An eerie sound pierced the stillness, waking me up.

  It began as a whisper, a faint ripple in the dark, growing into a melody so exquisite it seemed to weave itself into the fabric of my being. Heavenly humming, absolutely captivating, alluring, perfect. Each note shimmered across me, pulling me from the depths of unconsciousness with an irresistible grace.

  My eyes shot open as the song enveloped me, its beauty so profound it bordered on pain.

  It was night. The day had vanished away, stolen from me by the Yaga's domain-binding magic.

  I attempted to locate the source of the hum in the gloom.

  Yellow-gold eyes slowly emerged from the darkness, unblinking and predatory. I swallowed nervously.

  A ray of moonlight cut through the clouds above and my breath caught in my throat as an inhuman silhouette emerged from the shadows, its form a fusion of human and giant bird. The thing's feathers glinted with an oily sheen of midnight hues, sparkling with green shimmers at the edges melded seamlessly with the lithe, elongated limbs of a humanoid figure. Large talons clicked softly against the frozen ground, each step deliberate, as it approached and began to circle the boundary of my newfound domain.

  The bird-humanoid head tilted, revealing a face that was both avian and human. Curves of breasts revealed themselves between black and emerald feathers. Her wingspan must have stretched four meters at least, each primary feather ending in a sharp point.

  My analytical mind kicked in, desperately attempting to figure out a defense against the mentally captivating music flooding my system.

  The creature's features resembled something between a harpy eagle and a peregrine falcon—apex predators with specialized killing adaptations. Her primary wing feathers had the asymmetrical structure common to birds of prey, designed for swift, silent diving attacks. The oily sheen on her feathers suggested the presence of specialized preen gland secretions, perhaps water-repellent like those of waterfowl.

  Her proportions challenged my understanding of biomechanics. I noted her respiratory system must be extraordinary; no visible panting despite the obvious muscle mass that would require tremendous oxygen exchange. Perhaps she possessed an enhanced avian air sac system? The golden eyes showed no tapetum lucidum reflection despite the darkness—instead they were emitting a consistent, hypnotic golden glow.

  Focusing on these details helped anchor my racing mind, giving me something concrete to cling to beyond the pull of her voice.

  Then, her human lips parted fully. The words of her song struck me like a blade pressed to my throat.

  "

  Flesh so tender, soul misplaced.

  Step beyond your ring of earth,

  Join me, no longer be alone.

  Feathers soft shall cradle yee,

  Golden eyes shall set yee free.

  Why dost yee resist my call?

  Earthbound one, so frail, so small."

  The voice was sweet as honey, yet laced with a hunger that sent a shiver racing down my spine. The beast, twice taller than a man, stalked the perimeter of my glade, her massive wings folding and unfolding with a rustle like wind through dead leaves.

  The song wasn't simple animal vocalization—the lyrics were structured, with meter and rhyme schemes. They contained abstract concepts and emotional manipulation. The song demonstrated syntax, semantics, and rhetorical devices.

  I sunk deeper into the rational analysis to fight the maddening pull of her music.

  What sort of neural structures could generate such communication? Birds on Earth possessed remarkable intelligence despite their small brains—corvids could use tools and recognize themselves in mirrors with neural tissue organized differently than mammals. Some birds like parrots could easily emulate human speech and random noises. But this creature's capabilities seemed on another level entirely.

  How did such a being develop? What processes shaped this combination of traits?

  "Taste the sky, the wind, the flame,

  Speak to me, whisper mine name.

  Sirin waits, her heart alight,

  Come, my sweet, into the night."

  She sang, calling me out of my glade.

  Sirin? This was the monster Grandhilda mentioned, a dangerous creature that ate witches and heroes then.

  I mentally catalogued her features once again, assigning tentative classifications as if preparing a scientific paper: Homo avianthropus sirinium. Order: predatory. Family: avoid-at-all-costs.

  The song somehow tugged at my limbs, urging me to rise, to step forward, to surrender to her warm, alien, feathery embrace. My heart thudded painfully in my chest, each beat a war drum against the call.

  Yaga Grandhilda's warning echoed in my mind: "Remain in your glade and do not move, do not breathe."

  I stopped breathing.

  My body obeyed instinctively, freezing in place as though I were one of the barren trees rooted to this patch of earth. The air grew cold and heavy, pressing against my lungs, but I clenched my jaw and held my breath, willing myself to become as still as the ground beneath me.

  The Sirin's golden, glowing eyes narrowed, her song rising in pitch, a desperate edge creeping into the flawless harmony. She took another step closer, and I could see the intricate patterns on her feathers—swirls and whorls that seemed to contain galaxies of tiny emerald stars when they caught the moonlight. Her face, though alien, possessed a haunting beauty that made my heart ache.

  "Moonlight dances on pale skin,

  Forest witch, let me in.

  Cross the boundary of your fear,

  My song will dry each bitter tear.

  Through veils of mist and shadow deep,

  I'll guard your soul while you sleep.

  Why resist my golden call?

  When stars above begin to fall?"

  Her voice rose an octave.

  "I've watched you from my realm divine,

  Your solitude echoes mine.

  Feathers of silk shall be your bed,

  My wings, a shelter for your head."

  The words coiled around me, seductive and insidious, promising freedom, power, an escape from the shivering, battered, skinny, foreign body I now inhabited. My vision blurred at the edges, colorful spots dancing in my eyes. I felt a physical pull toward her, as if her voice generated its own gravitational field.

  The biochemist in me fought frantically against the supernatural allure.

  I considered if her song was potentially operating on specific neurochemical pathways—stimulating dopamine and oxytocin release while suppressing amygdala activity to reduce fear. Similar to how certain Earth parasites could manipulate host behavior through neurochemical hijacking. The Toxoplasma gondii parasite made rodents attracted to cat urine rather than fearful of it—could this be the same principle but weaponized and conscious, projected through sound waves?

  To distract my mind from focusing on her song, I forced myself to silently recite the Krebs cycle, tracing each metabolic step: citrate to isocitrate to α-ketoglutarate...

  The complex biochemical pathway provided a bit of a countermeasure to her melodic assault, giving my prefrontal cortex something to cling to. When that failed, I moved to recalling protein folding simulations, visualizing complex three-dimensional structures assembling from amino acid chains.

  My fingers dug into the frozen soil as my body trembled with the conflicting impulses—the irresistible urge to rise and approach her versus the desperate need to remain still. A trickle of blood ran down my palm where my fingernails had pierced the skin. The sharp pain helped ground me further.

  I fiercely clung to the witch's words, anchoring myself to the soil. This was my domain, my sanctuary—however fragile, however untested. I would not be lured out of it like some witless prey.

  "Ancient powers course through my veins,

  I offer freedom from your chains.

  Forests whisper of my might,

  Creatures tremble at my sight."

  The Sirin paused, talons gouging the earth just beyond the invisible line that marked my glade as she hummed. Her head cocked unnaturally, studying me with those molten eyes. The song faltered for a heartbeat, then resumed, softer now, a crooning lullaby meant to wear down my resolve.

  "Leave behind your forest throne,

  No longer shall you walk alone.

  My talons gentle on your face,

  My kiss shall leave eternal grace."

  The words dripped with a velvet sweetness that masked the razor beneath.

  Her golden eyes bored into me, unblinking, as if she could peel back the layers of my will. The air thrummed with her presence, heavy and electric, and I felt the pull of her song tightening around my neck like a noose.

  My lungs screamed for breath, my body trembling from the effort of stillness, but I held fast, rooted to the earth like a stubborn sapling in a storm.

  "Surrender to my siren song,

  Come to where you have belonged all along."

  She stepped closer, her talons sinking deeper into the snow-crusted ground, each click a deliberate note in her unspoken threat. Her wings flexed, feathers shimmering with an iridescent gleam—black fading to emerald at the edges—as she leaned forward, her unnervingly humanoid, dark face tilting towards me.

  I realized that her eyes were looking past me into the darkness. She couldn't actually see me—she was hunting blindly, sensing the magical signature of my domain but somehow completely unable to pinpoint my exact location or determine who or what I was. The domain’s protection was working.

  The song suddenly cut off. She cocked her head, listening intently. With shocking speed, she howled and darted to another side of my domain, her massive wings half-extended for balance as she crouched, predatory and focused.

  "You are here… somewhere nearby," she whisper-sung, her voice carrying with perfect clarity through the still night air. "I feel your living soul… a fragile, young life bound to the earth by chains of the dead."

  She prowled closer to the edge of my domain, her head tilting in a distinctly bird-like manner.

  "Ah," she crooned softly, "You are Grandhilda's handiwork. The old crone has created another witch… here amidst the ruins of Svalbard." She let out a sound that might have been laughter. "How desperate she must be, to chain so many human souls forevermore to this cursed place."

  Her knowledge of the Yaga was startling.

  The Sirin resumed her humming.

  My mind raced, analyzing the nature of her hypnotic voice as it once again struck me trying to hijack my body.

  This wasn't simple auditory processing—the effect bypassed normal neural pathways, targeting deeper, more primitive brain structures.

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  I recalled that hypnosis typically required a receptive subject and operated through suggestion, not compulsion. This, however, was something more invasive, more fundamental—almost like the song was rewriting my neural connections in real time.

  I focused on creating countermeasures, drawing on my knowledge of neurochemistry.

  Hypnotic states involved shifts in brainwave patterns, typically from beta to alpha or theta frequencies. If I could maintain beta wave activity—the state of alert, focused consciousness—I might resist her influence. I began to silently perform complex calculations, deriving biochemical equations, mentally balancing oxidation-reduction reactions—anything to keep my prefrontal cortex engaged and dominant over the limbic system her song was targeting.

  With a sudden movement that made me flinch inwardly, she snatched a rock from the ground and hurled it across my domain. It flashed through the air, mere inches from my head, striking a tree with a dull thud.

  I didn't blink. Didn't move. My lungs burned for oxygen, spots dancing before my eyes, but I remained motionless.

  "Clever," she murmured, her tone frustrated. "But how long can you hide, little witch? How long before you give in?"

  Her humming intensified as she circled my domain.

  I continued my silent battle against her influence, recalling studies on auditory entrainment. The brain naturally synchronized with external rhythmic stimuli—a phenomenon called frequency following response. Perhaps her song created patterns designed to override my neural oscillations, to entrain my brainwaves to her rhythm, making me susceptible to suggestion.

  To counter this, I focused on maintaining an irregular mental pattern. Instead of fighting the pull directly, which would create tension her song could latch onto, I let my thoughts flow chaotically—jumping randomly between memories of chemical formulas, snippets of scientific papers, even childhood nursery rhymes.

  My hope was that the unpredictable neural activity would prevent the synchronization her song required.

  I visualized my mind as a complex ecosystem, with her song as an invasive species attempting to establish dominance. My chaotic thoughts were a form of controlled burning—destroying the regular patterns her influence needed to take root.

  She began to circle faster, humming angrily, this time trailing her talons along the ground, leaving deep gouges in the earth. Each mark glowed faintly with an eerie blue light before fading—some kind of magical attempt to breach my sanctuary.

  I saw that the marks created a pattern—a complex sigil that seemed to be designed to counteract whatever protection my domain offered. The glowing marks pulsed in rhythmic sequences like some arcane circuit board attempting to override a security system.

  My lungs burned with increasing agony, oxygen deprivation sending waves of rising and falling dizziness through my consciousness. Black spots crowded my vision, and my diaphragm spasmed involuntarily, desperate to draw breath.

  The autonomic nervous system was overriding my conscious control. Humans weren't built for extended breath-holding—mammalian diving reflexes can only suppress respiratory drive for so long before carbon dioxide levels trigger involuntary inhalation.

  The Sirin must know this. Was she playing a waiting game?

  Yet, somehow, I didn't breathe.

  She paused in her circling, tilting her head to listen. Could she not hear the frantic pounding of my heart? The rush of blood in my ears sounded deafening to me—a roar of oxygen-starved tissues demanding relief.

  The Sirin's frustration mounted visibly. Her feathers bristled, rising along her spine like hackles—a display behavior reminiscent of threatened birds enlarging their silhouette. The feathers quivered with microscopic movements, catching the moonlight in captivating patterns.

  My vision swam across her body. Was this another method of attack? Visual hypnosis to complement the auditory assault? I thought of complex mathematics and closed my eyes, not looking at the shimmering feathers.

  She suddenly launched herself into the air with a powerful thrust of her wings, circling above my domain, her shadow passing over me like a dark promise. The downdraft from her wings sent icy air rushing across my face, stealing what little warmth remained in my skin. I felt my consciousness wavering, the edge of a blackout creeping in from the periphery of my vision.

  I continued my silent battle even as the Sirin stalked around my domain, making irate bird sounds. Then she began to sing again, repeating the words of her song.

  As my mind began to melt into submission, I focused my thoughts on another approach to fighting her hypnotic influence—cognitive dissonance.

  Hypnotic suggestions worked best when aligned with existing beliefs and desires. By deliberately maintaining contradictory thoughts, I could potentially create mental friction to disrupt her influence.

  I focused on simultaneously holding opposing concepts: I desired safety yet craved exploration; I feared her yet found her fascinating; I wanted warmth but embraced the cold ground beneath me. The cognitive dissonance created a mental static, a background noise of unresolved tensions that interfered with the clean signal of her hypnotic song.

  I also employed semantic satiation—mentally repeating key words from her song until they lost meaning, becoming empty phonetic sounds. "Come" became "kou-mee," then just vibrations without significance. By destroying the semantic content of her lyrics, I tried to neutralize their power to compel me into action.

  The array of my mental techniques seems to help form a layered defense against her supernatural lure. I felt the influence of her song weakening, unable to find purchase in my deliberately fragmented consciousness.

  "Come on! Leave that circle! JUST COME HOME! Arghhhh!"

  The final plea erupted into a wild, piercing screech. Her large, green-black wings snapped open fully, and she beat them furiously against the air.

  "Arghrgghhh!"

  Snow and ash exploded outward in a blinding flurry, the gusts battering my face as I crouched lower, pressing myself into the frozen ground. The Sirin's silhouette blurred, feathers whipping like dark blades, her golden eyes flashing with a manic fury. She lunged forward, talons raking the air right above me.

  The humming ceased, leaving only the crackle of the unnatural flames and the distant howl of the wind. For a moment, she simply stared past me, gold eyes filled with frustrated hunger.

  Then, with a sudden stillness that was somehow more terrifying than her rage, she composed herself. Her feathers smoothed, her posture straightening to its full, imposing height.

  "Tonight… I shall grant you respite," she uttered. "But know this, little witch—I have tasted the magic of your prison. I feel its pulse. I will not stop until I free you.”

  She took a deliberate step back, her talons clicking against stone. A thin trickle of ichor-like fluid dripped from the corner of her mouth, glimmering with an unnatural phosphorescence. Was it saliva? Venom? Some magical substance produced in anticipation of feeding?

  The ichor failed to drop to the ground, simply converging into a glowing sphere of fluid, hovering in the air and defying gravity.

  She extended her hand, dragging a taloned finger through the fluid, then used it to draw a complex symbol in the air. The mark too hung suspended, glowing with a sickly yellow light that pulsed and undulated.

  "I mark you as mine," she stated, the symbol suddenly shooting forward, stopping precisely at the boundary of my domain where it hovered, rotating slowly. "This magic is thus imprinted upon your domain and will grow in power with each day until I am able to see you.”

  I kept perfectly still, somehow still not breathing. Why was she telling me all of this? Did my fear or belief in her words increase the potency of her magic or was something else at play here?

  "Winter brings long nights," she continued, her golden eyes sweeping the area, searching in vain for any sign of me. "And in those cold hours of darkness, your will shall falter. Loneliness and misery will be your undoing.”

  She began to hum again, but this time the melody seemed to penetrate the very ground beneath me, making the earth vibrate subtly—a different approach to bypass my domain's protection. I pushed my consciousness deeper into chaotic thought patterns, creating a mental white noise to drown out the vibrations trying to sync with my nervous system.

  "And I will be waiting, patient as the stars. Singing until you submit.”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper, as if sharing a secret with the night itself. "Your maker Grandhilda is a fool. One who made a terrible mistake. This village is cursed by flames aligned with death. Over time your glade will weaken, perish. You are doomed by your master to suffering, little witch. I will not stay here all night, for the air here is vile and claws at my breath.”

  Her reference to cursed flames—presumably ones left by the dragon—was concerning.

  The Sirin spread her magnificent wings to their full span, the moonlight catching each feather in a display that was breathtaking despite the threat they embodied.

  "Farewell for now, little prisoner of the earth. Dream of me. Dream of flight. Dream of the moment when your will breaks, and you step beyond your circle to join me in the endless night."

  Then, with a final, resentful, inhuman wail, she thrust her wings downward, launching herself into the sky. The force of her ascent sent a shockwave rippling through the glade, bending the skeletal trees and scattering snowflakes about.

  The floating hexagram she left hovering in place began to fade away, dissolving into the air.

  As her silhouette disappeared into the night sky, I remained still for several more minutes, wary of a potential feint. Only when I was certain she had truly departed did I finally allow myself to breathe.

  The first breath was agony—like inhaling broken glass. My lungs spasmed, desperate to compensate for the extended oxygen deprivation. My vision pulsed with each frantic heartbeat—black to red to normal and back again.

  I retched violently, my diaphragm cramping from the sudden exertion after prolonged tension. Flecks of blood appeared in my spittle—had I damaged something internally?

  I reflected on what had just occurred—my understanding of human psychology had actually worked against an overtly supernatural attack. If hypnotic suggestion could be countered with neuroscientific principles, what other "magic" might be understood and potentially defended against through rational analysis?

  The air tasted sharp and cold, laced with the acrid tang of burnt wood and the faint, musky scent of feathers and ozone. A chemical residue lingered—something oily and foreign that coated my tongue and throat. Had she released airborne compounds with the hexagram as part of her hunting strategy?

  I pressed my trembling hand against my chest, feeling my heart hammering against my ribcage at what must have been well over 180 beats per minute. Tachycardia from stress and oxygen debt. If this continued, I risked cardiac damage. I forced myself to take slower, deeper breaths, fighting against my body's panicked rhythm.

  I considered the dangerously high level of the Sirin's intelligence. She wasn't just a predator; she was a thinking being with memory, spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and language. She understood complex social dynamics—recognizing the relationship between Grandhilda and her "created" witches. She even demonstrated theory of mind—the ability to understand that others have different mental states and knowledge than oneself.

  The biochemist in me couldn't help but wonder about her neurochemistry. Did her brain use the same neurotransmitters as humans? The same ion channels? The same cellular structures?

  My heart beat like mad as I stared into the unnerving darkness, flinching at every rustling branch and wind whisper, half-expecting the Sirin to return at any moment. I replayed our encounter in my mind, analyzing what had worked in my defense and what I might improve upon.

  The mental techniques I'd employed against her hypnotic song—chaotic thinking, cognitive dissonance, semantic satiation, and focused scientific analysis—had proven effective. But they'd required tremendous concentration, and I'd barely maintained them under ideal conditions. Doing so while holding my breath was draining.

  What if I were injured, exhausted, or taken by surprise? I needed to develop these defenses further, make them more instinctive.

  The night stretched on, an endless shroud of shadow and silence punctuated only by the faint crackle of the dying flames and my ragged breathing. Every few minutes, I thought I saw movement at the corner of my vision—a flicker of emerald feathers, a flash of golden eyes—only to find nothing when I focused on the spot.

  The dragonfire—if that's what it truly was—had died out, leaving the village around me a dark graveyard of charred husks and smoldering embers.

  The forest beyond loomed dark and eerie, its skeletal trees swaying in a frigid wind that carried whispers of creaking branches and distant, mournful howls. Strange lights occasionally flickered between the trunks—blue-white pulses that appeared and vanished too quickly to track. More predators? Some form of bioluminescence?

  Wolves, or perhaps something worse, howled in the distance—the sound distorted and different from any wolf calls I'd heard before. The howls contained harmonics that seemed unusual for mammalian vocal production.

  I lay there, sprawled across the frozen ground, my body a trembling wreck of exhaustion and adrenaline. Occasionally, my muscles would spasm violently—aftereffects of the extended oxygen deprivation and the Sirin's song still echoing through my nervous system. My right arm had gone completely numb, and I felt an intermittent pressure behind my eyes, as if something were trying to push its way out from inside my skull.

  The Sirin's song still echoed in my skull, a ghostly refrain that tugged at my resolve, but I forced it down, burying it beneath layers of rational thought. She was gone, driven off by the invisible boundary of my domain.

  My chest heaved with shallow breaths, the cold biting at my damp clothes, but beneath me, the earth pulsed faintly, a heartbeat of strange warmth that slowly seeped into my bones.

  I pressed my palms flat against the soil, fingers curling into the icy crust as if I could anchor myself to it more deeply. The sensation grew stronger—a subtle, thrumming connection, like the hum of a generator.

  It wasn't just warmth, I realised–it was sustenance, a quiet promise of safety woven into the fabric of this ruined place. My domain, Yaga had called it. My sanctuary. Whatever power I'd gained, it was tied to this patch of earth, and for now, it somehow was enough to keep me alive, and didn't allow me to simply freeze to death.

  The wind gusted harder, rattling the barren trees and sending a flurry of snow cascading over me. I shivered, but the cold felt distant now, blunted by the steady warmth rising from the ground below. My eyelids grew heavy, the weight of the day—of the cold river, the radial fire, the suspicious witch, and the terrifying yet mesmerizing Sirin—pressing down on me like a physical force. I wanted to stay vigilant, to watch the shadows for her return, but my body betrayed me, sinking into the embrace of the inexplicably warm ground.

  The distant howls faded away, swallowed by the vastness of the forest.

  The creaking trees became a lullaby, their groans blending with the wind's mournful sigh. My thoughts slowed, fragmenting into disjointed pieces—the lost agate amulet, the hexagram flaking from my chest, the incomprehensible runes that had branded themselves into my vision. There were questions I needed answered, mysteries I intended to unravel, but not tonight.

  Tonight, I was alive, and that was victory enough.

  My breathing steadied, matching the rhythm of the faint, deep pulse of my domain, feeling like a second heartbeat beneath me, like invisible, impossible hugs that cradled me from below.

  The last thing I saw before sleep claimed me was a dark gray sky, thick with clouds, shedding snowflakes. They spun and glittered like falling stars in the rays of unnaturally vibrant, violet-blue moonlight cutting occasional lines through the gloom.