The deeper he sank, the more the world changed.
Sound itself began to warp — no longer carried by vibration alone, but by something else. Something older. The water here spoke.
It didn't use words, but pulses, waves, echoes that brushed against the mind like whispers beneath sleep.
> Is this… communication?
Kuro slowed his descent, letting his tentacles drift as the cold embraced him. The pressure had become unbearable for a human — but his new body flexed and adapted, cells hardening, membranes tightening against collapse.
In the black, faint orbs of light drifted past — pale, slow, ghostly. They looked like souls that had forgotten the surface. Each time one passed, the water trembled with emotion: fear, longing, hunger.
He realized then that mana wasn't just power — it was memory. Every creature in the deep left traces of itself behind, like fingerprints pressed into the current.
If he concentrated, he could feel them. The echoes of dying fish, the panic of hunted things, even the song of distant giants resonating far below.
Each emotion was a ripple, and Kuro could now read the sea like a psychic map.
> [Instinct Adaptation: Echo Sense — Achieved.]
[Subcategory: Resonant Perception.]
The whisper again — calm, emotionless.
But this time, it felt closer, as if it wasn't coming from above but from within.
> …It's merging with me.
He wasn't sure if that terrified or comforted him anymore.
The deeper he went, the thicker the water became — like descending through layers of thought. The dim glow of the upper trenches vanished behind him, replaced by a cold, blue-black void.
A sound trembled through it.
A pulse.
Not natural. Patterned.
He froze, every muscle tensing. His sonar clicked instinctively — a small burst of mana through the water. The return signal was distorted, scattered by something vast ahead.
A form moved — slow, deliberate.
It wasn't like the eel or the shrimp.
It listened back.
> That can't be right…
He sent another pulse.
This time, the answer came — not as sound, but as intent. A vibration that scraped through his mind like claws on stone.
> ≋Who≋
It wasn't a word. It was meaning.
Raw, compressed into resonance.
His thoughts scattered. His primitive neural net struggled to interpret it. But something inside him — the Abyssal Whisper — translated the pattern automatically.
> [Incoming Resonance Detected. Translating…]
[Origin: Unknown Entity. Depth Class — Leviathan Juvenile.]
> [Message: "Who drifts where gods sleep?"]
Kuro hesitated.
His instincts screamed to flee, but curiosity burned hotter.
He tried to respond — not with sound, but by imitating the pulse. He concentrated, shaping mana into a wave and pushing it through the water.
The reply he sent was awkward, fractured — like a child speaking a foreign tongue.
> ≋Kuro≋ … ≋Human… No…≋
The darkness shivered.
Something vast moved ahead — the current bending around it. Its bioluminescence flickered like constellations beneath its flesh, hundreds of eyes glimmering faintly in a serpentine shape.
When it finally spoke again, it wasn't through resonance alone.
The sea itself vibrated.
> ≋There are no humans here.≋
≋Only those who forget.≋
Kuro's mind reeled.
The pressure increased tenfold — his mantle quivering, ink sacs flaring reflexively. His Echo Sense spiraled out of control, flooding him with sensations: pain, memory, sorrow.
He saw flashes — images not his own.
A forest of stone towers drowned beneath the sea.
Gigantic silhouettes chained to the seafloor, sleeping for eons.
A sunless temple built from bones and coral.
And at its center…
A throne. Empty. Waiting.
The vision snapped.
He gasped — or whatever a squid's version of gasping was.
> What… was that?
The entity ahead had gone still. Its light dimmed, then faded.
Only one echo remained, faint but deliberate.
> ≋Deeper, Kuro.≋
≋Your mind will feed the Abyss.≋
Then it was gone.
The current settled, and the world returned to its silent, crushing calm.
Kuro hovered motionless. His pulse — his resonance — trembled with aftershock.
He could still feel the echo fading through him, like an infection spreading through the soul.
> Feed the Abyss?
Is that what I'm becoming? A vessel?
The thought lingered.
And for the first time since awakening, Kuro realized something horrifying —
the more he evolved, the less human his mind became.
Words slipped away first.
Then faces.
Then fear.
All that remained was purpose — primal and inevitable.
> Adapt. Consume. Descend.
A final ripple brushed against him — soft, like a hand over glass.
Faint bioluminescent motes swirled in the water ahead, coalescing into a spiral. A pattern — a mark.
It glowed for only a second before dispersing into black ink.
But Kuro felt it etch itself inside his body — on a cellular level.
> [Abyssal Mark Received.]
[Designation: "Echo-Born."]
[Memory Synchronization Imminent.]
He didn't know what it meant.
But somewhere, far below, something noticed him.
And smiled.