Day 5 of the new cycle.

Quiet trench. Clean water. The weight of the deep sits right on the plates. I keep the hum low and steady. Tail, breath, count.

System numbers slide across the mind like a tide.

[Cycle Log Active]

[Biomass Total: 6,341 Units]

[Resonance Output: Stable (4.2 Hz)]

[Integrity: 100 %]

I patrol black corridors cut by old quakes. No rush. No waste. I hunt the way a ledger fills. Line by line.

Every click returns a shape. Every echo is data. The trench writes itself on the ribs, and I read.

Show prey.

[Targets Within Range: 11]

[Yield Variance: Low → High]

I filter for dense signatures. Metallic hints. Slow movers. Three stand out. I tag them and drop the rest. Precision before appetite.

I sink into the first lane and let the current carry me until the target’s pulse trembles between the plates. Close enough. Angle right. Muzzle low. I set the tone under the ribs and let it climb until the water tightens.

The strike is simple. Pressure first, teeth second. The body has learned this order and keeps it.

The wave goes out. The shape kinks once and stops trying to be a shape. I meet it with an open jaw and finish what sound began.

The System keeps pace, counting like breath.

[Biomass +3 Units]

[Biomass +5 Units]

[Biomass +2 Units]

[Biomass +14 Units]

[Biomass +7 Units]

[Biomass +9 Units]

[Biomass +6 Units]

[Biomass +11 Units]

[Biomass +8 Units]

[Biomass +10 Units]

[Biomass +12 Units]

[Biomass +10 Units]

[Biomass +18 Units]

[Running Total: 6,456 Units]

The rest scatter. I do not chase noise. I watch the vibration trails settle, pick the least wasteful path, and follow the cleanest tail.

Second kill, same method. I ride the echo into the soft spot and let the tone do the work. Third kill, a plated feeder with a good shell, but its rhythm betrays a seam along the jaw. I take the seam and keep the plates intact for later scraping.

The water clouds. I hold. No panic. I pull the hum down to near zero and reset the tone in small pulses until the cloud thins. When the sound is clean, I file the setting away.

[Predation Efficiency +3 %]

The number warms the ribs. Not pride. Proof. I move on.

The trench carries its old silence. My wake is the only new story in this lane. I keep the story tight.

The System hangs a marker where I can’t miss it.

[Threshold Reminder: 8,000 Units, Growth Cycle Pending]

Eight thousand. Then bigger. A merchant’s line. A debt to be met. I put it in the front of the mind and keep swimming.

I work the fields between collapsed chimneys. The prey here is careful, used to aftershocks, slow to commit. Good. Slow prey means fewer surprises. I build the total by small bites and quick ends.

When the tail aches, I rest in the lee of a ridge and chew through a plate I kept from the last feeder. The meat under it is mineral-rich, not soft. It pushes heat into the gills in small waves. I log the flavour and the afterburn for later use.

I ask for a sweep.

Show prey.

[Targets Within Range: 6]

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[Yield Variance: Moderate]

Two are light. Not worth the pulse. One is spiny and not worth the time. Three are fine. I take two and leave one for the lane to stay balanced. A full corridor starves fast. I have learned to leave a little coin in the bowl.

I do not hunt for hunger now. I hunt to tune the new body against rock and temperature, and pressure. Each strike is a calibration. Each bite is a test.

Hours blur into a rhythm that does not scrape the mind. Flesh, shell, blood, numbers. The plates warm from the inside as the count climbs. The resonance organ deepens by a fraction, a second beat setting in under the first. Not loud. Present.

The System watches and adds sparingly. I let it.

I cross a cold seam, and the total sits in a clean place behind my eyes. The number is a line I could draw with teeth on stone.

I ask again.

Show prey.

[Targets Within Range: 4]

One is shielded by a crack I do not want to widen. One is too close to a fragile tube field. Two are clear. I take them with soft tone and small bites.

The current shifts. The lane rises under me, warmer, faster. I hold to the bottom edge and let the lift take some load off the tail. The prey downstream tastes the change and leaves. Good. That lane will be clean when I need it later.

The count climbs. The hum settles into the kind of quiet that means the ribs are ready for whatever I ask next. My sight is sound and habit. I pass a carcass I struck days ago and do not touch it. The small mouths are working it. They do not flinch at my shadow. I am learning how not to write fear into everything around me.

The body finds a speed that costs little and holds it. The gills do not argue. The plates flex easily. The jaw’s hinge is silent.

I taste the water for iron and for heat and for the faint resin that comes off soft-bodied prey. I work the lines the trench offers without breaking them. The number climbs again.

The System whispers once each hour with a narrow light. No clutter.

[Biomass: 7,412 Units]

[Biomass: 7,641 Units]

[Biomass: 7,894 Units]

My back rides the pressure like a keel. The trench feels smaller. Not by pride. By fit.

I find a pocket of slow fish pressed under a shelf. I could clear it in three pulses and two passes. I do not. I take one and leave the rest for the corridor to keep its shape. The count still creeps toward the line.

I know I am near when the body hum changes without instruction. The tone sits a little lower, carries further. The plates shed wake more cleanly. The breath draws smoother. The system’s presence thickens at the edge of thought.

At 8,000 units, the voice arrives. Not loud. Not cold. Weight behind it.

[Minor Threshold Reached]

[Initiate Incremental Growth? Y/N]

The corridor is quiet, the seam is stable, the body is warm. Yes.

The change comes like a tide that ignores bone until it doesn’t. Fast. Clean. Honest. A low pain that holds steady rather than tearing. I keep the jaw shut and the tail still and let it pass through.

Bones lengthen by a hand. Plates separate and seal again with a seam so tight I can feel the stitch in the pressure. Fins thicken at the roots. The ridge along the back populates with new micro-plates that shear water finer. The resonance organ takes up more room under the ribs and stops arguing with the lungs.

I breathe once. The trench fits differently. The same water presses with less cost.

My tail span was now about 20 meters, by body just under half of that, but my length, I was just over half of an imperial clipper, around 70 meters.

The System files the fact with no ceremony.

[Incremental Growth +6 % Mass]

[Resonance Amplitude +4 %]

[Biomass Reset: 0 / Next 8 000]

The ledger flips a page. The amount due is the same size printed at the bottom. Eight thousand again. The count starts at zero. The body is larger, so the room looks smaller. That is the joke the sea tells after growth.

The sea counts everything, even size. The thought is not bitter. It is a rule like pressure. I put it next to the others and keep it.

I roll once to feel the water hold. The edges of the wake fall away without chatter. The hum carries further with the same effort. I set a soft pulse and taste the walls half a valley out. The map returns crisp.

I tip the nose into an old lane that slopes up. The water holds a warmer thread. The plates drink it and do not crack. The ribs sing back a note that sounds like space above.

The System marks the change without drama.

[Gradient Shift Detected (+7 °C)]

[Unknown Layer Ahead]

[Advisory: Ascend With Caution.]

I choose motion over thought. The tail lies down slow power. The fin roots do not burn. The mouth stays shut. The hum sits at idle, and I only lift it to taste the shape of the slope.

The layer announces itself as less drag and more glide. The gills do not have to pull as hard. The armour does not sweat from heat or ice. The current writes gentle lines across the plates like a hand that wants to test rather than take.

I keep my speed modest. No point sprinting into a band with rules I do not know. I watch what happens to bubbles of old gas that leak from a seam. They rise a little faster, then stall, then slip sideways. The layer is not a wall. It is a tongue of different water laid between familiar ones.

I climb until the shimmer I tasted two days ago threads the dark. It is faint. It is clean. It comes from above and keeps its promise by not burning or blinding. It paints the edges of the plates in soft silver when I roll the body to let it.

The System holds its lines. I hold the breath between them.

The ledger sits at zero again. It should feel like a loss. It does not. The weight moved into the bone. The number printed at the bottom of the next page is honest as ever. Eight thousand. Then more shape to carry what comes next.

I test the new amplitude in three small pulses laid out like stones on a path. The first returns with shapes I already know. The second runs farther for equal cost. The third brushes something wide, level, and still. Not rock. Not plain. A layer of water the echo treats as a sheet. I mark it on the inside of the jaw like a tooth I do not want to break.

I work a small loop to the left to see if the layer tilts. It does, a fraction. I keep the slope below the teeth, and the shimmer above the eye, and find the line where both speak to each other without shouting.

The corridor below falls away. The noise of old work thins. The taste of mineral shifts toward clean salt that has not been chewed through heat. The ribs are happy. The lungs are disciplined. The plates are quiet.

I do not ask for prey. I let the count be zero long enough to learn how the new body behaves when it is not being paid for with meat. The sea often teaches the hardest lesson right after growth: do not waste your fresh walls on the first fist you meet.

When my tail wants to sprint, I refuse it. When the hum wants to climb, I touch the ritual line to keep it honest.

The sea gives. The sea takes.

The layer accepts me without complaint. It would accept my corpse without complaint, too. That is the long rule that keeps pride out of the ribs.

A ridge to starboard lifts its nose into the band like a question. I run a soft pulse along it and feel a notch that would break a fin if I threaded it fast. I slow, slip over, and leave no chip. The new mass does not mean I get to write my will into stone.

The System breathes once with me, the way it does now when it is more partner than tool.

[ Continue Exchange.]

I taste the water upward again. The shimmer is stronger by a hair. Not a day. Not mercy. Just a measure I have not earned yet and mean to.

If the abyss fed me, the next sea will measure me.

I answer with tail and with quiet. I climb into it.