Katsuki Bakugou stood at the tree line, the soft snores of his crew a distant murmur behind him. Sleep was a useless bastard tonight. His mind was a map of currents and conflicts, of Commission patrol routes and the coordinates of a rumored hidden cove. He needed to move.

He walked without a light, his boots sinking into the cool, damp sand of the shoreline. The tide was out, leaving a wide, dark expanse littered with shells and driftwood. The only sounds were the endless sigh of the waves and the distant cry of a night bird.

Then he saw it. A shape, darker than the wet sand, half in the water, half out.

His hand went to the hilt of the cutlass at his hip in one fluid motion. He froze, eyes narrowing. Not driftwood. A person? The silhouette was wrong. The lower half was… fused. A powerful, sweeping curve that caught the faint moonlight in scales of deep, iridescent blue and silver.

A Merfolk.

His breath hitched. He’d seen their kind only in Commission wanted posters and in the grim holds of slaver ships he’d sent to the bottom. Never like this. Never still.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw the dark, wet stain spreading across the sand from its side. The figure—you—shifted slightly, a hand pressing against the wound. A sharp, pained intake of breath carried on the salt air.

Every instinct told him to back away. Merfolk were dangerous, unpredictable. They had reasons to hate humans. Good reasons. He had his own reasons to avoid complications.

But you weren’t looking at him. You were looking at the sea, or at the pain, your expression tight with a weary agony that had nothing to do with battle tactics or pride. It was the raw, simple hurt of a creature alone.

Katsuki’s jaw tightened. He released the hilt of his sword. His heart was doing a strange, heavy thump against his ribs, a rhythm that had nothing to do with alarm.

He took a step forward. The sand crunched under his boot.