The Fang-Eel’s wake still hummed through the trench like a heartbeat.

Every pulse seemed to find its way into my ribs. The water itself remembered.

I followed the vibration until the world began to glow again, red first, then white, then a dull molten shimmer that turned the dark into haze. The trail ended at a fissure so wide it made the trench look small.

The entrance alone could have swallowed a mountain range.

Heat rolled from it in slow breaths, distorting the water into waves. The stone walls around the opening sweated beads of molten glass. Every few seconds, the sea moved, not from current, but from something deeper, a rhythm that seemed to come from inside the planet.

The Fang-Eel’s den.

I waited in the shadow of the entrance, every instinct screaming to turn back. The water here was alive with pressure. My gills fluttered too fast. My skin itched like it wanted to crawl away from me.

I counted seconds to steady the heart.

Five. Ten. Eleven hurt. Twelve burned.

Then the trench shook again.

The eel exhaled.

The current hit me like a storm. It wasn’t violent, it was total. The entire sea seemed to move with it. The water rose, spinning me through a spiral of ash and light before dropping me again.

The pressure dragged me closer.

I caught a ledge and held with everything I had. My teeth cracked from the strain. Every muscle screamed.

The current changed direction. The eel inhaled.

It was like being pulled toward the end of the world.

I let go.

The water carried me straight into the fissure’s mouth.

Inside was heat and noise and red light that moved like slow fire. The den stretched far beyond sight, its walls rippling with veins of dull light. Everything shimmered, as if the rock itself was melting, constantly changing shape to fit the creature that called it home.

The water was thick, heavy with oil, blood, and decay. The eel’s pulse rolled through the space like thunder made solid.

I sank lower, riding the currents deeper in, until I began to see what the trench had been hiding.

The floor was covered with bodies.

Thousands of them, layer upon layer.

The dead were pressed into the walls, fused into shapes that were no longer fish or beast, just matter caught in the eel’s cycle. Some still twitched, nerves trying to move long after everything else had forgotten how. A carpet of rot and slow movement covered everything.

Parasites crawled across the surface of the corpses. Fat white shapes with translucent shells, their bodies glowing faintly from what they’d eaten. They pulsed with small, rhythmic light, feeding in time with the eel’s breath.

I hesitated.

The water stung my gills. Every inhale hurt. My head throbbed. The body wanted out, but hunger had its own voice.

I lunged.

The parasites were soft, almost liquid when I bit into them. They burst against my teeth, spilling faint light into the water. The taste was sour but rich, warm enough to make my chest pulse faster. I ate until the ache behind my eyes dulled.

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Then I went for the rest.

The eel’s leftovers were layered like sediment, fat, muscle, bone. The outer layer was charred. The next layer was jelly, cooked but still alive. Beneath that, the meat turned cold and solid. I tore it apart one piece at a time, swallowing fast to keep the heat from blistering my throat.

Each bite was a new flavour of pain. The meat burned as it went down, but it didn’t stay painful for long. It became energy, raw and bright.

I felt it spread through my veins, my skin beginning to glow where the parasites had touched. Blue-white light shimmered faintly through the scales. The water around me flickered with each breath.

My gills ached. My bones felt soft. My fins twitched in strange, wrong ways.

The pain didn’t stop. It changed shape.

The body began to adapt.

My gills widened, pulling more oxygen from the toxic water. Thin filaments branched off them, glowing faintly with each breath. The membrane along my flanks hardened, thickened, turned from silver to near-black.

Then came the second wave.

The heat beneath the flesh wasn’t just temperature, it was energy. The eel’s discarded biomass had its own rhythm, still pulsing faintly from whatever piece of it had come from the creature’s body. Every scrap I swallowed sang against my insides.

The song got louder.

The blood inside me began to hum, matching the faint vibration that ran through the stone. My heart changed its beat to match the eel’s.

I tried to slow it. It didn’t listen.

The System flickered between the throbs of pain.

[Apex Biomass Fragments Assimilated: 0.05%]

[Genetic Resonance Detected]

[Integrity -7% | Growth Potential +9%]

The words came bright and sharp, then vanished like sparks in the current.

I wanted to stop eating. I didn’t.

I chewed through another carcass, scraping skin and bone apart with teeth that had started to feel too long. The light inside the meat spread across my tongue, tiny shocks running through it. The air in the den grew thicker.

The eel’s exhale rolled through again.

The current lifted me off the floor, spinning me through a storm of bones. When I landed, I found myself next to one of its ribs, if ribs were even the right word. The bone stretched beyond sight, pitted with grooves where parasites had burrowed into it. I ran my fin along its edge, feeling the vibration.

The eel was asleep, but the power running through its body was still strong enough to make the water tremble. Each breath it took was a tide.

I felt the pulse drag through my chest again, syncing with my own heartbeat.

The sound filled everything.

My head, my chest, the water itself, it all thudded to the same rhythm. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the current began.

The human part of me tried to think, but the thoughts came out wrong.

Every meal costs thought.

It was true.

The more I fed, the less I felt like something that could think.

I had become something that only reacted. Something that lived off what was left behind.

The eel shifted slightly in its sleep.

The movement was enough to throw the water into chaos. Heat and current burst outward in waves. The carcasses along the wall shuddered and tore loose, drifting upward like strange balloons before bursting apart.

I curled into a hollow of bone and held there until the world stilled. My skin blistered along my sides, thin layers peeling away in the heat, beneath, new tissue pulsed with faint blue light.

It hurt, but it was growth.

My thoughts frayed, pulling apart like threads in boiling water. The body worked faster than the mind could keep up.

I lost count of how long I stayed there. Time broke down into movement, eat, breathe, survive. The eel’s breath filled everything. I stopped resisting it and started to time myself with it.

Breathe when it breathed.

Rest when it rested.

Exist when it allowed it.

The System flickered again, dimmer now, like the text was afraid to be seen here.

[Cognitive Drift: Escalating]

[Instinct Dominance: 84%]

The light faded from the words before I could blink.

The glow under my skin brightened. The water around me shimmered faintly with the same pulse that came from the eel. My heart matched its rhythm perfectly now, a smaller version of the same machine.

For the first time since dying, I didn’t feel alone.

The thought frightened me more than the heat.

I turned toward the eel’s massive body, the size of it blotting out everything else. Its scars pulsed under the skin like molten rivers. Every exhale made the den walls breathe.

I drifted closer until I could see the fine lines of current flowing along its side, streams of heat that shimmered like fireflies.

The water here was still deadly, too hot to survive long. But I didn’t want to leave.

I settled near its flank, close enough to feel the slow drag of its pulse. The vibration was hypnotic, a lullaby for things that should have died long ago.

My heartbeat matched it completely. The glow under my skin dimmed and brightened in time with its breath.

I closed my eyes.

If I dream loud enough, I thought, maybe it will think I’m part of it.

The trench groaned with the next exhale, and the current lifted me off the ground, pressing me against the eel’s side.

I stayed there, small and weightless, a parasite curled against the body of a god.

Sleep came slowly and strangely, full of heat and light that had no source. My last thought before the dark took me was not prayer, not fear, just the certainty that I was becoming something new, something less mine.

The Fang-Eel breathed, and the sea breathed with it.

And I followed.