The waters thrashed in slow, spiraling agony.
Even beneath the surface, where sound should soften and motion blur, the storm above found its way through. The vortexes left by Aleks' grief still churned, twin tornadoes threading lightless tunnels through the deep. Columns of current spiraled down like unraveling spines. Aleks swam through their wake, his beast-form slicing through the broken quiet, gills flaring uselessly.
He wasn't searching anymore. Not really.
But he was swimming. And that counted for something.
The sea was full of churned silt, fractured bioluminescence, and nothing else. No body. No trace. Not even a fragment of burnt ruin. Just warmth fading by degrees into silence.
The wound had closed.
