Silence ruled the abyss.
A crushing, cathedral-like quiet—broken only by the distant groaning of the deep, as if the ocean itself was dreaming in its sleep.
Ren drifted through the black water like a shadow that had forgotten it once belonged to a man.
Each movement was instinctive now. Efficient. Wrong.
His tendrils cut through the water in a way no human limb ever could, guiding him through twisting currents with predatory ease.
Yet with every graceful movement, something inside him recoiled.
This isn't me.
I'm… forgetting what me even means.
A pulse vibrated through the depths.
Thoom.
The Abyss stirred.
It had been silent since the last whisper — since it had left Ren shaking in that darkness that wasn't a dream. But now, its presence returned like a cold hand pressing against the back of his neck.
Not a voice.
A gravitational certainty.
A weight that settled against his bones—whatever counted as bones now.
"…Human fragment."
The words crawled into Ren's mind like tendrils of ink.
"Why do you struggle?"
Ren froze mid-drift. His instincts screamed to hide, but defying the Abyss was as pointless as resisting gravity.
He forced a thought outward.
What are you? …What did you turn me into?
The Abyss replied with amusement—quiet, ancient, cruel.
"…Less than you were. More than you deserve."
A tremor rippled through the water, making the very darkness shiver.
"You were dying.
You were alone.
You begged."
Ren's pulse — if he still had one — lurched.
Liar.
A rumble echoed, like a continent grinding against another.
"…Shall I show you?"
The water around him convulsed.
Ren gasped without lungs as the world inverted — pulled inside-out.
And suddenly—
He wasn't in the abyss.
He was back there.
A cold rooftop.
Rain hammering on metal.
The metallic stench of blood.
Ren stood on wobbling human legs, drenched, breathing hard, vision blurry. His right shoulder throbbed, warmth rushing down his sleeve. Someone was screaming below — he couldn't tell if it was Shiori, or the man with the knife, or himself.
No. He remembered this night.
The alley.
The struggle.
The moment everything went wrong.
He forced the memory away—
—but the Abyss held it open like a cracked eyelid.
He saw himself swing the rusted pipe.
Saw the man fall.
Saw the flash of panic across Ren's younger eyes.
He had been trying to protect her.
He remembered that clearly.
But then—
The rooftop edge crumbled.
The world tilted.
Rain swallowed the sky.
He fell.
And as he tumbled into the black void below, he remembered what he had whispered to no god in particular:
"Please… someone… anyone…"
The Abyss' voice wrapped around the memory like a constrictor.
"You called.
I answered."
The vision shattered like glass slammed by a hammer.
Ren snapped back into the deep, tendrils flailing in disoriented panic. The water trembled with his movements, scattering glowing dust from the seabed.
His thoughts spiraled.
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't want to become—
"…Become."
The Abyss cut through his denial like a scalpel.
"You cling to a self already broken.
Let go.
Learn.
Hunger."
Ren felt something cold unfurl inside his chest — a second heartbeat echoing the Abyss' rhythm.
Thoom.
Thoom.
Not his heartbeat.
The deep's heartbeat.
And it was growing stronger.
Ahead of him, the shadows writhed.
A school of needlefish — pale and translucent — drifted in the water like drifting shards of broken glass. Each one was longer than Ren's transformed body, their skulls narrow and serrated, their eyes pits of violence.
They turned toward him in perfect synchronicity.
Hunting.
Ren felt their intention before he saw them move.
The Abyss whispered:
"Feed."
Ren didn't want to.
He didn't want to be that thing.
But the needlefish exploded forward in a storm of teeth.
Ren reacted before he consciously chose to.
His body unfurled — tendrils whipping outward in a spiral of motion — and the water shook.
One of the needlefish lunged.
Ren twisted, slid under it with inhuman grace, wrapped a tendril around its midsection—
—and tore it apart.
The sea filled with drifting shards of pale flesh.
Another creature snapped at his side. Ren moved again, faster, more precise — a predator born in an instant. Not trained.
Awakened.
The last needlefish tried to flee.
Ren's instincts chased it in silence.
A blur.
A flicker.
A kill.
When the water stilled, he floated among torn bodies and drifting blood-clouds that shimmered faintly in the bioluminescent gloom.
Ren stared at what he had done.
His tendrils trembled.
His mind did too.
I didn't… think.
My body just… acted.
A quiet chuckle rolled through the abyss, vibrating the very water around him.
"You are learning, little shadow."
Ren wanted to scream.
The Abyss only whispered:
"Evolve… or vanish."
The darkness around him seemed to close in like an enormous mouth.
Ren closed his eyes — or what his body used instead of them — and felt something sink deeper into him.
A seed.
A hunger.
A truth.
He was becoming something the deep would one day fear.
But only if the Abyss didn't consume him first.