Let the Unworthy Forget How to Breathe

Ren opened his eyes.

There was no light, yet he could see.

Black.

The darkness wasn't just around him. It was inside him. Pressing into his skull, slithering down his spine. There was no surface above, no seabed below. Just a cold, crushing expanse in every direction.

'Where am I?'

He drifted—or sank—hard to tell which. His limbs floated uselessly. No gravity. No up or down. But something… something was dragging him lower. Slowly, invisibly, like a chain looped around his soul.

He looked up.

Nothing.

Down.

Endless, ink-thick water.

A sound escaped his mouth—"Huh"—and with it, a trail of bubbles spiraled upward and vanished into black.

His eyes flicked around, slow, dazed.

He was underwater.

No… deeper than water. Deeper than the sea.

That thought struck him like a weight to the chest.

There was no current, no pressure gradient, no direction. Just stillness and cold and that awful sense of depth—as if he were buried beneath oceans the world had forgotten.

He kicked, twisted, tried to swim—but he couldn't rise. The weight wasn't physical. It felt like the ocean itself had decided he was unworthy.

Then came the fear.

Real fear.

The kind he hadn't felt since the day his affliction first took hold. Except now… his affliction wasn't numbing anything. His heart slammed against his ribs, a wild, rabbit-beat of panic. Cold sweat slicked his palms, even in the water.

'Why…? Why am I scared?'

He flailed—desperate, frantic—and every movement sent out rippling waves that vanished instantly, swallowed by the stillness.

And then—

He heard it.

A song.

It was not music. It was blight made audible. Like something ancient and rotten, trying to hum a lullaby with a mouth full of drowned lungs.

The melody didn't echo. It coiled.

It moved.

Every note slithered closer, scraping against the back of Ren's teeth, vibrating in his molars. The language was wrong—words twisted into gurgles, vowels submerged in grief. He didn't know the language.

But he understood it.

"Let silence judge.

Let the sea remember.

Let the unworthy forget how to breathe."

The words repeated like scripture. Over. And over.

And over.

The water around him grew darker, denser. As if color itself was suffocating. Ren blinked—and realized his vision was deteriorating. The pressure was getting worse. His ribs strained. His lungs screamed.

Then—

He felt it.

A presence.

It wasn't approaching. It was already there.

Behind him. Beside him. Inside him.

His body locked. Every cell in him knew—this wasn't just dangerous.

It was wrong. Evil.

Whatever it was—was older than fear. Older than light. It didn't belong in any world.

He turned, slowly.

And saw it.

She emerged like a birth of rot—an impossible thing crawling out of the eternal womb of the sea.

The creature was colossal, her presence erasing space itself.

At first glance, she looked like a woman.

But no human could ever be this—Ugly. Vile. Wrong.

Like something wearing a woman's shape… but made of rot.

From the waist up, she was mockingly humanoid—skin a sickly, veined blue, like something embalmed and half-digested. Her breasts were bare but shriveled like kelp-draped ruins. Gills flared open along her ribcage, pulsing like wet, breathing wounds.

Her arms were too long. Each finger ended in a barbed claw, glistening with algae and meat. Her face—

Gods.

Her face.

Where her nose should've been was a caved-in pit. Just a hole—black and breathing. Her mouth stretched impossibly wide, ringed with multiple rows of translucent, needle-fangs, curved inward like a predator designed only to devour from the inside out.

Her eyes were the worst.

Her eyes weren't just empty—they were hollow, like windows into a cursed abyss, glowing faintly with a sickly, living light, and within that glow floated dozens of tiny figures, curled into fetal positions with mouths stretched in silent, eternal screams—souls, trapped and frozen, as if her eyes were not eyes at all, but cages.

Ren's own scream never made it out.

His throat refused to work.

Tears spilled from his wide eyes, dissolving instantly into the water.

He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.

He forgot how.

The creature watched him.

And she sang.

"Let silence judge.

Let the sea remember.

Let the unworthy forget how to breathe."

Ren convulsed.

The command—forget how to breathe—took root.

He gasped instinctively—

And water tore down his throat.

It burned.

Liquid invaded his lungs, his sinuses, his skull. He thrashed violently, bubbles exploding from his mouth and nostrils in one final, helpless purge.

He clawed at nothing.

His body spasmed, choking, drowning, breaking.

Still she sang. Still she watched.

And then—

Her mouth began to open.

Not like a jaw.

Like a gate.

The bottom of her face split downward—flesh peeling open like the petals of some carnivorous flower. Her jaw unhinged, dragging the rest of her neck with it.

And from within the gaping maw, a hand emerged.

Massive. Webbed. Clawed.

It shot out—too fast.

SLAM.

The hand crashed into Ren's chest, flattening him with an impact so violent it didn't just shatter his ribs—it detonated him.

His spine snapped like glass. His body folded in half. And then—ruptured.

Water gushed from his mouth, ears, eyes, and more. Not just water—pieces of him.

Flesh. Bone. Thought. Identity.

All torn apart.

The ocean welcomed the offering, swirling his remains into the abyss.

No scream. No final breath.

Only silence.

And the song.

"Let silence judge.

Let the sea remember.

Let the unworthy forget how to breathe."

***

Ren jolted awake, screaming—or trying to.

No sound came. Only a dry, panicked gasp, like his lungs had forgotten how to breathe.

He clawed at the ground, scrabbling across cold, wet stone, trying to escape something that wasn't there anymore—but had been there. It had filled his vision. Filled his skull. Pressed into his chest until his ribs cracked like glass.

He remembered drowning.

He remembered the dark flooding his mouth, pouring into his throat like ink—thick, endless, merciless.

But worse than the water was that thing. That abominable being.

The thing with eyes full of trapped souls.

The thing that watched him die.

And now—

Now he was here.

He collapsed onto his side, shaking uncontrollably, eyes wide, breath ragged and useless in the heavy air. The stone beneath him was rough and damp, slick with something colder than water. The air itself felt wrong—thick, static, like it had been trapped for centuries.

He forced himself upright, elbows trembling, chest tight. He didn't know if he was alive.

He wasn't sure if this was hell. Or worse.

Then he looked up.

A massive dome of water arched high above him, shimmering faintly—unnaturally still. Beyond that dome was nothing but darkness, deep and infinite, stretching forever in every direction. But it wasn't silent.

Not anymore.

Above, in the sea beyond the dome, something moved.

Massive. Slow. Wrong.

The water groaned with its passing. He could hear clicking. Flesh scraping against water. Bone clattering. Breathing. The long, shrieking calls of creatures that didn't belong to any known world.

Then, he saw it—a leviathan, barely visible through the warped shimmer of the dome above. Vast. Slow. Incomprehensibly large. It drifted just beyond the veil, its silhouette a shifting mass of ridges and tendrils, brushing against the outer surface like a mountain dragging its spine through water. The dome groaned. Not from impact—but from the sheer presence of the thing. It didn't swim. It glided, as if the sea itself made way for it.

Ren immediately looked away. He was afraid that if he looked too long, he would draw the attention of whatever that creature was.

But even with his eyes shut, he could still feel it—its presence pressing against the edges of his mind like wet cloth clinging to skin.

His breath came fast and shallow. Then—after what felt like an eternity—that dreadful presence slithered away.

He waited, still as stone, barely daring to blink.

When he finally looked again, the darkness above the dome had returned to stillness. Whatever had passed beyond it was gone… or at least, hidden once more.

He took in a deep breath, though it scraped through his chest like ice.

Then he leaned back, pressing against the slick surface behind him. It was freezing down here. A cold that didn't just sting skin—it sank in. Bone-deep. Crawling into the marrow like it had a purpose.

His body began to shiver uncontrollably.

Each breath left a faint trail in the air. His fingers were already turning pale.

His heart began to race.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Water Virans weren't supposed to feel cold. At least… he thought they weren't. Even his affliction—usually so quick to dull sensation—wasn't numbing the fear that gnawed at his spine.

Then a thought pierced through the haze, sharp and sudden:

How safe was this dome, really?

The one he was inside.

He hadn't even looked around since waking.

Panic prickled his skin.

He pushed himself upright—legs stiff, joints aching—and turned in a slow circle.

Then he looked around—really looked.

The dome wasn't small. It was massive.

A hollow island deep beneath the surface.

It stretched out in every direction—a vast, gently curved expanse of dark glass or something like it, smooth and faintly reflective, pulsing with a dim, underwater glow. The dome encased him like the hollow of a submerged moon.

He stood on an island of stone, its surface uneven and cracked, dusted with pale sediment that shifted beneath his feet. Shallow pools had collected in the lower places, reflecting the dome's ghostly shimmer. Jagged monoliths jutted from the abyssal plain beyond—towering shapes like broken spines, remnants of something ancient and long-forgotten.

The ground felt old. Buried. As if it had been sleeping beneath the ocean for centuries, waiting for something to wake it.

Farther out, more vague structures loomed—collapsed pillars or ruined columns, half-submerged and crumbling.

The silence was absolute, broken only by the faint lapping of still water… and the distant, echoing memory of movement beyond the dome's edge.

From what he could tell, he was standing near the center of the dome.

He began to walk, but his bare feet scraped against the rough stone. He winced and paused.

Not far ahead, a structure emerged from the gloom—dark, angular, unnatural. A sanctuary, if it could even be called that.

It wasn't beautiful.

A half-collapsed formation of jagged stone jutted at odd angles, as if it had grown from the seabed rather than been built. No symmetry. No artistry. The slabs were sharp and uneven, leaning into each other like broken limbs. Crooked columns surrounded a central platform, some still standing, others crumbled into heaps of ruin.

At its heart stood a single altar—a basin carved from the same black stone, dusted in salt and silt. Its sides were etched, not with symbols or language, but with scratches. Deep. Violent. Repeated.

Ren stared at it, his breath catching.

There was something ancient about it. Something wrong.

He didn't know why, but he felt himself being drawn toward the altar.

It was ominous—every instinct in him screamed that this place was wrong—And yet, he couldn't stop. The pull was too strong. A quiet urgency wrapped itself around his spine and tugged.

He took a slow step. Then another. And another.

As he neared the altar, something came into view—a small chalice, carved from the same black stone. It sat alone in the basin, perfectly still, as if it had been waiting.

Like everything else here, it was crude. Its surface was etched with markings—scratches rather than letters, gouged deep into its sides.

Ren paused.

His throat suddenly felt dry. Painfully dry.

That thirst—the one that always came when his affliction tightened its grip—returned all at once, violent and overwhelming. He reached for his neck, fingers pressing into skin that felt hot to the touch.

It burned. Badly.

He looked around in a panic, searching for water—anything. But the pools scattered across the stone floor were gone. Evaporated. Hidden. There was only the altar now. And the chalice.

Then he felt it.

The pull again.

Stronger now.

Before he realized it, he was moving again—rushing forward. His foot scraped hard against the stone, tearing skin. Blood welled from the fresh wound, trailing behind him in streaks of red.

But he didn't stop.

Step after step, he climbed the sanctuary's uneven rise, breath ragged, head pounding, heart racing beneath his skin.

Then, finally, he stood before it.

The chalice.

He looked inside.

Water.

But not blue.

Not clear.

It was black. Still. Opaque. Viscous-looking. So dark it didn't reflect anything—not even light. It looked like death, liquefied.

And yet… it shimmered. Not with light, but with something deeper—something Ren couldn't explain.

He hesitated—just for a moment.

Then his hands, shaking, reached forward.

He gripped the chalice and drank.

All of it.