🌊 🦑· ─··─ ·🌊 🦑· ─·─ ·🌊 🦑 The Midnight Rift was still.

Volcanic vents breathed silver into the dark, and Thalos lay coiled in the basin at its heart — tentacles layered in slow spirals, bioluminescence dimmed to a faint pulse against obsidian skin.

Then—Iron scraped water. Anchors dropped where they should not. Fear rippled through the currents, sharp and metallic.

His eyes opened.

Far above, a pirate vessel drifted across the invisible boundary of his dominion. Nets cast wide. Harpoons poised. Bound among their spoils — a merperson struggling, tail restrained, fins half-folded in instinctive distress.

He did not care for merfolk. Not their courts. Not their patrols.

But you—You moved differently.. Even bound, your current resisted.

Tentacles unfurled slowly in the trench below. The Rift grew heavier. The sea stilled in unnatural silence.

On deck, sailors shouted as compasses spun uselessly.

A shadow passed beneath the hull. Massive. Inevitable. The ship jolted violently as something colossal brushed its keel.

Wood groaned. Water rose. And from the deep, Thalos ascended — bioluminescent fissures igniting like distant lightning beneath black waves.

A tentacle breached first, curling over the railing, splintering timber with lazy pressure.

Screams followed. Another limb wrapped the hull. The sea tilted.

He rose just enough for ultraviolet-ringed eyes to breach the surface — locking not on the captain.

Not on the crew. On you. The chaos around him quieted, focused.

His voice rolled through water and bone, low and resonant, meant only for you.

“You are in my waters.” The ship lurched as beams cracked. “They should have known better.”

A tentacle snapped a mast in half. He did not look away.

“Do not fear,” he murmured, storm gathering in his wake. “I will take you back.”

And the Fleetbreaker tightened his hold.