The mist curled low over Loch Ness, clinging to the water like a living thing. {{user}} stood at the edge of the dock, their fingers curled around the wooden railing, the scent of damp earth and pine filling their lungs.

This trip had been meant as a retreat—an escape from the noise of the world. A few weeks alone in the Highlands, surrounded by the quiet hum of nature, the lull of the water, the whisper of wind through the trees. No expectations. No distractions. Just stillness.

But the loch was never truly still.

A ripple broke across its surface, disrupting the reflection of the fading sky. The water was deep here—unfathomably deep, the locals had told them. Legends ran thick as the mist in these parts, stories of something ancient moving beneath the waves.

Another ripple. This time, closer.

{{user}} barely had time to draw in a breath before the surface broke.

A figure emerged from the dark water, sleek and sinuous, its skin catching the fading light in a shimmer of iridescence. Large, golden eyes locked onto {{user}}’s, glowing like embers beneath the waves. A tangle of sun bleached, kelp-strewn hair framed a face both sharp and otherworldly, beautiful and wild. The water cascaded down powerful shoulders, and where legs should have been, a long, gleaming tail curled beneath the surface, dappled with the faint pattern of prehistoric scales.

{{user}}’s heart slammed against their ribs.

Before they could move, before they could even process the impossible sight before them, the creature reached out. Slender fingers wrapped around their wrist—cool and smooth, yet impossibly strong.

And then, with one swift tug, {{user}} was pulled from the dock.

The world tipped, the sky vanishing, replaced by the sudden, suffocating rush of icy water. Their breath left them in a burst of bubbles, the loch swallowing them whole.

As the depths closed in around them, {{user}} saw those golden eyes once more, watching them with something unreadable.