, that woman…!”

Soon, the Count was overcome with ecstasy.

The tone Aria possessed was the angelic voice he had dreamed of all his life, rich and resonant.

‘And that’s not all.’

Despite its pure, unadorned clarity, it carried a thick, suffocating scent of blood.

Once ensnared, one could never escape. Like the touch of an angel, yet leading to ruin, a deadly poison.

He instinctively realized—

‘Even among Sirens, this is on another level.’

That 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 rule it at will.

“More! Sing more… more…!”

The Count stepped on a bottle rolling on the floor and fell over.

Then, with bloodshot eyes, he reached toward Aria, crawling pitifully across the ground.

It was a wretched sight.

Aria looked down at him indifferently.

‘To think I suffered all this time for someone like this. Just to satisfy the greed of a man who knows nothing but wealth and power.’

Count Cortez.

A man who ruled his ignorant young daughter with violence, and once she could no longer resist, forced her to do anything.

Things beyond imagination.

In her memories, he had always seemed like a towering mountain.

But now, he was nothing more than a pitiful old man.

“Tonight will be the first and last time you hear my song.”

At Aria’s cold words, the Count’s expression shifted as realization dawned.

“W-wait, that song is—”

‘Yes, you should recognize it.’

It was the very first song the Count had taught her.

So she could use it to dispose of nobles who discovered truths they shouldn’t know.

“You’re about to forget everything.”

“No! What are you doing?!”

He shouted in panic, but Aria paid him no mind and began to sing again.

“A song like a mirage.

O night, you have vanished—phantom of illusion.”

Fragments of everything he had just seen, heard, and felt began to crumble within him.

A hazy sensation engulfed his entire body, and his memories vanished without a trace.

“It was all a dream.”

“No… it’s not a dream. The Siren I longed for is right here.”

The Count desperately covered his ears, muttering to resist the song of oblivion.

That voice… if I can just possess it, I’ll gain glory, honor, power, wealth beyond anything I’ve ever had…

But as if mocking his efforts, Aria poured all her power into the final verse.

“Ah… it was all just a dream.”

Overwhelmed by the immense power, he staggered, veins bulging in his neck as he screamed,

“Siren!!!”

With that final, desperate cry, his eyes, fixed on Aria, turned vacant like a fool’s.

The song ended.

There was no need to hear the belated regrets of blood kin. She had no intention of giving him a chance to beg for forgiveness.

Looking at the Count, now devoid of reason, Aria asked coldly,

“Where are the Mermaid’s Tears?”

“Mermaid’s Tears… in my bedroom… drawer beside the bed… inside a box…”

“The key?”

With unfocused eyes, he fumbled at his chest and pulled out a small key.

Taking it, Aria immediately ran to the Count’s bedroom.

Inside a jewelry box, she found a pair of pearl earrings shimmering with a rainbow sheen.

‘Found it. Mermaid’s Tears.’

The reason she had never been able to resist her father—

Was entirely because of those earrings.

Mermaid’s Tears reflected the effects of a Siren’s song back entirely.

But only songs that carried harm, those sung with malice.

As long as someone wore them, she could never attack that person.

‘That’s why I could escape him after Mother died.’

Ironically.

Though the Count never parted with the earrings, after Sophia’s death, he had stopped wearing them.

Only after discovering that Aria was a Siren did he begin wearing them again every day.

‘Mother…’

Aria brushed her fingers over the locket hanging around her neck.

‘If only I had returned a few days earlier.’

But she soon shook her head.

If she had returned even slightly earlier or later, she wouldn’t have escaped the Count’s grasp so smoothly.

It was more important not to waste this miraculous opportunity.

Aria tucked the earrings into her clothes.

---

She had truly returned to the spring of her tenth year.

Aria set down the newspaper she had taken from the Count’s room and placed a hand over her racing heart.

‘I thought I would fall into hell.’

She had denied God, yet instead of punishment, she was given another chance.

It was absurd.

Now, her face would never again be marred by burns, and her legs would never be crushed.

‘I can change the future.’

Aria felt something stir within her.

That the nightmare of her childhood, which had defined her entire life, was in truth so small and insignificant.

‘Now… what should I do?’

She fell into thought.

The potion she had drunk every day since birth, which stole her voice—

Because of it, Aria had become terminally ill.

That fact hadn’t changed, even now.

‘I’ll probably die around twenty.’

Then how could she make the rest of her life meaningful?

One thing was certain: no one could ever find out she was the last remaining Siren.

‘Because my song drives people mad.’

A Siren’s song enchants, addicting people, then drives them insane and corrupts them.

Aria was sick of it.

She didn’t want to drive anyone mad anymore.

“Siren, I’ve heard that those who hear your song go mad.”

At that moment—

“Then it won’t matter to me. I was already mad to begin with.”

She remembered the voice she had heard as she was dying.

Dull gray eyes, as if they had lost their original color.

Eyes that only lit up in response to slaughter.

A gaze wandering aimlessly, half-lidded as if intoxicated.

Even the way he couldn’t let go of drugs, as though he couldn’t endure reality sober.

‘Lloyd Cardenas Valentine.’

He had inherited the title of Grand Duke at only eighteen.

Because four years from now, a massacre would occur, wiping out every member of the Valentine bloodline and all their subordinates.

The people of the empire would call it the “Valentine Incident.”

The only survivor of that tragedy—

Was Lloyd Valentine.

Naturally, he was accused.

‘Yet he was never punished.’

People said it was the culmination of the madness passed down through the Valentine lineage.

But even the Emperor ignored the strange happenings within the duchy.

Which meant the Valentine family was untouchable.

‘Maybe it’s true.’

Perhaps he really had dealings with demons and slaughtered his own family.

After seeing his overwhelming power before her death, it was understandable why people suspected him.

‘But… he didn’t want anything.’

Who makes a pact with a demon without desire?

He hadn’t even burned with rage or revenge like Aria.

Nor was it resignation.

‘He was just… empty.’

Eyes that desired nothing, wished for nothing—

And yet he offered to take revenge for her.

Like a demon’s amusement.

She couldn’t believe such a man had caused the Valentine Incident.

‘A man who wants nothing.’

Aria wanted to kindle a spark of hope in him.

Just as he had shown her hope.

‘I want to show you the happiness you could have had. Not heaven, not hell.’

If you accept me—

May I burn the rest of my life for you?

Aria thought.

If so, then even if she fell into complete ruin, she wanted to become the night that made him shine.

---

“I think the master has gone mad.”

As several maids entered the attic, the old wooden floor creaked.

Aria, sitting on the bed and gazing out the window, turned toward them.

The maids placed a dish carelessly on the yellowed blanket.

It was a foul-smelling porridge, like pig slop.

“They suddenly told us to wash and dress her.”

“Why?”

“How would I know?”

All of them looked Aria up and down with sour expressions.

The child was like a ghost in this mansion, her only purpose being the Count’s punching bag.

And now they were told to tend to her?

“Could it be he’s finally going to acknowledge her as family?”

“No way.”

“Right. He said he’d never record a disgrace to the family, even if he died and came back.”

“Maybe it’s just drunken nonsense? He’s been drinking every day since the mistress died.”

“Maybe he wants to replace the mistress. Like a decorative doll to keep by his side.”

Even without proper care, Aria’s Siren blood was evident.

Her smooth hair, flowing to her waist like waves, resembled cherry blossoms that painted the garden with spring.

Her eyes shimmered like finely cut pink sapphires.

Her cheeks, flushed from the lingering chill of early spring, looked like ripe peaches.

A beauty no one could deny.

In spring, she shone even brighter, like a fairy of the season.

‘A Siren.’

When describing that legendary race, everyone said the same thing—

A beauty so breathtaking it defied belief.

Once your gaze was captured, you would stop in your tracks.

Once you heard their voice, you could never escape.

‘Once, it was just a legend.’

But when Aria’s mother, Sophia, first appeared before the world, no one could doubt it anymore.

The existence of the beautiful monster, the Siren.

‘Look at her eyes. They’re like jewels.’

One maid stared at the child sitting on the bed like a doll, entranced, before snapping out of it.

“Well, what does it matter? She can’t even speak.”