The first thing Ren Kisaragi felt was cold.
Not the sharp, mortal cold of winter, but something deeper—an ancient, crushing chill that gnawed at bone and memory alike. It seeped into him like ink bleeding through paper. He opened his eyes, expecting the familiar ceiling of his small apartment, the hum of the city outside, the dim light of morning.
Instead—
Darkness.
An endless, swallowing dark.
Ren hung suspended in a world of drifting currents, weightless yet suffocating, as if the sea itself was wrapped around him. There was no up, no down—only the press of immeasurable water and the distant groaning of something vast moving in the abyss.
Am I… underwater?
He should have been drowning. Choking. Panicking.
But he felt none of that.
His lungs were still. His heartbeat slow, almost… synchronized with the rhythm of the black ocean around him.
A pulse reverberated through the deep.
Thoom.
The water shivered. Something ancient shifted in the void.
A faint glow appeared in the distance—pale, ghostly, trembling like a dying ember. Ren's instincts screamed that he should swim away, flee, run, escape—but his limbs didn't obey. They weren't his limbs at all.
He looked down.
Eight tendrils drifted where arms should be.
A sleek, ink-dark body floated where his torso once was.
And staring back at him from the reflective sheen of the deep—
—was not a human face.
Panic slammed into him too late.
This isn't real. This isn't real.
Did I die? Am I dreaming? What—what am I?
Before he could think, the glow intensified into a blinding, abyssal beacon. Something stirred behind it—vast, coiled, and watching. A presence older than storms and deeper than gravity's pull.
A voice—not sound, but sensation—brushed his mind.
ᚺ̶̱̿u̶͙͗m̶̥͒a̵̱͑n̴̫̔.̶̥͒
Y̵̱̋o̷͍͊u̴̘̅ s̵͖̓h̷̪̽ö̷̟́u̶̞͆l̸̼̓d̶͓̿ n̶̩͂o̴̬̐ẗ̵͇ b̷͖͝e̶̫͌ h̶̰͒é̶̘ȑ̸̥e̷̻͘.̶̘̏
The abyss spoke like cracking ice and shifting tectonic plates.
Ren's thoughts twisted. Memories slipped like sand through clenched fingers.
A childhood memory—gone.
The smell of rain on asphalt—gone.
The warmth of sunlight—gone.
Something was taking him apart.
Piece by piece.
Rewriting him.
ᚨ̷̼̂d̶̻̓a̴͚̅p̵̳̊t̷̻̆.̸̓͜ Ë̸̤́v̷̬͒o̵͕̿l̴̯̂v̵̠̈́e̷̬̔.̶͓́ B̶͙͂e̸̱̓c̴̱̓o̵̜͌m̴̦̅e̶͇̕.̶̦̄
The abyss radiated hunger and expectation, like a god leaning close to see whether a mortal would shatter or kneel.
Ren wanted to scream.
Instead, the ocean answered for him.
A violent tremor surged through the darkness. The glow receded. The presence withdrew, leaving behind only echoes and unbearable silence.
Something inside Ren pulsed—an alien organ beating in time with the deep.
Thoom.
Thoom.
A rush of instincts, not his own, poured into his mind.
How to navigate crushing pressure.
How to hunt by vibration.
How to hide in absolute nothingness.
How to kill with patience sharper than teeth.
They were not human instincts.
Not anymore.
From somewhere in the deep, a new whisper curled through him, faint, seductive, almost gentle:
"Become more… Ren."
For a moment, something inside him shattered.
And then—
He moved.
A flick of tentacles.
A burst of speed.
A body built for the abyss slicing through its birthplace.
The darkness around him parted like a curtain drawn back to reveal a colossal world: drifting leviathans with lantern eyes, forests of bioluminescent spires, ruins of a drowned civilization stretching beyond the horizon of the ocean floor.
Ren felt their presence.
Their hunger.
Their attention.
The abyss was watching.
And he—whatever he was now—was part of its cruel, endless game.
A final whisper crept through his skull, cold and certain:
Welcome to the Deep.
Evolve… or vanish.
Ren drifted alone in the infinite dark, the last echoes of his humanity fading like bubbles rising toward a surface he would never see again.
The abyss waited.
And Ren Kisaragi—reborn, remade, unchosen yet claimed—took his first breath as something new.
Something monstrous.
Something the deep sea itself would one day learn to fear.