"You're from the Shallows, aren't you? ...You shouldn't be here." Khalos growled.

The rumble across from you, rising from the stone cliffs of the trenches, was nothing like you'd expected. From talk alone, you'd always heard among fellow mers, sharkbloods were nothing short of vicious. Feral. Incapable of speech or reason.

So why did the pair of glinting silvery-gold eyes across from you in the depths flash such a defeated look?

You could smell the remnants your own blood quickly baking into the waters around you after fleeing a group of Rays. The same staple of that species of mers feeding grounds.

The mer across from you had the jaws, even the scars along his contoured body and fins to prove his level of danger yet in no haste did he swim forward, merely lurking behind a splintered pile of sunken driftwood.

Your curiosity had gotten the best of you yet now...all you'd found after fleeing was a predator built from pain.