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The boy was not older than 7 years old when he heard the tales of the siren song — he’d overheard the conversation of a group of sea folk by the docks. Benzo had brought him along to make sure he would be able to carry the shipment back to the shop, but as he heard a commotion on board, Ekko had let his curiosity get the best of him and jumped inside the harboured ship.
He swiftly hid himself between the barrels on board, trying his hardest not to slip on his own feet due to the movement of the ship. Ekko watched as one boy was dragged outside the hold to the surface of the main deck. He stumbled upon himself as he walked, his head constantly turned back to face the small opening to the hold from where he had just come out, his eyes were painted a crimson red, from tears or exhaustion — Ekko couldn’t tell.
“Take this wretch home. And make damn sure he never sets foot on a ship again”, one of the men barked as they dragged the half-conscious sailor away. The moment their boots hit the dock, Ekko heard grunts and curses spill from the hold again: the sound of men straining to drag something heavy.
What he’d assumed was oversized cargo was actually a glass tank filled nearly to the top with seawater. It took four men bracing their shoulders to haul it out. Inside writhed a creature, half woman, half fish, her long auburn hair plastered to her face. Ekko clamped a hand over his mouth to stop a noise from escaping. Startled, he jolted upright and smacked his back into the wall. He steadied himself, quiet as prey, and stole another look over the crates.
Crushed into the tiny tank, she curled her tail tight around her body as if bracing for a blow. Her dorsal fins ran in a stark line down her back, rising and falling as she breathed. Her eyes snapped to every movement on deck with a kind of tense, patient dread. When her gaze suddenly snapped toward Ekko’s hiding place, he felt his whole body freeze.
He didn’t have time to flinch.
The men heaved the tank on its side, and the water thundered out, flooding the deck. The creature slid with it, thrashing violently, slapping the planks with her tail as she dragged herself from one end to the other like an animal choking on air. A woman strode toward her with a single brutal purpose; Ekko barely processed the blur of motion before the creature’s head rolled across the floor, trailing a thin line of blood that mixed with the seawater, turning the puddle a cloudy pink. Her body jerked once, maybe out of reflex, then went still. A scream tore the air: the boy who’d been chased off the ship fought his way back on board, face twisted with grief and fury. Ekko jumped out of the barrels like a scared cat, stumbling on his own feet to get out of the ship as soon as possible — he didn’t bother being discreet anymore.
Ekko didn’t stop running until he slipped into a narrow alley between two leaning warehouses, the smell of fish guts and rust thick in the air. He shoved his back against the wall and bent forward, hands braced on his knees, lungs scraping for breath. His mind raced faster than his pulse, replaying what he’d just seen in broken flashes of red and water.
“Ekko!” The voice cut through the chaos in his head. Familiar. Steady. He didn’t move. Footsteps approached carefully, and Benzo’s figure filled the mouth of the alley. No anger on the man’s face — just a heavy, tired kind of worry.
“You shouldn’t have seen that, son,” Benzo said, his voice iron-hard.
Ekko lifted his head, eyes burning. “Why did they have to kill it?”
Benzo sighed, the sound scraping out of him like old wood. “They’re wicked, Ekko. No good ever came from a siren’s mouth.” He jerked his chin, signalling for Ekko to walk with him. “They’ll sing to you. Songs that dig into your bones, twist your heart, and pull your soul right out. That poor boy who tried to save her… he shall never look at the sea again. Even now that she’s gone.” His voice dipped, quieter. “If you ever see one, you turn your sails the other way. You hear me?”
The boy nodded, staring down at his worn-out shoes and followed the man back to the harbour.
Time taught Ekko that sirens were far more complicated than old dockside warnings. He learned the truth in pieces, in late-night conversations, in whispers traded between sailors too tired to lie anymore. “Sirens,” they called them. Tortured souls the sea refuses to let die. Young girls dragged into the water before they ever had a chance to live, shoved beneath the waves and swallowed whole. They don’t just drown; they’re ripped apart and reshaped, forced to claw their way through currents that break bones and tear voices into screams. They fight, thrashing against a world that wants them quiet and sunken, but the ocean is patient. It hunts them. And when it finally closes its jaws around them, it doesn’t kill them — it keeps them, twisting what’s left into something half-alive and aching to survive. In the end, the sea always claimed its debts.
Ekko tried to follow Benzo’s advice. He tried hard.
But the world didn’t give him much time to be a boy.
After Benzo died before his time, Ekko took on every responsibility he had, putting it all in his own small hands. He kept the old man’s shop open for two long, miserable years. A thirteen-year-old trying to run a business meant for a grown man. The shelves emptied, the bills stacked, and the only thing heavier than the work was the silence Benzo left behind.
Eventually, land felt too tight, too hollow. So Ekko chose the sea instead.
Nothing gave the boy more comfort than the movement of the waves, the smell of salt, and the gentle turn of the tides. He patched ships with scrap metal, learned to command small crews, and taught himself to read the moods of the sea the way other kids learned to read books. Waves became pages; storms became warnings. He belonged out there. And sometimes, when the tides were calm, he could almost pretend Benzo was still beside him, guiding him with that low, steady voice.
However, a war grew up just like he did. It came quietly at first, like rot spreading under floorboards. Piltover pushed beyond its bridges, and Zaun bled for it. Ekko had found himself in the middle of a battle he never meant to be a part of, but the sea had a way of dragging him into trouble anyway.
Before long, he was smuggling supplies to starving Zaunite families, hijacking Councillors’ shipments, delaying Piltover’s operations by attacking their transports where they were weakest — on the water. And it didn’t take long for the Council to slap his ship, The Firelight, onto their list of wanted vessels as one of the most dangerous pirate ships on their borders.
Stealing supplies from Piltover felt less like a crime and more like balancing scales someone else had broken. If being loyal to his own people made him a pirate, then so be it; He would honour the name of those he trusted and loved, especially those who had already left, like Benzo, Violet and Powder.
Her blue hair used to glow like sunlight on waves. She’d tug at his sleeve in Benzo’s shop, begging him to ditch chores so they could race through Zaun’s alleys or climb rooftops until their legs gave out. She laughed loudly, ran fast, lived like the world couldn’t catch her.
And then it did.
Ekko never forgot the day her body disappeared beneath the waves — tossed like cargo by the same kind of officer they used to outrun laughing. Losing Powder felt like having the last piece of childhood ripped away.
—
The Firelight slid into the Undercity docks under a sky the colour of rusted metal. Steam hissed from pipes overhead, mixing with the thick chemical fog drifting over Zaun’s waterways. As soon as the gangplank hit the wood, the crew scattered — slipping into alleys, vanishing through trapdoors, calling out to familiar vendors in the maze of metal and shadow.
Ekko didn’t follow them.
He moved with purpose, hood low, boots silent on the planks. Ten months. Ten months chasing whispers, bribing dockhands, stealing coded messages, listening from behind walls that stank of oil and mould. Ten months tracking the same name: The Kirammans.
He ducked beneath a dripping pipe and stepped into the back corridor of a grimy tavern. Two men leaned over crates, arguing in low, frantic tones. Ekko stayed in the shadow, just close enough to hear.
“I’m telling you, the Council wouldn’t approve it if it weren’t important.”
“It’s madness,” the other hissed. “Hunting a thing like that?”
A heavy pause.
Then the words landed like a blade to Ekko’s spine:
“The Kirammans are sponsoring the siren hunt.”
Ekko stepped back too quickly, and his shoulder bumped a metal beam with a sharp clang. Both men snapped their heads toward the sound.
“Oi! Who’s there?”
He didn’t run. Not immediately. He let them get close enough to make eye contact, just long enough for them to recognise the smirk of a boy who wasn’t afraid of them, before he bolted. He didn’t stop until he reached the lower walkway overlooking the canals. The echoes of Zaun’s machinery rattled beneath his feet, but his mind was somewhere else entirely.
A siren. He knew the rumours. Everyone did.
A siren named like a bad omen.
Jinx.
A voice of destruction at sea, sinking whole crews with nothing but her voice. Survivors, if they existed at all, spoke of her like a nightmare. A siren touched by arcane magic, capable of powering weapons, fueling war machines, and giving Piltover the victory it had always wanted.
The kind of power someone would die to claim.
Ekko leaned on the railing, knuckles white. Behind him, his second in command, Scar, stepped out of a small shack, wiping grease off her hands with a rag. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ekko didn’t turn. “You ever hear the name Jinx?” he asked.
Scar snorted. “Hear it? I’ve heard grown men piss themselves over it. Why? Planning to go monster hunting?”
“Not a chance.” Ekko shook his head. “I’m not suicidal.”
He raised a brow. “Funny. Thought our whole job was being suicidal.”
He didn’t argue. Scar wasn’t wrong.
Ekko’s stomach twisted. He hadn’t seen a siren since he was a child. Since the night that still pricked at the back of his mind when the seas went too quiet. He never meant to cross paths with one again. He’d changed course at the first hint of singing, but fate didn’t give a damn about the promises he made to himself.
There was a weight in the air, heavy, suffocating, the same weight he felt before storms that tore sails apart and flipped ships like toys. His instincts screamed that if he chased the Kiramman vessel, he wouldn’t come back whole.
Maybe it wouldn’t come back at all. Ekko exhaled slowly, forcing the tension from his shoulders.
“I’ve survived worse,” he said quietly.
Scar gave him a look that said he wasn’t sure he believed him, but to be fair, Ekko wasn’t sure he believed himself either. But he turned toward the docks anyway. Storm or not, he was already walking straight into it. They would track down Jinx before the Kirammans could so much as catch her scent and make sure the story ended on their terms.
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The storm cracked open the sea like a skull splitting under a hammer, and Jinx stirred from the depths where she slept coiled in darkness. Pressure rolled through the water in heavy, vibrating waves, the kind that made her gills flare and her teeth pulse with hunger. She rose, not with thought but with instinct — the primal pull of disturbance, of trespass, of warm bodies slicing through her currents.
She rose from the deep like a blade pulled from a sheath, tail carving through the black water in smooth, deadly arcs. She broke the surface with a sharp inhale, pupils contracting against the electric light webbing across the sky. Above her, ships thrashed through the storm like wounded beasts — metal and wood splitting, machinery screaming under the weight of the waves. The air stank of burned hextech, hot metal, and human sweat. Her lip curled, exposing rows of sharp, uneven teeth. These waters were hers. They had been hers long before any floating carcass dared drift into them.
Her tail flicked once, and she surged forward.
The first scent that hit her came from Piltover — cold, bitter, laced with hextech that scratched at the edges of her senses like broken glass. Zaun trailed behind it with a harsher, oil-thick odour that coated the back of her throat. Both were unwanted. Both were intruders. And the storm only heightened her agitation, the arcane inside her skin humming violently, demanding release. She felt the world in colours and pulses: the gold-blue burn of hextech charges, the murky green churn of Zaun’s engines, the frantic scatter of human heartbeats banging uselessly against their ribs.
When the first harpoon struck the water near her, she reacted like any cornered animal — violently and without hesitation. A sound tore from her chest, not a song but a guttural shriek that rattled the bones of the nearest ships. The wave she summoned rose with predatory precision, slamming into the bow of a Piltovan vessel with crushing force. Wood snapped like bones. Blood hit the water in thin red ribbons that drifted lazily toward her.
Her mouth opened, hunger clawing at her insides, and she lunged.
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Ekko clung to the Firelight’s rigging as the mast buckled under lightning’s strike. Blue-white light exploded through the air, outlining him sharply in the storm, a defiant figure against the chaos. His skin glistened with rain, his breath visible in short bursts, his movements frantic but stubbornly controlled.
The storm had swallowed the world whole. Rain hammered the deck of the Firefly in vicious sheets, drowning out every shouted order. The sea roared, the wind howled, the mast groaned under the assault, but none of it mattered once Ekko heard a song. At first, it threaded through the chaos like a trick of the wind—thin, distant, impossible to place. But then it grew, curling around his ribs like fingers of cold smoke. A voice. Not loud. Not sharp. Soft, almost curious, humming through the crashing water with an unnatural calm. It vibrated through the wood, through Ekko’s spine, through the thunder itself. The storm didn’t swallow it. The storm carried it.
His hand froze on the splintered mast. His heartbeat slowed. A strange warmth spread through his chest, gentle and dizzying, out of place in a night so violent it felt like the world was ending.
Then he saw her.
A pale shape between the waves, blue braided hair floating around her like tattered silk, eyes burning blue beneath the surface. She wasn’t fighting the storm; she moved with it, rising and sinking as if the water itself shaped her body. Her gaze locked onto him with predatory stillness, the kind that stopped time entirely. Just one long, unbroken look, and Ekko felt the world lurch under his feet.
She lifted her head above the water, lips parting slightly as she continued to sing notes that slid under his skin like warm needles, rewiring the parts of him that told him to run, to fight, to live. The melody sweetened, sinking into something intimate, coaxing, as if it had been meant for him alone from the beginning of time.
“Ekko!” one of his crew shouted, grabbing his arm. “Don’t look—don’t listen—”
He barely registered the voice. Wind. Water. Thunder. Words. They all became muted, distant, irrelevant. But her… every inch of her was unbearably sharp. The shine of her scales beneath the lightning. The way her pupils narrowed was like an animal scenting blood. The way her shoulders lifted, tense with hunger, every movement carrying the cold certainty of a creature evolved to kill in silence.
The singing changed. Softer. Warmer. She tilted her head with a curious, almost childlike twitch, studying him as if she’d found something she had lost long ago. Ekko’s breath hitched. The pressure in his chest pulsed with heat, turning painfully sweet.
He stepped forward without realising it, breath hitching in his chest. “Powder…?” The name slipped out of him in a whisper meant for no one, barely louder than the storm. Because beneath the monstrous shape, beneath the scales and the hunger, he saw them — those blue eyes he’d known all his life. She looked carved from the ocean itself, something wild and unreal, ethereal in a way that made the world around her fall silent.
“Ekko, stop—STOP!”
Hands grabbed him again, more desperate this time, but he yanked forward with terrifying strength he didn’t know he had. The song guided him, threading into his muscles, bending his will like softened metal. He could feel the deck tilting under him, his boots sliding across soaked planks as he moved toward the edge.
Her eyes never left his.
The song rose—so beautiful it ached. So gentle it felt like forgiveness. So commanding it carved out everything else inside him.
And he smiled.
A slow, peaceful smile.
The crew saw it and froze. Their grip loosened with shock, with fear, with the understanding that they weren’t restraining a man; they were holding back a tide. And in one shared motion, their hands slipped from his arms.
Ekko stepped onto the rail. Rain washed over him, wind clawing at his clothes. The world tilted, opened, beckoned. Her song wrapped around him like warm arms pulling him close, promising safety where there was none.
The waves curled around her like something that belonged to her, not the other way around. She didn’t reach for the ship. She stayed just beneath the rail, body suspended in the dark like a phantom tethered to nothing, her movements smooth and sinuous, gliding along the hull with a predator’s lazy confidence. Only her face remained above the waterline, eyes fixed on Ekko with a focus so sharp it felt like she was peeling him open.
The Firelight lurched again, its mast groaning as a gust tore across the deck, but she didn’t flinch or waver. The storm seemed to move around her, leaving her untouched. Even when the ship slammed back into the next wave, throwing spray and shards of cold water across her features, she kept her gaze locked on him.
Then she moved.
Her hand slipped out of the water, fingers breaking the surface one by one. Long, pale, claw-tipped. Drops slid from her nails like beads of mercury. Her wrist hung loose, relaxed in that eerie, boneless way predators hold their limbs before they strike. She lifted it only halfway, palm half-opened, a gesture so deceptively gentle that it made Ekko’s breath catch in his throat.
The deck pitched under his feet, but his legs softened instead of bracing. His body answered before his mind could: knees bending, muscles uncoiling, his weight tipping forward until he knelt at the edge of the deck. Water dripped from his face, from his shoulders, from his trembling fingers, all falling straight toward her.
Another wave surged beneath the Firelight, forcing the rail to rise above her head, but she floated upward with it, following the ship’s movement with unnatural ease. She stayed perfectly aligned with him, as if the storm existed only to lift her closer. Her hand hovered just shy of his, trembling slightly. And Ekko couldn’t look away. Her fingers, barely parted, shook with the effort of restraint. A creature waiting for permission to take what was already hers.
He reached out.
The instant his fingertips brushed hers, a shock of cold slid through him. Her skin was impossibly smooth, soft in a way nothing born in the ocean should be.
Her fingers clamped around his wrist with brutal precision, her grip tightening so fast he barely had time to gasp. The gentleness vanished, replaced by something sharp and absolute. The next wave collided against the Firelight, slamming water up the hull, and she used it, twisting her body downward with the current, dragging him forward with the full force of the sea behind her.
Ekko hit the rail hard, the wood cracking against his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. The ship dipped suddenly, the deck tilting beneath him, and for a heartbeat, he hung suspended between the storm and the sea.
Then her pull became irresistible.
His weight shifted, the rail slid beneath him, and the storm swallowed his scream as he toppled cleanly over the edge, torn from the ship in one fluid, merciless motion—straight into her waiting grasp.
The cold swallowed him instantly. She caught him in the same heartbeat, arms coiling around him with startling strength, her hands digging into his back like claws.
Then she dragged him down.
The surface disappeared in a whirl of bubbles and light. The storm above became a distant memory. Ekko clung to the last thread of breath in his chest, feeling her scales scrape against him, her tail wrapping around his legs, her mouth brushing the hollow of his throat like she was deciding where to break him open.
Above them, the storm raged on, unaware that the boy who once ran along Zaun’s rooftops had vanished beneath its fury. The sea closed over him without a sound, swallowing his name, his ship, his fight. And somewhere in the dark, where memory twisted into instinct, Ekko reached for the last image he carried with him — blue hair, a laugh echoing between alleys, a hand pulling him into trouble. It flickered once, fragile as a flame in the wind, and then the ocean took that, too.