The Siren’s Captive

On Nereida, an ocean world where humanity has built remote research outposts, doctoral researcher Ethan Ward is transferred to Viridian Island to study the planet’s merfolk. There, he encounters Ophelia—a lone figure with silver-gold hair and a black-gold tail—and mistakes her for a deep-sea merfolk cut off from her pod. Convinced she knows nothing about courtship customs, Ethan decides to teach her himself.