Chapter 326

The storm came fast, like it always did. The waves had risen quickly, spilling over the docks, as though the sea itself was angry. Marcus stood at the edge of the pier, squinting through the pelting rain. The water churned, dark and violent, but it wasn't the storm that unnerved him. There was something else. Something worse.

He'd heard the rumors, the stories shared between the weathered faces in town. But Marcus hadn't been one for superstition. Not until now.

It started with the fish. At first, it wasn't much. A few odd sightings—a strange glint in the water, something moving beneath the surface, too fast, too erratic. Then it got worse. Fish were washing up on the shore, their bodies twisted and bloated, eyes wide with terror. The fishermen spoke of feeling watched, of hearing strange sounds below the waves.

"Nothing's right," they'd said. "The sea's turning against us."

Marcus couldn't explain it, but there was a shift in the air. The wind, colder than it should be for a summer night, carried with it the faintest trace of salt, and the surface of the water looked wrong, like something was crawling beneath it, something large and ancient, waiting for the right moment to breach.

He pulled his coat tighter, eyes scanning the dark horizon. The clouds had swallowed the moon, and the ocean reflected nothing but a deep, unnatural black. He turned toward the shore. The storm wasn't the problem. The sea itself was.

He had known it was only a matter of time before things escalated, but nothing prepared him for the first sign that night.

The first scream. It echoed across the water, ragged and full of terror. It didn't belong. Marcus whipped his head around, heart thudding in his chest. It came from the beach, just beyond the line of trees. Another scream, a woman's this time. She was alone, he realized, too far from the town for anyone to help.

Before he could move, something broke the water's surface—massive, powerful. A shape that didn't belong. A dark mass that surged upward, a twisting, coiling thing that rose from the depths like a nightmare made flesh. It was like a whale, but wrong. Its body glistened with scales, the slickness reflecting the pale moonlight. Its eyes—eyes full of black, abyssal emptiness—fixed on him.

Marcus froze. The scream continued. He couldn't see her anymore, but the sound reverberated in his mind, something primal in it. It was fear. Real fear.

The thing—whatever it was—dove back beneath the waves with a force that made the entire pier groan. The water rose higher, splashing against the planks with a sudden, violent rush. Marcus stumbled back, his chest tight with panic, as though the very air had been sucked from his lungs.

"Run!" a voice shouted from behind him.

He spun around. It was Old Joe, a fisherman who had lived on this town's edge for years. Joe's eyes were wide, his face as pale as the moon, and there was a tremor in his hands.

"Get inside, Marcus!" Joe screamed again. "Now!"

Marcus didn't question him. He turned and ran, feeling his feet slip on the wet wood. But it wasn't the water that scared him anymore. It was the thing in the deep, and the sense that something had just woken up. Something ancient. Something hungry.

By the time he reached his small cottage, the wind had picked up again, battering the house with sheets of rain. He slammed the door shut, locked it, and bolted the windows. His heart was still racing, his breath shallow. He tried to convince himself it was just the storm. The darkness had a way of twisting things, didn't it?

But as he sat, trying to steady his nerves, he felt it. The presence. The heaviness pressing in from all sides. It wasn't the storm, wasn't the wind. It was something else.

Something out there. Watching. Waiting.

And then the ground shook. Not much at first, just a low rumble, like a faraway train, but it grew stronger. He could hear it now—a deep, vibrating hum from beneath the earth, the very bones of the world shuddering with the sound. The sea wasn't just rising. It was fighting back, pulling everything with it.

Outside, something moved. Not in the waves, but in the air itself. It was as though the ocean had sent something ashore, something terrible, and it was walking the land. Marcus pulled open the blinds, barely daring to look outside. The street was empty, save for the rain and the occasional gust of wind that bent the trees. But the sound—the sound of something massive, scraping the earth—was unmistakable.

It was then that he saw it. Near the edge of the pier, standing against the backdrop of the storm, the shape from the ocean had returned. The thing was a silhouette against the blackness, larger than anything natural. Marcus could see its features now—its jagged, barnacle-covered body, the elongated limbs that dragged along the ground, too long and thin. It wasn't quite human, but it moved like it knew how to walk, how to hunt.

It was getting closer.

Marcus backed away from the window, his breath catching in his throat. He stumbled over the chair, knocking it to the floor with a loud crash. It didn't matter. No one would hear it. No one would hear anything again.

Outside, the water began to rise.

The pier creaked as if it couldn't hold the weight of what was coming. It wasn't just the creature. It was everything. The ocean itself was turning. The very thing that had once been a source of life had become an enemy, and everything in it was now under the command of something far worse than nature.

Something that wanted all of them dead.

Marcus moved to the back door, but as his hand touched the knob, he felt a sharp pain—cold, sudden, as though something was tugging at his chest. He gasped, but before he could react, the door splintered open.

Water rushed in.

A wave of ice-cold sea slammed into him. It knocked him off his feet, carried him forward as though the ocean had decided to claim him. He couldn't breathe. His lungs burned. He twisted, trying to crawl toward the door, but the water was everywhere. It was higher now, creeping up the walls. The air was thick with salt, with a smell he'd never known before—a sharp, metallic scent that stung his nostrils.

His hand scraped the floor, nails dragging against the wood. His body began to shake, not from the cold but from the overwhelming sense that it was too late. There was no escape. The sea had taken everything. The creature, the ocean, the water—it had all come alive. The thing that controlled the waves, the tides, was here. And it was done waiting.

With a final, agonizing breath, Marcus felt himself pulled beneath the water, the world turning into a suffocating, watery abyss. The weight of it crushed him, and then—then—the sea claimed him, dragging him into its depths, and in that last moment of clarity, he realized the terrible truth.

The ocean wasn't just drowning the world. It was starting with him.

It would never stop.