Day 9.

Routine had taken hold, even down here where nothing was supposed to have rhythm.

Every cycle was the same: wake when the vents warmed the trench, stretch the scarred tail until the ache dulled, hunt, feed lightly, return to Harbour. Rest. Listen. Watch.

It wasn’t comfort. Comfort didn’t belong in the abyss. It was just pattern, and pattern, I’d learned, was its own kind of safety.

Harbour had changed since I’d claimed it.

The small hollow that once barely held me had become an ecosystem of its own. The warm water that leaked from its walls drew tiny lives: thin worms that glowed faint green, soft sacks that pulsed in rhythm with the vent, even a few scavenger crabs that nested in the outer cracks, collecting scraps I left behind.

They stayed near the entrance, never coming close to the deep pocket where I slept. I didn’t chase them off. They made noise, small, predictable noise, and noise meant life.

It was better than silence.

When I woke this morning, the vent’s breath was steady again. Warm enough to keep my joints loose, not enough to make me lazy. I drifted from the chamber and circled the trench mouth. The plankton outside shone faintly in the current, soft glimmers moving like dust caught in light.

My body had mended well. The cuts from the swarmfish were faint lines now, smooth under new scales. The tail still pulled a little, but it worked.

I no longer swam in panic. Every motion had a reason now.

I kept close to the trench floor where warmth pooled. Small fish fed on the edge of the vent clouds. They darted between rocks, slick and fast. Easy to chase, easier to overeat.

I took two. No more.

I could’ve taken five. I wanted to. The hunger never really went away, but it had learned its place. I’d given it boundaries, rules it didn’t like but couldn’t ignore.

The water around the trench shimmered with faint worms hanging from the ceiling, their tendrils bright as thin lanterns. I let them drift near my face. The glow brushed my scales, faint and harmless.

For a moment, I thought about biting one, just to taste that light again.

I didn’t.

Control. It was new, fragile, but real.

Instead, I watched the worms sway and thought about how strange it was to see anything beautiful here.

The vents sighed again, their heat washing over the hollow’s mouth. I followed the exhale back in and settled near the wall. My gills fluttered slowly, steadily.

For the first time, I realised Harbour had begun to sound like breathing.

The rhythm of it calmed me, even when I knew it wasn’t alive.

Maybe that’s enough, I thought. Something to hear besides myself.

I stayed there a long while, listening to the small clicks and hisses of the vents, the faint movements of worms, the soft scrape of scavengers cleaning stone. Every sound meant the world hadn’t forgotten me yet.

When I finally slept, I dreamed in light again. Not sunlight this time, ventlight. The same dull orange glow that painted the trench. It pulsed like a heartbeat.

Each pulse carried an echo, faint and rhythmic, but distant.

Click. Pause. Click.

I thought it was memory at first, the sonar I’d used to hunt, but the rhythm didn’t belong to me. It was slower, deeper, deliberate.

I woke, still hearing it.

The vents were quieter than usual. The trench floor below me rippled faintly. The sound came again: two clicks close together, then one long one that faded into silence.

Not random.

I eased closer to the entrance, careful not to disturb the worms. The current outside was colder, the dark thicker. I sent a single click of my own.

The echo came back wrong, drawn out, warped. Something large was moving somewhere down the trench, far enough that the sound reached me like memory instead of warning.

It wasn’t a predator’s hunting pulse. Too slow, too even.

It sounded like communication.

The thought unsettled me more than hunger ever had.

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I backed away from the entrance and let the warm water close around me. The small scavenger crabs hiding in the cracks clicked their claws together at the disturbance. For once, the sound comforted me.

Whatever was out there was too far to reach Harbour. For now.

The next day passed quietly.

Routine again. Feed a little. Rest. Listen.

The plankton fog near the vent mouth had thickened, and I caught sight of a few small grazer schools sweeping through. They reminded me of the swarmfish from before, only clumsier. I could’ve hunted them, but I let them go.

Their light flickered across the rocks as they passed. I didn’t chase it.

Control again.

Hunger would not own me.

By the second sleep, the clicks had stopped. I tried to tell myself it had been a current shifting through stone, nothing more.

But the trench never truly went silent.

There was always something moving, breathing, living, just beyond what I could see.

Midway through the cycle, I heard a different sound.

Not the far-off clicks.

Closer.

Something scraped against the outer lip of Harbour. A curious snout, small, sniffing at the warmth.

I stayed perfectly still. My glow had faded to a faint shimmer. The creature outside pressed against the stone, testing the crack. I saw its shape in the faint ventlight, long-bodied, not big, just bold enough to investigate what the warmth promised.

A mid-tier predator. Scavenger class. Curious, not desperate.

It slipped half its head through the entrance, gills flaring as it tasted the air. Its eyes caught the faint light and shone pale blue.

It saw me.

We stayed like that for a few heartbeats, neither moving.

Old instinct told me to strike. It would be easy, a single lunge, one bite, and the intruder would be gone.

But I didn’t move.

This was my place now. My territory. Killing for comfort was no longer the rule.

Instead, I sent a short, sharp click. A warning note.

The echo bounced off the walls and filled the chamber, turning the sound into a low hum that vibrated through the water.

The intruder flinched. Its body rippled once, then slid backward through the crack. The sound of its fins faded into the dark.

I waited another minute before relaxing.

The worms along the ceiling had folded in during the noise. Slowly, one by one, they unfurled again. The scavenger crabs resumed their small scraping.

I drifted to the entrance and inspected the seam. The intruder had widened it slightly where its body forced through. The gap would carry sound differently now.

I couldn’t have that.

I slid my jaw along the edge and tested it with a click. The returning sound rang too open, too obvious.

I worked for hours patching it, moving loose mineral shards into the gap, stacking small stones, shifting the way the current hit the mouth. Each adjustment changed the pitch.

When I finally sent another test click, the echo came back soft, scattered, harmless.

Perfect.

Harbour was hidden again.

The small act left me oddly proud. I had repaired the place, not just survived inside it.

It felt like ownership.

By the ninth evening, routine had fully taken hold.

The water outside the trench was cooler now, but inside Harbour, the warmth lingered. I drifted in the pocket, gills fluttering slowly, watching the small lights play across the stone.

Every now and then, a glowworm detached from the ceiling and drifted past. I let them.

The hunger still whispered. It always would. But I had found another rule, control is better than full.

I could survive on less.

The worms gave soft light, enough to see the edges of the chamber without calling attention to myself. The small scavengers along the walls had grown bolder, coming closer each day. One even climbed along the ridge of my fin while I rested. I didn’t swat it away.

This was what passed for company down here.

For a time, I thought it might be enough.

Then the quiet grew too loud.

There were no voices here. No sound that wasn’t made by hunger or survival.

No one answered my clicks.

I realised, sitting there in the slow rhythm of vent breath, that I was the only conscious thing I could hear.

No voice but hunger.

The thought landed heavy, like pressure settling on my ribs.

I sent another click into the hollow just to prove I still existed. The echo came back a fraction later, smaller, emptier.

The warmth felt colder after that.

Toward the end of the cycle, the faint rhythmic clicking returned.

Deeper this time, echoing from the far end of the trench.

Click. Pause. Click-click. Long pause.

Different from before, fainter, but sharper.

I held still, listening.

The rhythm didn’t belong to any vent I knew. It was too measured, too alive.

The trench walls carried it in waves, each pulse vibrating through the water like a slow drum.

I sent a single reply click, just once, to see what it would do.

The sound that came back wasn’t an echo. It was an answer.

A low thrum, long and deliberate, more vibration than tone.

It rolled through the trench, shaking silt loose from the ceiling. The worms folded tight again. The crabs vanished into cracks.

Then the water went still.

Something vast passed above the trench.

The light changed. A shadow stretched from one end of the chasm to the other. The current bent around it, slow and heavy, like the entire sea had turned to muscle.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

The shape blotted out everything, light, warmth, sound.

When it passed, the pressure it left behind felt like the memory of being crushed.

For a long time, there was nothing. Then, faintly, the trench walls vibrated once more.

Not sonar.

Something speaking.

The thought crawled through my mind, quiet and cold.

I stayed pressed against the wall until the tremor faded. The water returned to stillness.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t hunting me. Not yet.

I was too tired to think about what it meant.

Maybe the sea had words, and I’d just never learned to listen right.

Or maybe something out there was learning to speak.

I turned back toward the hollow and slipped inside, letting the warmth close around me again. The ceiling worms began to open one by one, casting small threads of light through the water.

The vent hummed low and steady, pretending everything was normal.

I didn’t believe it.

I settled near the far wall, resting my head against the stone. My body was still tense from holding still, but exhaustion won. My gills slowed, the rhythm of breath matching the faint heartbeat of the vent.

Before I closed my eyes, I sent one final click into the hollow. It came back soft, exactly as it should.

Safe, for now.

The System whispered in the silence, its glow faint and distant in my mind.

[Territory Integrity: Moderate]

[Warning: Apex Signature Detected]

[Environmental Anomaly Logged: Unidentified Communication Pattern]

[Harbour Acoustic Profile Updated]

The messages lingered longer than usual, as if the System wanted to make sure I’d seen them.

I didn’t answer.

The sea around me was quiet again. The warmth held.

That was all that mattered.

I closed my eyes and let the water rock me, the faint hum of the vent mixing with the slow beat of my heart.

If something had spoken, it could wait.

The deep always could.