Hunger returned before the heat.

It came creeping back the way pressure does, quietly at first, then all at once, until it filled everything. The small fish near Harbour had thinned to nothing. Even the plankton fog had drifted elsewhere, drawn to fresher vents. The world outside the hollow was still, the kind of stillness that smells like a warning.

Nine days had passed since I’d claimed this place. Enough time for the small scavengers to grow bold, for the worms along the ceiling to spin faint nets of light. Harbour had become a nest, a quiet room of heat and order. But order didn’t feed you.

The ache started in the gills. A pulse. Then a burn behind the eyes. Then the thought itself began to thin.

I waited as long as I could. The hunger didn’t fade. It waited with me.

By the tenth breath, I was already moving.

The current outside carried a sharp tang, iron and salt. The scent of living things. I followed it without meaning to, body remembering the old rhythm of the hunt. My fins stirred the silt into slow clouds. Every movement sounded louder than it should have.

The trench floor sloped downward into a gloom I hadn’t explored before. The vents here coughed in lazy intervals, breathing old heat instead of new. It was colder than I liked, but the scent was strong, rising through cracks in the rock.

I eased into the current and let it take me.

The light dimmed to a smear. The water grew thick, ash-grey. My heartbeat became the only sound.

Then, faint and clear through the dark, came clicking.

Click-click. Pause. Click-click-click.

I stopped, hanging mid-water. The pattern came again, soft but deliberate. It wasn’t the sonar of predators. It was slower, steadier.

It almost sounded like… language.

Click-click. Safe. Click. Safe.

I froze.

The noise wasn’t mine, yet something in it struck deep, a rhythm that carried feeling even before meaning. The water around me vibrated faintly with the sound. It reminded me of the way my grandfather used to hum over the engine of his trawler, half a song, half prayer.

Curiosity pushed where reason should’ve stopped.

I followed the sound.

The trench widened into a small basin, lit by a faint blue shimmer. Heat shimmered off the vent bed, bending light into waves. Through that haze, I saw movement, hundreds of small, pale shapes shifting in rhythm.

Crustaceans.

Pale-bodied, jointed, almost translucent. They moved in slow, circular lines around a bubble dome of trapped heat. And around them drifted a herd of fry, tiny, glass-thin creatures with glowing bellies. The crustaceans herded them gently with claw-taps and rhythmic clicks, guiding them through the warm current.

Click-click. Safe. Click-click. Safe.

The chant rolled across the water like a heartbeat.

I watched from the shadows, hidden among rocks at the basin’s edge. The light from the dome washed over the scene in waves. For a moment, I thought it was beautiful, the way their tiny world pulsed with warmth and order, the way they moved like they believed in something.

The thought made me ache.

My stomach clenched. The smell of life filled every breath.

The hunger had found its voice again, and it was whispering in my ear.

I fought it. I told myself this wasn’t a meal, it was a moment, something worth leaving untouched.

But then one of the fry drifted too close. The scent hit the back of my throat, sweet and soft, and the rest of me stopped caring.

The chant went on, slow and calm.

Safe-safe-safe.

I drifted closer.

The warmth from the dome hit my face. The bubble shimmered, reflecting small silhouettes that danced across my eyes. I could hear the clicks more clearly now, and though I didn’t understand the words, I could feel their meaning. They were comforting their young.

Safe.

The sound twisted as it reached me.

My gills flared. My jaw tensed. Every pulse of sound became a call, every repetition a lure.

Hunger rose like a tide.

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No, I told myself. Don’t.

But instinct didn’t care for words.

The next pulse came, and my muscles moved before thought caught up.

I lunged.

The first impact shattered the water. My jaws closed around the nearest shell. It cracked like dry coral. Warm flesh filled my mouth, rich and sharp. The crustacean’s glow winked out as I bit through its centre.

The chant broke.

Click, click, safe,

Then silence.

The fry scattered instantly, flashes of silver darting through the haze. The remaining crustaceans clicked in chaos, the old rhythm replaced by panic.

Safe, same, same, please,

The sounds tore through the water like screams.

For a heartbeat, I froze.

It wasn’t language as I’d known it, but meaning still reached me: pleading, confusion, loss.

I almost stopped.

Almost.

Then another fry brushed my fin, and the reflex took hold again.

I struck.

Flesh tore. Shells cracked. The sound became noise and then nothing at all. The dome’s warmth turned red.

When I finally stopped moving, the water around me was thick with debris, broken shells, drifting limbs, and torn fins. The dome pulsed weakly, half-collapsed.

The warmth that reached my skin now was wrong. Too thick. Too still.

My body trembled. The ache in my stomach had quieted, replaced by something colder.

I looked at what I’d done.

There were no words for it.

No chant. No song. Only stillness.

The current didn’t move. The vent’s hum had quieted as if holding its breath.

Even my own heartbeat seemed too loud.

I hovered above the carnage, unable to leave, unable to speak. The water felt heavier with every moment that passed, pressing against my gills.

And yet, under that weight, another sound began.

A slow throb. A pulse that wasn’t mine.

The sea itself was listening.

I didn’t believe in omens. Not anymore. But the silence that followed that slaughter felt like judgment.

I tried to swallow, but the warmth in my throat made me sick.

The words came out without thought, rising in bubbles that drifted toward the ruined dome.

“The sea gives…”

The words scraped raw against my throat.

“And the sea takes…”

The bubbles broke against the rock, small and weak.

“We thank the ocean for the life we take, or one day it’ll take us in return.”

The words dissolved in the current, vanishing before they could reach the surface.

For a long time, I waited for something, an answer, a sign, even punishment.

Nothing came.

Only my own reflection, dim and pale, staring back from the dome’s cracked surface.

I turned away and drifted back toward the trench, the trail of blood following behind me.

By the time Harbour’s faint glow appeared again, exhaustion had replaced hunger. My body moved automatically, guided more by memory than will.

The warmth of the hollow hit me like guilt.

The scavenger crabs scattered when I entered. The worms above had drawn in their light, leaving the chamber dim.

I settled against the wall, shivering despite the heat. My gills fluttered too fast. Every breath carried the taste of blood I hadn’t washed off.

I tried to sleep. I couldn’t.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the dome again, the way it pulsed with soft light, the way it went dark when my teeth closed.

The words haunted me.

Safe-safe-safe.

Sometimes they sounded like clicks. Other times, they sounded like English.

Please. Same.

Begging, repeating.

It wasn’t just memory. The rhythm stuck in my head, too precise to forget.

I tried clicking softly, mimicking what I’d heard.

The sound echoed back from the walls of Harbour, wrong somehow, too sharp, too alone.

No answer came.

I covered my gills and tried to shut it out.

Sleep finally took me, but the dreams came hard.

The air was warm again. I stood in a kitchen lit by weak sunlight. The pan hissed on the stove. My grandfather’s hand squeezed lime over a cooked fish, and the steam rose like prayer smoke.

“Always thank the sea, boy,” he said, smiling. “It gives what it gives. Never take without a word.”

The sound of the sizzling oil shifted, became bubbles, became clicks.

Click-click. Safe-safe-safe.

I looked down. The fish in the pan twitched. Its mouth opened and closed. The eyes were still moving.

I woke choking.

The ceiling worms were pulsing faster than before, their glow uneven. The vent hummed in a low, dissonant rhythm. I couldn’t tell if the sound was in the water or in my head.

Heat built behind my eyes. The ache spread through my skull, thick and pulsing. My gills flared. The warmth wasn’t coming from Harbour, it was coming from inside.

I pressed against the wall to steady myself. The stone vibrated faintly. Not from the vent, not from current.

From me.

Something inside my head was moving, brushing against my thoughts like a fin against water.

I felt it, faint, unfamiliar, scared.

Not mine.

The crustaceans’ chant, the rhythm of their speech, it hadn’t died with them. Some trace of it had clung to me, alive and whispering.

It wasn’t words anymore, just impressions. Warmth. Fear. The memory of being crushed.

I shuddered. The ache behind my eyes flared white-hot, then dulled to a lingering throb.

The sea outside was silent.

But inside my skull, something new had begun to stir.

When the System came, it didn’t announce itself with light this time. It arrived like pressure, soft, dense, inside my head.

Then the text appeared, glowing faintly in front of me.

[Sentient Biomass Consumed]

[Cognitive Synchronisation +1%]

Each line pulsed once, matching the rhythm still echoing in my chest.

A faint warmth spread through my mind, subtle but invasive. For a heartbeat, I wasn’t just seeing my own memories, I was feeling theirs.

A flash of light. The press of water. The ache of being torn apart.

Then silence.

The warmth faded, leaving nausea behind.

I lay motionless, gills fluttering weakly. My tail twitched with leftover energy I didn’t own.

For the first time since dying, I felt less like a creature learning to live and more like one learning to regret.

The hunger had been fed. The body was strong again. But something else had gone missing.

The silence in my head wasn’t emptiness anymore. It was full of ghosts.

By the next cycle, Harbour had changed again. The worms were dimmer. The small scavengers had gone. Even the current moved differently, slower, as if the sea itself was waiting.

I drifted near the wall, too tired to move. My thoughts came in pulses, slow, uneven.

The sea gives. The sea takes.

But it also remembers.

When I finally slept again, the warmth in my skull returned, not painful this time, just present. Like someone standing close behind me, too quiet to see.

I thought I heard clicking again. Only two notes this time.

Safe.

Then nothing.

The sea around me hummed faintly, like breath against glass.

And for the first time, I wondered if I was the only one still dreaming.

[Sentient Biomass Consumed]

[Cognitive Synchronisation +1%]

[Empathic Interference: Dream Intrusions Expected]

The lines pulsed once more in the dark before fading, their glow washing over the stone like ghost-light.

I closed my eyes and let the current carry the nausea away.

The sea had given me its voice.

And I didn’t know if I’d ever stop hearing it.