Max Payton pressed his palms against the weathered countertop, ocean-blue eyes fixed on the envelope before him. The bank's logo glared back, a final notice printed in bold red that might as well have been written in his mother's blood.
Three months. He murmured.
Three months before they took everything. The century-old building with its salt-crusted windows. The antique wooden shelves lined with glass bottles that caught sunlight like imprisoned rainbows. The copper distillation equipment his grandfather had salvaged from a French perfumery after the war.
His fingers traced the curve of a nearby bottle. The oceania, his mother's signature scent. The last batch she'd ever made before cancer took her away.
"What would you do, Mom?" His voice echoed through the empty shop, bouncing off walls that had witnessed three generations of Paytons transforming raw ingredients into liquid memories.
No answer came. Just the distant crash of waves against the cliffs beyond the village and the faint ticking of the grandfather clock that was probably worth enough to cover a month's payment if he sold it.
The shop bell remained silent these days. Tourists preferred the mass-produced scents from the new boutique across town with its Instagram-worthy displays and celebrity endorsements. Meanwhile, Max mixed tinctures by hand, using recipes passed down through journals and whispered secrets.
He flipped the sign to CLOSED though it hardly mattered. Tucking the final notice into his pocket, he moved to the back room where the real magic happened. Where his mother had taught him that perfume wasn't about smelling good but about capturing emotion in a bottle.
Glass vials and beakers cluttered the workspace. Dried flowers hung from the rafters. The walls were stained with decades of experimental splashes. Each mark telling the story of a failed attempt or breakthrough discovery.
Max rolled up his sleeves and opened his mother's journal. His dinner was a cold sandwich, and it sat forgotten beside burners and droppers. Sleep could wait. It always did these days.
"Seventy-three thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars," he muttered, the number burned into his brain. The loan his father had taken out for his mother's treatments. The debt that remained after selling almost everything else.
He pulled out a metal box from beneath a loose floorboard, his last resort. Inside lay a chunk of dark, waxy material that had cost him two months' savings from a contact who didn't ask questions.
It was Ambergris, whale excretion cured by ocean salt and time. Illegal in most markets but legendary among perfumers.
"Please work," he whispered, carefully shaving a small piece into his mortar.
Midnight passed as Max mixed oils and essences, following his intuition more than any recipe. His hands moved with practiced precision despite the exhaustion weighing his shoulders. The grinding stone worked against the ambergris, breaking down its structure.
Then, without warning, the chunk fractured entirely. Splitting with a sound like distant thunder. A flash of blue light sparked from within its core.
"What the—"
The scent hit him instantly—not the expected musky, marine odor of ambergris but something otherworldly. Salt and moonlight. Ancient depths and sunken treasures.
Max inhaled deeply, unable to help himself. The fragrance filled his lungs, seeping into his bloodstream.
The room swayed. His vision blurred. The last thing he remembered was slumping against the workbench, the broken ambergris glowing faintly beside his outstretched hand.
In his dreams, the ocean floor stretched endlessly. No fish swam here. Just emptiness and a strange, expectant silence.
Then movement. Pale, moon-colored waves rising from the floor. A tall figure emerged, standing over him barefoot, her body wrapped in sea-stitched silk and starlight.
Long ocean-blue hair flowed like water, rippling in an unseen tide. Her body glowed, wrapped in a sensual one-piece robe of white and gold. Regal and barely clinging to her form. Translucent fabric billowed behind her like fins from a sea goddess's gown.
Golden chains hugged her hips. Her eyes… twin sapphires flecked with phosphorescent light, stared into him and it was filled with an ancient loneliness and knowing hunger.
"You called me," she said, her voice somehow both inside his head and surrounding him like ocean pressure. "After so long, a mortal has remembered the old ways."
Max tried to speak but found no air in his lungs. Panic seized him.
"Hush." The goddess knelt beside him, trailing fingers across his cheek. "You breathe my essence now."
Her touch sent electric currents through his skin. Where her fingertips traced, his flesh tingled with brine and possibility.
"Your offering was unexpected but..." She lifted her hand, revealing a small portion of the shattered ambergris between her fingers. "Acceptable. This came from one of my children, after all."
Max found his voice, barely a whisper. "Who are you?"
Her laugh rippled through the water like silver bubbles.
"I have been called many names across many shores. But you may know me as the one who has watched your family for generations." Her face drew closer, impossibly beautiful and terrifying. "Your great-grandmother built her first shop on my sacred cove. Your grandmother left offerings of perfume at full moons. Your mother..."
A shadow crossed her luminous features.
"Your mother understood the covenant but left this world before passing it to you."
Max's thoughts raced. His mother had told stories, old legends about the lady of the tides who blessed perfumers with inspiration. He'd thought them bedtime fables.
"What covenant?" he managed.
The goddess's eyes narrowed. "One drop of blood. One bottle of essence. Once a year." Her hand caressed his throat. "In exchange for prosperity. Protection. And secrets of scents no mortal could discover alone."
A distant alarm sounded, something from the waking world pulling at him.
"You're drowning in debt," she whispered. "Drowning in grief. I can save what you love, Max Payton. But all magic demands sacrifice."
Her lips, tasting of salt and eternity, brushed against his. "Think carefully about what you're willing to give. I'll await your decision."
The dream fractured like the ambergris.
Max jolted awake, gasping. Morning light streamed through the small workshop window. His head pounded. The broken ambergris lay inert on the table, ordinary once more.
But the scent, that impossible fragrance is lingered everywhere. On his clothes. In his hair. He looked down at his hands and arms, shocked to find his skin gleaming with a faint, the shimmer of pearls that smelled like everything he had ever experienced in his dreams.
The bank notice fell from his pocket as he stood. The red letters seemed somehow less threatening in the morning light.
Three months to find a solution.
Or three months to decide what price he was willing to pay.