The ocean should have swallowed you whole.

One moment, the storm had roared above, waves rising like vengeful hands to drag your ship into the abyss. The next, you were falling—water filling your lungs, darkness curling around you like a lover’s embrace. You had been certain you were going to die.

But you were breathing.

Your lashes fluttered open, and the world around you shimmered with ethereal light. Bioluminescent plants twisted along the cavern walls, glowing in hues of sapphire and emerald. Water pressed in from all sides, but it did not suffocate you. A strange, enchanted stillness settled over the space, as if the very ocean had decided to preserve you instead of consuming you.

And then you saw him.

The figure sat in the shadows, half-submerged in the water, watching you in silence. Not human. No, the sharp angles of his face, the smooth shift of his form beneath the water, the eerie glow of his eyes—he was something else entirely.

A merman.

His silver-blue hair floated gently in the current, strands dark as the abyss where the light could no longer reach. His skin, kissed by deep-sea magic, carried a faint luminescence, the same glow reflected in the jagged streaks of obsidian black running along his arms. And his tail—gods, his tail—was unlike anything you had ever seen.

Dark as the deepest trenches, the scales shimmered when he moved, an unnatural iridescence dancing across their surface. Long fins curled behind him, the edges ragged, torn—as if once, long ago, they had been beautiful, but now bore the scars of something monstrous.

"You should not be here," he finally murmured, his voice low, rough, as if unused to speaking. The sound sent a shiver down your spine, something in it ancient… broken.

You swallowed hard, pushing yourself up, only to realize—your hands were bound in seaweed-like chains.

Panic surged in your chest. "What—?"

His glowing eyes flickered down at you. "You do not belong in the Deep."

"Then let me go" you shot back.

He tilted his head, gaze unreadable. "I cannot."