The drift took everything that hunger had not.

I moved because the water moved. There was no plan, no path. My body still burned with the rival’s heat, a fever that refused to cool. Every pulse of my heart carried that warmth through me. It was not mine, and it did not feel earned.

The trench had changed.

The vents no longer sang; they wheezed. The walls had melted and cooled into uneven waves of glass, cracked and shining where the collapse had scorched them. The seafloor shimmered with dust and glass shards that caught what little light survived this deep. Every stroke of my fins stirred a thin cloud of ash, which rose, turned silver, and fell again.

I passed through what was left of Harbour.

The vent that once filled it with warmth was now a cold hole yawning into the crust. The worms that had lined its walls were gone, baked into threads of ash. Even the scavenger crabs that had claimed my scraps had vanished, leaving only the faint outline of their claws pressed into cooling stone.

Nothing breathed here anymore.

No hum. No warmth. No pulse.

Only the hollow memory of both.

The sea took everything, I thought, and left the wanting.

The wanting was no longer hunger. It had dulled into something steadier, quieter, a habit. A pulse that replaced thought when the mind had nothing left to say.

The trench watched me. The silence pressed like a weight. Even my sonar faltered. Clicks scattered through the walls and came back wrong, delayed, fractured, and confused, as though the sea no longer knew its own shape.

I drifted deeper into the smoke. The ash moved in shapes that looked like memory: fins, faces, a human hand reaching upward. Each time I blinked, they fell apart.

Then came the voices.

My thoughts split.

Two lines of words overlapping, tangled but distinct.

Turn left.

Wait.

Kill.

Hide.

Not all of them were mine.

The rival was still inside me.

Mine. / Yours.

Images hit me in fragments: his hunts through the narrow trenches, the taste of hot blood, the panic under falling stone, and the final instant before my teeth tore through his throat. I saw my own reflection in his eye, sharp, wild, empty.

Then came his last thought, so clear it burned.

You’ll become me.

I slammed my body against the rock until pain took its place. The ache in my ribs drowned the voices.

The trench stayed quiet.

Then light bloomed behind my eyes.

[Cognitive Merge Instability: Active]

[Integrity -2%]

[Recommendation: Seek Apex Biomass to Stabilise]

The message hovered, bright and patient.

It was not advice. It was bait.

Seek apex biomass. Eat something greater. Silence the noise.

The System had no interest in peace. It only understood movement. More heat. More growth. More hunger.

The rival’s warmth was fading now. My body felt heavy again, slow and sore. The itch along my sides grew sharper as new plates tried to form. Underneath the sound of my own breath, I heard the smaller voice whisper.

Feed.

Grow.

Feed.

The words weren’t words anymore. They were rhythm, simple, unthinking.

I hovered in the centre of a wide field of cracks, listening to the sea’s low hum. The System’s message echoed inside my chest, dull but insistent. It wanted what the sea always wanted.

Eat. Evolve. Repeat.

This tale has been pilfered from NovelBin. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The reward wasn’t survival. It was change.

The sea didn’t care who lived; it only cared what became bigger.

I thought of the rival, of what I’d absorbed. His body, his memories, his fear. Even his thoughts had turned into fuel.

Maybe that was the truth behind every god.

Maybe gods were just things that finished their meals.

The current shifted.

At first, it was faint, small tremors that rippled through the cracked floor. Then stronger.

The ash began to rise.

The vibration came up through the rock, slow and deliberate. It didn’t sound like a collapse. It sounded like the world itself stretching.

I froze.

The tremor rolled through the water, lifting ash in spirals. The sound hit a moment later, a low, heavy pulse that moved through bone instead of water.

The trench walls vibrated like drum skin. The sea pressed tighter, pulling against my body.

Pressure changed. Heat rolled in waves, then withdrew, replaced by cold.

The hum thickened until it became something solid enough to taste. The water shimmered with red light that came from nowhere.

Something enormous was moving below.

It was not a vent. Not a quake. Not anything I had felt before.

The sea itself was breathing again.

I held still and listened.

Every pulse rolled through me, stronger than the last. The sound was so deep it flattened everything else. Even the current forgot how to move.

The fear that should have come never did.

Only curiosity.

The sound wasn’t just noise, it was structure. A kind of order written into the water.

It was too big to be a creature and too deliberate to be anything else.

The abyss itself had found its voice.

The hum deepened until the stone beneath me began to crack.

Columns of ash burst from the floor, curling toward the ceiling and falling back in on themselves. The water bent around invisible shapes.

It was alive.

I descended, careful and slow, each motion deliberate. The heat increased. The water thickened, heavy with vibration.

The trench widened into an open plain of red-glowing stone. Faint streams of molten minerals slid down the walls. The pulse rolled upward through the basin, pressing against my chest until my ribs ached.

Then I saw it.

A shadow coiled across the valley floor, so vast it blurred into the shape of the trench itself. Its fins rose and fell in slow intervals, each movement shifting entire currents.

The water moved with its breathing.

I couldn’t tell where it ended. It might have been one body or a whole mountain range.

Every beat of its pulse was a command.

Apex.

The word came unbidden, heavy and certain.

The water, the stone, the System, everything pointed toward this.

The thing below wasn’t a predator. It was the rule that predators obeyed.

The thought sank into me like a stone dropped in endless water.

I hovered above the shadow.

The hum faded, leaving the trench in stillness.

Two breaths filled the gap.

Mine.

And the echo.

The rival’s voice was still there, softer now, almost reverent.

Watch.

Learn.

The warmth in my chest pulsed once, faint but real, answering the call from below.

I smiled. The expression felt alien in water this cold.

“If there’s a greater shadow,” I said, “I’ll follow it.”

The sea didn’t reply, but the current changed.

The pulse returned, slower this time, deeper. It rolled through the basin like approval.

Then the System spoke again.

[Apex Signature Locked]

[Rule Update: Territory Redefined: The Abyss Itself]

[Objective Added: Engage Apex Entity]

The words hung there for a long moment, pale against the dark. Then they faded.

I drifted around the shadow’s edge. The ground shimmered where heat met cold, light bending into dull rainbows. Small creatures clung to the rocks, blind worms and soft shells feeding on the minerals that leaked from the beast’s scales.

Even here, life persisted. The sea didn’t believe in empty spaces.

I stayed just beyond the reach of its pulse and watched.

The ash moved in circles, slow and steady, turning with the rhythm of its breathing. Each exhale spread warmth through the water; each inhale drew it back.

It didn’t move like a predator. It moved like weather.

The rival’s echo stirred again, a faint whisper.

Take.

Be taken.

The words didn’t frighten me. They fit too well.

Every creature here was just a rung in a ladder of mouths. Every victory was borrowed time until something larger needed to eat.

Maybe that was what the System meant by “Apex.” Not a crown, just the next link.

I looked down at the shape beneath me, its size too vast to hold in thought. Its presence pressed against my skin like gravity.

And for the first time since I had woken in this world, I felt something like peace.

I descended again, slow and quiet.

The ash lifted around me like fog. My gills filled with the taste of metal and heat.

The water grew warmer the closer I came. The pulse no longer hurt; it guided.

Each wave rolled through me, steady, certain.

The System flickered again, its light faint but steady.

[Rule Update: Territory Redefined: The Abyss Itself]

[Objective Active: Engage Apex Entity]

I ignored it.

I wasn’t ready to engage. Not yet.

I wanted to understand.

The creature’s body filled the horizon now. Vast fins arched upward, disappearing into haze. Faint scars ran the length of its form, each one glowing faintly, as if lightning had once lived there and left a memory.

The warmth from its skin radiated through the water, pulsing with slow power.

I watched the ash drift across its back, disturbed by the faint tremor of its pulse. The movement was hypnotic, steady, endless, eternal.

It was old. Older than thought.

The kind of life that didn’t eat for need but for law.

The rival’s voice spoke again, thin as a ripple.

This is what the sea remembers.

I almost answered aloud, but the hum filled my chest again, erasing language.

The trench was no longer mine.

It had never been mine.

It belonged to this.

To the rule at the bottom of everything.

I looked once more at the faint shimmer above, the ghost of light where Harbour had been. Then I turned back toward the dark.

Every part of me wanted to see what the sea had made beneath all ruin.

Not to fear it.

To learn from it.

The pulse grew stronger, filling every space between thought and breath.

I spoke again, soft but certain.

“The sea doesn’t stop. It just trades one hunger for another.”

The shadow shifted, slow and immense. Heat rolled through the trench like a heartbeat from the planet itself.

The System answered, cold and sure.

[Apex Signature Locked]

[Rule Update: Territory Redefined: The Abyss Itself]

[Objective Added: Engage Apex Entity]

I closed my eyes and let the current take me.

The warmth became light. The hum became music.

The abyss opened.

And I followed.