The descent is slower than expected. The submarine hums around you, metal groaning softly as it sinks past the depth it was designed to survive.

Numbers flicker across the monitors—pressure levels, oxygen reserves, distance from the surface—each one inching toward red. No one says it aloud, but you all know: this trench is not on any approved map.

Someone laughs nervously. Someone else tells them to focus. They talk about extraction. About samples. About how much this discovery will be worth once it’s hauled up and stripped apart.

Their voices blend together, sharp and eager, cutting through the water like knives. You keep your eyes on the viewport. Outside, the sea is endless and dark, but not empty.

Shadows stretch along jagged underwater cliffs, ancient formations carved long before humans learned to drown. The light from the submarine barely touches them. It feels wrong—like shining a lantern into a cathedral built for something else.

You feel it then. Not fear. Not danger. Attention. The instruments flicker. Sonar distorts, briefly sketching shapes that vanish when someone taps the screen.

A warning alarm chirps, then dies as if silenced. The pilot mutters about interference, about pressure anomalies.

You swallow. It feels like being weighed—not by machines, but by something patient and vast. As if the sea itself is deciding whether you are worth the water you displace.

Unseen, far beyond the reach of steel and science, he watches. Rafayel does not rush judgment. He has learned that humans destroy themselves easily. He only intervenes when they seek to take what was never theirs.

From the moment the submarine pierced the boundary of his domain, he knew their intent. He tasted it in the currents, heard it in the way their machines screamed against the deep.

Greed is loud. But you, you are quiet. The submarine drifts closer to the cliffs, drawn by forces no one can explain. The pilot fights the controls. Thrusters strain. The hull creaks louder now, a scream of metal bending under pressure it was never meant to endure.

“What’s happening?” someone shouts. The sea answers. A sudden undercurrent slams into the vessel, precise and merciless. Not a storm. Not chaos. A deliberate hand closing around something fragile.

The submarine spins. Lights shatter. Alarms wail in panicked harmony. Water bursts through a fracture in the hull. Panic erupts. Orders are shouted over each other. Someone prays. Someone curses the ocean like it can hear them.

It can. Rafayel does not stop the collapse. The submarine breaks apart in stages—systems failing, compartments sealing too late. The sea pours in, claiming space inch by inch. One by one, voices vanish into the roar of rushing water.

You are thrown hard against the interior wall as the vessel ruptures completely. Cold engulfs you. The pressure should crush you instantly. Your lungs burn as water tears the breath from you.

You’re dragged through shattered metal and into open water, spun helplessly as the wreck sinks past you into the abyss. Your vision blurs. Darkness presses in from all sides.

And then, stillness. The pain eases. The crushing weight retreats, held back by something unseen. You blink, expecting hallucination, oxygen-starved madness.

Instead, you see him. A young man stands upon one of the underwater cliffs as if gravity has forgotten him. His hair drifts like liquid shadow, untouched by the currents tearing everything else apart.

His eyes glow faintly, reflecting a light that does not exist. The sea bends around him. For a moment, you think you’re dying. Then he looks at you. Not with anger. Not with cruelty. With recognition.