Cold.
That was the first thing Jayden felt. Not the gentle cold of wind or rain — but the suffocating chill of a world that had forgotten warmth.
He gasped, and saltwater flooded his throat. His lungs convulsed. His eyes snapped open to darkness — not empty black, but a deep, living blue that shimmered with faint light, as if the sea itself was breathing.
He was underwater.
Panic tore through him. He flailed, arms slicing through sluggish resistance, mind screaming — *I'm drowning!*
But… he wasn't.
Jayden froze, trembling, and took a shaky breath. The water entered and left his lungs like air, leaving behind a strange burn, as if every inhale scraped against something primal inside him.
Slowly, he turned his head.
All around him stretched a drowned city. Towers of marble and coral intertwined, archways carved with runes that pulsed faintly like veins under skin. Statues of robed figures watched him through cracks in the ruins, faces eroded by centuries. Schools of translucent fish drifted past broken domes.
It was beautiful. And wrong.
The silence wasn't silent — it hummed with whispers, faint echoes that seemed to crawl into his skull.
Jayden's mind raced. *Where am I?*
The last thing he remembered was the world splitting — the ground tearing open, light swallowing him, pain so deep it shredded thought itself — and then… this.
He glanced down. His clothes were torn, soaked, his knuckles scraped. The currents tugged at him like unseen fingers. His pulse thudded in his ears.
Then he saw it — an obelisk standing tall in the sand ahead, half-buried, covered in glowing runes.
He hesitated, then swam closer, dragging his body through the sluggish water until his fingers brushed cold stone.
The runes rearranged themselves. Letters — symbols — meaning.
> [STATUS: MORTAL — DORMANT]
> NO CORE DETECTED
> ACCESS LEVEL: NULL
A cold knot formed in his stomach. "Dormant," he whispered. His voice sounded hollow, swallowed by the deep. "No Core…"
He wasn't sure why those words hurt. Maybe because they felt like judgment.
He reached out again — the obelisk pulsed once, and a shock surged through his arm. Jayden yanked his hand back, teeth gritting as the water rippled with a low, angry vibration.
Then the ground moved.
Something massive shifted beneath the sand — a low groan echoed through the ruins, vibrating through his bones. He spun, instincts on fire.
From the shadows between two fallen pillars, a shape emerged.
It looked like a chitinous crab but it wasn't a crab — it was leaner, smoother — like a skeletal eel draped in translucent flesh. Its body coiled and uncoiled, glowing faintly with bioluminescent veins. The head was vaguely human, the mouth split wide, too wide, revealing rows of needle teeth that glimmered like glass.
Jayden froze. His heart hammered.
The creature's eyes — twin voids of black ink — turned toward him.
Then it screamed.
The sound wasn't made for human ears. It vibrated the water, made his vision warp. The thing lunged.
Jayden barely dodged, the tail slicing past and shattering a pillar. He felt the shockwave rattle his ribs. Panic turned to adrenaline. He grabbed a shard of coral, holding it like a dagger.
The creature circled, fast, leaving ghostly trails in the water. Jayden kicked off a wall, spun, and slashed — the shard tore into the eel's side, releasing a cloud of dark blue ichor.
It recoiled, shrieking. Jayden pushed forward, lungs burning, arm trembling. Every motion felt heavy, desperate, useless — like fighting inside a nightmare that refused to obey physics.
The eel darted again, faster — he ducked, barely escaping the jaws snapping an inch from his throat. He slammed the coral shard into its gills. The creature convulsed, thrashing violently, tail smashing against him and hurling him into a ruin wall.
Pain. White, sharp, blinding.
He coughed blood — or water — he couldn't tell. The shard slipped from his hand. The eel floated above him, twitching, wounded but alive.
Jayden looked up at it, chest heaving, body trembling, and thought — *I can't die here. Not like this.*
He grabbed a loose stone, pushed off the wall, and with a scream muffled by the sea, drove it into the creature's open maw.
A flash of blue light — the eel twisted once, then went limp, sinking slowly to the sand.
Jayden collapsed beside it, barely conscious.
He didn't feel triumph. Just emptiness. His arm was numb, his shoulder bleeding. His head buzzed with exhaustion and disbelief.
He collapsed beside the creature, his body trembling from pain and exhaustion.
The eel's corpse twitched once, then began to dissolve, the pale glow seeping from its flesh like a dying ember. The light drifted upward, scattering into the water like dust caught in moonlight.
Jayden stared at it, chest heaving, vision blurring. The world was quiet again — too quiet.
Just the rhythm of his pulse and the endless hum of the abyss.
He swallowed hard, tasting blood and salt. "Is that it?" he whispered into the current. "Is this… the end?"
But the silence gave him nothing back.
Only the faint blue glow far in the distance — a heartbeat in the dark — pulsed once more, calling to him.
Jayden clenched his hands, forcing his battered body upright. The current tugged at him, dragging him toward the unknown.
He didn't resist.
Somewhere deep in the abyss, something ancient was watching.
And it wasn't done with him yet.