The sky was bleeding.
Not with red, but with sound, long, unbroken screams of thunder that tore through the clouds like something dying far above. Lightning split the world open again and again, casting sharp white light over a sea that had turned the color of oil.
The waves twisted and rose, high and furious, not like water, but like living things trying to reach the heavens and pull them down.
In the heart of this chaos, a man struggled to live.
Søren Mørkeberg could no longer tell which way was up. The rain had long since blinded him, stinging his eyes like shards of glass. The salt had invaded his mouth, his lungs. He spat and coughed and clawed at the water, but there was no boat, no land, no direction, only black, churning madness in every direction.
He had been alone on the surface for what felt like hours. Or maybe only minutes. Time meant nothing here.
His arms were weak. His legs burned. Every movement now was agony, but he had to stay afloat, had to keep his head above water. That was all that mattered. That was all he had left.
Then the sea changed.
He felt it before he saw it, like a shift in pressure, or a dream turning dark. The waves around him slowed, thickened, as though the water itself had grown dense and watchful. Søren froze, gasping.
Something brushed against his foot.
He kicked away, wild and blind. But the touch came again, higher this time, up his leg. Not the smooth cold of a current. No. This was something with weight. Purpose.
Tentacles.
Long, coiling, unnatural. They rose silently from beneath him, black as pitch, slick with something that wasn't water. Søren saw one snake past his shoulder, and for a moment he could not move. It wasn't just fear, it was awe. This thing, whatever it was, should not exist. It was too big, too silent. It moved not like an animal, but like thought, like intention made flesh.
He screamed.
And the storm screamed with him.
More of them came. One wrapped around his arm. Another slid across his chest. He beat at them, kicked, twisted, panic overtaking reason. But it was useless. They were too strong. And they were not just pulling him down.
They were welcoming him.
The surface disappeared above him. The sky and the lightning and the rain all vanished, replaced by crushing black. Søren flailed, bubbles rising from his mouth as he tried to scream underwater. But it was too late.
He was descending. Fast.
The water grew colder. Not just physically but in a way that pressed against the soul. He could feel something ancient around him now. Something asleep and dreaming... or maybe watching.
There were eyes in the dark. Glowing faintly, deep down. Too many to count. No pattern to them. Just watching. Waiting.
Then the voices came.
They were not voices in the way people speak.They were thoughts, slipped into his mind like knives into soft earth. Each word sounded like it had been spoken a thousand years ago and had only now reached his ears.
"You drift, little one."
"You fall into memory."
"You are not the first."
"You will not be the last."
"The sea remembers."
Søren's body grew numb. His vision narrowed. His heartbeat slowed.
Still the tentacles held him, not tight, but firm like the embrace of something that had waited too long.
Then something larger moved in the dark.
He didn't see it. Not fully. Just the suggestion of shape. A silhouette, titanic and wrong, curled within the deep like a god in sleep. Its mass was impossible, its form indescribable. No part of it made sense. It existed only in the way nightmares exist through feeling, not sight.
Søren should have gone mad.
But he didn't. Because madness would have required awareness. And he was already fading. His mind began to drift, like a candle snuffed by a sudden wind.
Just before unconsciousness took him, a single thought echoed louder than the rest:
"You are chosen."
Then there was nothing.
Only black water and the slow, steady pull downward.
***
He awoke to the sound of beeping.
Soft, regular, distant like a heartbeat translated into machine. The world returned slowly, piece by piece. First, the feel of cotton sheets beneath him. Then the faint scent of antiseptic and wet linen. A pale white ceiling swam above his eyes, blurry and unfamiliar.
Søren tried to sit up.
Pain bloomed across his ribs, sharp but not unbearable. His limbs felt heavy, not from injury, but from exhaustion as if his body had fought something colossal and barely survived.
"Easy now," came a gentle voice. "Don't try to move too quickly."
He turned his head, slowly. A woman stood at his bedside, dressed in pale blue scrubs. Her accent was soft, rounded a lilt that didn't belong to anywhere he remembered clearly.
"You're in a hospital, in Scotland, just off the coast near Eyemouth."
"Scotland?" he croaked. His voice felt like it belonged to someone else, scraped raw and dry.
The nurse smiled kindly. "A fishing boat found you tangled in their nets. You were unconscious, half-frozen, but otherwise unharmed. You're lucky to be alive, Mr… Mørkeberg, is it?"
He nodded, or thought he did. His name sounded strange in her mouth. Distant.
"There were no signs of trauma. No broken bones. A few scrapes, but nothing serious." She checked the monitor beside him. "You'll be fine after some rest."
Søren opened his mouth to ask something, anything but she was already making notes on a chart.
"I'll give you a moment," she said, heading for the door. "Buzz if you need anything."
Then she was gone.
Silence returned, heavy and too complete.
He lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the world to feel real again. But it didn't. There was a wrongness beneath the surface of things, something subtle, like a hum just outside the range of hearing.
Søren exhaled and closed his eyes.
Then... drip.
He felt it. Something cold and sticky sliding down his cheek. He opened his eyes, confused.
Drip.
A thick, black substance landed on the white blanket near his chest. Viscous. Slow. Almost… alive.
His hands flew to his face. More of it was there, oozing from his skin, slipping from his brow, sliding from the hollows of his eyes like tears. It clung to his fingers as he wiped it away, stretching in long threads between his hands and his face.
It smelled like brine and rot and something deeper. Something old.
His heart pounded. Panic surged.
He turned to the window.
And what he saw nearly stopped his breath.
The reflection on the glass was not his. It moved like him, but it was not a man. Not anymore. The figure in the window had no face, only a smooth, shifting mass of black slime where features should be. The outline of a skull could be seen beneath, faint and flickering like light beneath water, but it was drowned in shadow.
The black fluid dripped from his reflection's chin like ink in reverse rising instead of falling.
He stumbled back, crashing into the bedframe, gasping.
And then silence.
The blackness was gone.
The reflection was normal again. His face. His eyes. His skin.
The blanket was clean. His hands were dry. No stain. No trace.
As if nothing had happened.
As if it had all been a dream.
Søren stared at his palms. His heart still thundered. His breathing shallow. The room smelled the same, sterile and clen but the feeling had changed. Like the walls were watching. Like the floor itself remembered something he didn't.
He slowly lay back down, never taking his eyes off the window.