Saltblood

The ocean was always louder at night.

Even inside the floating city of Halvryn buried beneath layers of metal, reinforced glass, and noise-canceling systems-Kieran Voss could hear it. Not just the crash of waves or the deep, constant churn. This sound was stranger. Like breathing. Or something older than breath.

He stood alone in the observation deck, staring down through the thick glass that separated the city from the sea. Below him, the Abyssal Veil yawned like a scar in the ocean floor. Blacker than the water itself. And somewhere in its depths was the truth he'd been chasing for most of his life.

His father's name was etched on a memorial panel outside the deep-sea dock, along with others who never returned. Twenty years ago, James Voss dove into the Veil on a classified mission and never surfaced. No body. No wreckage. Just a garbled comm signal and then silence.

No one ever told Kieran what really happened.

That silence became a weight, one he carried into every study, every dive, every data set. He wasn't just a biotechnologist. He was a ghost hunter in a lab coat. A son with questions that science hadn't answered.

And tonight, he was going back into the trench.

A soft chime from his wristpad pulled him from the view.

Mina: "Dive team assembled. Waiting on you."

Kieran sighed. Of course she was on schedule. She always was.

The descent bay buzzed with tension when he arrived. Engineers moved with quiet efficiency, checking systems, securing gear. The room smelled like oil and disinfectant. And at the center of it all stood Mina Rowe-head engineer, co-lead on the dive mission, and the only person Kieran had ever trusted enough to love. Once.

"Late," she said, not looking up from her tablet.

"Lost in thought."

"Still chasing ghosts?"

"Still chasing facts," he muttered, and moved toward his suit.

Their banter had softened over time, but the edges were still there-unresolved, like everything else between them.

The submersible for tonight's dive was compact and old but recently retrofitted with deep-sea shielding and a neural feedback interface. Kieran slid into the pilot's seat while Mina ran diagnostics from the co-chair.

Their mission? Scan the lower shelf of the Veil for energy anomalies. For the last six months, seismic sensors had picked up rhythmic pulses deep below-too regular to be natural, but too organic to be machine. A perfect mystery.

Kieran strapped in. "Send us down."

The dock doors opened, and the water swallowed them whole.

As the sub descended, light bled away until only the soft pulse of internal LEDs remained. The trench was endless, its walls rippling with strange patterns of life-jellies, shimmerfish, things unnamed and unnoticed. The sensors chirped steadily, feeding streams of data into the console.

Mina broke the silence first. "Do you actually think you'll find something this time?"

He didn't answer right away.

"I think something's already found us."

Mina looked at him, frowning. "That's comforting."

They passed 6,000 meters.

And that's when the sonar blinked.

A shape was rising from the trench wall-not rock, not coral. It was smooth, curved. Kieran adjusted the scope and zoomed in.

"No way," he whispered. "That's... architecture."

Mina leaned closer. "It looks... carved. But that would mean-"

Another pulse. Stronger this time. The sub jolted.

"What was that?" she snapped.

"Unclear," Kieran said, fighting the controls. "Could be-"

And then he saw her.

Just outside the viewport, floating.

Not in a suit. Not struggling. Just... there.

A woman. Pale skin that shimmered slightly, dark hair drifting like sea grass, eyes that glowed faintly gold. She wasn't swimming. She wasn't panicked. She was watching them.

Mina gasped. "What the hell-?"

The sub rocked again. A pressure wave surged past them, shaking the hull. Warning lights flared. Kieran reached for the comm, but nothing worked.

She was still there. Still watching.

Then-slowly-she lifted her hand and pressed it against the glass.

It was like time held its breath.

Kieran did the same.

Her lips moved. A single word.

He couldn't hear it, but he understood.

Run.

And then she was gone. Just vanished into the dark.

Back on Halvryn's surface, alarms were blaring.

The dive mission had triggered a seismic reaction across the trench. Quakes. Energy spikes. Something had awakened. The city trembled, engineers scrambled to reroute power. Below, Kieran and Mina surfaced in time to see the lower dome briefly flicker.

They were met by military officers immediately-too quickly.

Admiral Sen Talor stood on the landing platform, arms folded.

"What did you find?" she asked coldly.

Kieran exchanged a quick glance with Mina.

"Just more trench scans," he lied. "But we were hit by turbulence. Possibly volcanic."

"Possibly," she echoed, unimpressed. "Yet the quake coordinates match your last scan point. Curious."

She walked away without waiting for a reply.

Mina turned to Kieran, voice low. "She knows something."

"She always has," he said. "And now she knows we do too."

Later that night, Kieran reviewed the footage from the dive.

The camera feed had been corrupted-static bursts, blurry images, corrupted audio. The only clear frame was three seconds long.

Nyra, staring straight into the camera.

He paused the video.

Zoomed in.

Her eyes looked directly at him.

Not a glitch. Not a reflection. A warning.

He leaned back in his chair and whispered to the room, "What are you?"

A soft knock at the door startled him. He didn't expect visitors this late.

He opened the door.

And there she was.

Soaking wet. Silent.

Nyra.

Not on a screen. Not behind glass. Here.

Alive.

Real.

Before he could speak, she collapsed into his arms.

Kieran caught her before she hit the floor.

Her body was unnaturally cold-colder than the ocean itself-and yet there was a low, vibrating warmth pulsing beneath her skin, like some dormant current trying to restart. Her long hair clung to her shoulders and cheeks like wet silk, and her eyes, once glowing gold, were now half-closed, glassy with exhaustion.

"Hey," Kieran whispered, panic rising like bile. "Stay with me. Don't fade out now."

She didn't respond.