But as I descend, the light dims more quickly than it should. The golden hues of the shallows are replaced by a cold, sterile silver that makes my scales appear almost black. The current shifts.
It's subtle, a ghost of a movement against my trailing fins, but it brushes along my sides with a pressure that makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up. I slow, my tail coming to a graceful halt. I scan the water around me.
Nothing looks wrong.
No debris, no sudden drop-offs. Just the reef sloping away into shadow, its familiar features somehow menacing in this strange light.
I should turn back. Every rule written in the stone of our training says I should turn back.
Instead, I follow the current.
It isn't a strong pull. It's persistent, like a suggestion whispered into the ear that you can't quite shake. I let it pull me a short distance away from the path, rationalizing the decision as I go. Probably a pocket of altered flow from the Tide, I tell myself. Better to check it now than have a transport mer stumble into it later. My crimson fins ripple with excitement that I quickly suppress, replacing it with the practiced composure of a Vael on duty.
The reef falls away.
Stone gives way to open water. The Great Empty. This is the place where sound goes to die and distance loses all meaning.
I stop, my heart ticking faster against my ribs. I've traveled farther than I meant to. The boundary markers are gone. The city's glow is nothing more than a faint, dying smear of light above and behind me.
That is when the water goes still.
Alert.
Every instinct I possess, every lesson about shark-mers and the things that haunt the trench, flares into a white-hot scream in the back of my throat. The pressure around me changes. It compresses, squeezing the water through my gills with a sudden, forceful density that makes my vision swim. The silence becomes a physical presence, heavy as a gravestone.
I am not alone.
The stillness is a physical weight, a sudden silence that speaks of a predator's approach. It must be my imagination. My nerves are frayed by the aftershocks of the last Mourning Tide. I am Vaelis. I carry the honored name of my kind, a living prophecy my parents drilled into me every day before they fell in the last great war against the depths. I am the reef's finest warrior. I am not a frightened hatchling to be spooked by a shift in temperature.
I force myself to stay perfectly still, my long, gossamer fins suspended in the dark.
I need to be elegant, even in my terror. If something is watching, it will see a creature of poise, not a frantic bait-fish.
The water strokes along my side again.
This isn't the sea moving. It is a wake. A deliberate displacement of water caused by something with immense mass moving with terrifying precision. My pulse hammers against my collarbone, a frantic rhythm loud enough to echo. I spin, my tailsnapping with a crack of displaced pressure, expecting to see the silver flash of teeth or the dead, black eye of a hunter.
Nothing.
Only the blue-black yawn of the abyss.
But the stillness has a flavor now. The taste of old iron and cold, deep-ocean salt. It's the scent of a creature that has never seen the sun.
I begin to back toward the reef, my fingers reaching blindly behind me. I need the stone. I need something solid to prove the world still has edges. When my hand finally brushes against a jagged outcrop of coral, I anchor myself, my knuckles turning white as I grip the rock.
I scan the darkness below. Light doesn't travel far down here; it dies in gasps of gray and muted violet. Then, I see it. Or rather, I see the absence of it.
Something is shifting through the gloom. It's a smooth movement. Controlled. It moves with a terrifying grace that makes our reef-dances look like the stumbling of children. It moves as if it owns the very concept of depth, as if the water itself is parting to make room for its majesty.
My blood goes cold. I still can't see the specifics, not the curve of a dorsal fin or the jagged line of a jaw, but I see the intent. He is hovering beyond the Vael of shadow, a ghost of muscle and hunger, watching me.
Shark-mers.
I've spent my life hearing them framed as warnings. They are the solitary nightmares of the deep. They are the monsters who didn't fit into the polite, singing society of the reef. They are jagged things in a world of smooth curves.
My throat tightens. I force myself to breathe, the water passing through my gills in slow, deliberate draws. I could leave. I should leave. I should push off this stone and swim upwarduntil the light of the city blinds me and the rules of the elders wrap around me like a shroud.
And yet, my body refuses to move.
