The trench was still.

No current, no drift. Only the slow hum inside my ribs and the faint echo of pressure in the water.

Something moved ahead.

I felt it before I saw it, a scrape against bone, metal on rock. A long body sliding through the remains of the Fang-Eel’s ribs. The sound carried across the trench floor, heavy and slow.

I turned toward it, following the noise.

Through the dust, a shape appeared. A serpent, broad and thickly armoured, its scales the colour of old bronze. It pushed its head into a pocket of rotten fat, tearing at what was left of the eel’s flesh. When it moved, sparks of dull red flickered between its plates.

A scavenger.

The System woke without a sound.

[Target Detected]

[Target Class: Omnivore / Shell Type: Ferric]

[Predictive Strike Vector: 71° Down jaw]

[Execute Resonance? Y/N]

I didn’t think. I said yes.

The hum inside my chest rose to a low roar. The water tightened, pressed in against me. For a moment, I could feel my own bones vibrate.

The sound hit before I moved.

A ripple tore through the trench, too fast to follow. The serpent’s body snapped like a rope under tension. Its tail lashed once, then went limp. A dull echo followed, a single, deep note that shook the ribs of the Fang-Eel’s skeleton and faded into quiet.

The serpent didn’t move again.

The System spoke.

[Result: Instantaneous Organ Failure]

[Energy Cost: Acceptable]

[Feeding Efficiency +15%]

The water was thick with silence.

The hum in my ribs slowed. The red lines along my plates dimmed.

I drifted down. The serpent’s head hung open, its eyes glassy, body still twitching in small spasms. Its blood leaked through the cracks in its armour, floating up in thin red threads that turned black before they reached the surface.

I bit into the neck where the plates had split. Flesh parted cleanly, soft and hot. I tore off a strip and swallowed.

The meat tasted like metal and salt.

Each bite slid down easily, no effort. I didn’t feel anything. No thrill. No fear. Just the steady work of eating.

I fed until I was full, then stopped. The serpent drifted where it was, its insides spilling into the sand. The light from my veins reflected in the slicks of oil rising from its body.

The System came back, voice quiet.

[Combat Efficiency: 99.7%]

[Emotional Index: Near Null]

[Inquiry: Does the Subject Require Restraint Protocols? Y/N]

Restraint.

The word hung in my head like a hook.

I didn’t answer. I turned away and pushed off the floor, water parting around me. The hum stayed low, steady, and I kept it that way.

The body moved without thought. Fins and tail worked together, smooth and certain. I could feel the water bend and settle behind me, the trench returning to stillness.

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The Fang-Eel’s ribs loomed above, half-buried in silt. The serpent’s corpse lay between them, a dark coil, fading heat still leaking from its wounds.

The trench didn’t care. It had seen this before.

I drifted higher, letting the cold water slide along my armour. The glow beneath my plates faded until it was only a faint pulse. I could feel the quiet press of the deep closing in again.

No satisfaction. No guilt.

Just the echo of what I had done.

I hovered over the ribs, looking down. My hum travelled out, touched the walls, and came back smaller. The trench had already swallowed the noise. The serpent’s blood had already mixed with the silt.

The System waited, patient.

I still didn’t answer.

Instead, I swam away from the rib-field, into colder, cleaner water. The dark opened ahead, full of space.

The hum under my ribs slowed again, turning back into a heartbeat.

I followed the slope down until the water thickened and the sound of my movement grew small.

My reflection followed me, faint shapes of red and black in the shifting light. The body was still strange to me. Heavy, powerful. Too much power. It carried itself like a weapon, not a creature.

I thought about the moment I’d said yes. How easy it had been.

The serpent hadn’t even looked at me.

It had only fed.

And I had killed it for that.

The System spoke again, voice even.

[Observation Logged.]

[Exchange Continues.]

The words faded into the water.

I stayed still, listening to the echoes. The hum from my ribs spread outward in slow waves, touching the rocks and returning in thin threads. It mapped the trench for me, each line showing where the world bent and where it held.

Nothing else moved.

Only the sound of the deep and the small click of cooling armour where my plates met.

The serpent’s death felt distant now, as if it had happened to someone else. I remembered the impact, the way its body folded, the way the water went still afterward. The memory felt clean, stripped of anything human.

It was just a process.

I swam back toward the ridge, letting the water carry me. The System was quiet now, but I could feel it watching, the faint static at the edge of thought, ready to speak if I let it.

The trench narrowed ahead, funnelling the current through broken vents. The heat there made the water shimmer. I passed through slowly, the warmth sliding across my armour in uneven lines.

Each vent still hummed with a faint sound, a leftover voice from the world below. I matched my hum to it. For a moment, they aligned. The vibration filled my body, almost comforting.

The body felt right again when it worked.

When it fed. When it moved.

It was the stillness that made the mind wander.

I reached a ledge of rock and rested there. Below, the rib-field glowed faintly, a reflection from the cracks still leaking heat. The serpent’s body was smaller now, half-dissolved. Small scavengers had already come, pale things that fed without fear.

I didn’t interfere.

The sea knows how to clean its own.

I opened my mouth and let the hum rise once more. Not loud, just enough to feel it travel through the trench. It came back after a long moment, carrying with it a faint echo. Not words, just tone.

The sea spoke in its own way. Always had.

The hum faded. I stayed where I was, watching the last of the serpent’s oil rise and vanish. The taste of it still clung to my throat. I couldn’t tell if it was hunger or habit that made me keep swallowing.

I turned away and started moving again. The trench opened wider, swallowing sound. The deeper water ahead was clean, untouched.

The System pulsed softly in the back of my head, a reminder that it was still listening.

I thought of its earlier question, restraint.

Maybe it wanted to see if I could feel anything at all.

Maybe it didn’t understand that feeling wasn’t part of this anymore.

Feeding. Killing. Surviving. They were the same now.

The hum inside me rose and fell with each breath, steady as the tide.

The deeper I went, the more the trench felt alive again, faint vibrations from shifting rock, small clicks from creatures in the silt, the slow grind of pressure moving through stone. All of it answered me in small ways, as if acknowledging that something new had joined them.

I didn’t need the System to map it anymore. I could feel the world through the water itself. Every pulse told me where to move, when to slow, when to wait.

When I reached the edge of a long slope, I stopped and looked back. The ribs of the Fang-Eel glowed faint red behind me, barely visible now. The serpent’s body was gone, stripped clean by the smaller mouths that had come after me.

The trench had taken back what I’d borrowed.

I let the current roll under me, slow and steady. The hum in my ribs stayed soft.

I wondered if the System would speak again.

It didn’t.

It didn’t need to.

Its work was done for now.

The sea had its silence again.

The trench carried my hum into the distance, smaller and smaller, until it blended with the sound of its own breathing.

The serpent had been the first kill since I changed, but it didn’t feel like victory.

It felt like a lesson.

Power without need. Hunger without joy.

The System might have called it efficiency. The sea would have called it balance.

I wasn’t sure which of them was right.

I turned away from the ribs for the last time and drifted into open water. The current thickened, pushing against me like a slow heartbeat. I let it.

The hum rose once more, faint but certain, filling the trench one last time before the silence swallowed it.

The System whispered in return, soft enough to sound like a thought.

[Observation Logged.]

[Exchange Continues.]

The words faded into the dark.

I kept swimming.

The sea gives. The sea takes.

And somewhere in between, it watches what you become.