In the quiet coastal town of Saltmarsh, seventeen-year-old Kian Reyes is haunted by the night his older brother, Lukas, vanished into the ocean. Officially ruled a drowning, Kian knows the truth is far darker because he saw something in the water that night. Something was watching. A year later, the sea hasn't let him go.
When a classmate is nearly dragged under during a bonfire, Kian witnesses the impossible: pale hands clawing from the waves and a woman's face beneath the surface, beautiful, monstrous, and smiling. As more teenagers begin to disappear or turn up dead with unnatural marks on their bodies, the town spirals into fear. But instead of believing Kian, they turn on him. Rumors spread. The police begin to question him. Even his own father believes he's losing his mind. Only Maya, his best friend, stands beside him until she hears the ocean calling her too. As the pull of the sea grows stronger, Kian realizes the truth: the mermaids are not myths, they are predators. They lure, manipulate, and hunt using the voices of the dead. Lukas wasn't lost. He was taken. And now the same creatures are coming for Kian and anyone connected to him.
Desperate for answers, Kian and Maya dig into Saltmarsh's buried history and uncover a pattern of disappearances stretching back generations. The town has always belonged to the sea. And the creatures within it have always demanded a price. As the body count rises and the town closes in on him, Kian must fight not only the creatures in the water, but the suspicion and fear of the people around him. When another boy vanishes, and the evidence points back to Kian, he realizes the mermaids aren't just hunting, they're framing him, isolating him, ensuring no one will believe the truth before it's too late. In the end, Kian is forced to confront the ocean itself and the horrifying reality that the sea has already marked him as its own. To save Maya and stop the cycle, he must resist the call that claimed his brother... or risk becoming part of the darkness beneath the waves. The ocean doesn't forget, and it never stops hunting.
