Hunger woke before thought.

It was not an ache in the belly or a growl of emptiness. It was pressure. A steady, deep throb that started somewhere behind my ribs and spread outward until it filled every inch of me. It moved through bone, through skin, through whatever strange flesh I now wore.

The sea around me was still. Too still. Every ripple, every sound seemed far away. Only the hunger was near.

At first I tried to ignore it. I told myself that I was still a man, and men could wait. I had gone hungry before. I had worked through it. I had prayed through it.

But this wasn’t the same. This hunger didn’t wait. It didn’t respect thought or patience or prayer.

It spoke in a voice older than language.

Feed.

Just that one word, shaped from pressure and instinct. It did not sound like a command; it was one. My new body understood it better than I did. The gills along my sides opened and closed faster, drawing in water, tasting it. My tail flicked. My body arched in a slow curve, ready to move.

No, I told myself. You’re not a beast. You’re still you.

But the hunger didn’t care.

I tried to think of other things. Of the storm. Of the ship’s wheel under my hands. Of my grandfather’s voice shouting through the wind, Keep her into the waves, boy. Don’t give the sea your side.

The memory cracked apart under the pressure.

The ache grew sharper, filling the hollow spaces inside me where thought used to live. I could feel life nearby. Not see it—the dark was too thick for that—but sense it, hundreds of tiny vibrations in the water, a living fog that pulsed faintly against my skin.

The ache flared into need. My gills drew the water faster. My body twisted in the current.

Feed or die.

That was the truth of it. Not a threat, not even a promise—just truth.

I moved before I could stop myself. The tail lashed once, twice, smooth and powerful. The water flowed past like silk. The ache guided me, turning me toward the faint pulse of life ahead.

The plankton cloud waited there, invisible but everywhere. A drifting storm of light and flesh, too small to see, too many to count. Their movements sang against my new senses like rain on canvas.

The hunger became heat.

Don’t, I whispered, or thought I did. But there was no voice left for words.

I darted forward, and the sea became fire. The first mouthful filled me, raw and electric. The gills convulsed, tearing the life from the water. The ache eased for a heartbeat and then demanded more.

I forgot everything else.

I swam through the cloud, wide-mouthed, devouring without pause. The water thickened around me, heavy with the taste of salt and bloodless life. My body moved like it remembered a rhythm older than reason. In. Out. Tear. Swallow.

There was no thought. Only motion.

And then it was gone. The cloud dispersed, leaving only empty water and a silence that was not peace. My body slowed, then stopped. The ache was quiet now, replaced by a deep, dizzy satisfaction that felt nothing like fullness.

I floated there, gills fluttering, my mind trying to remember how to think.

What have you done?

The question didn’t come from guilt alone. It came from fear.

As a man, eating had always been a choice. It was deliberate. You caught your meal, you cleaned it, you cooked it. You said grace, because you knew you had taken something alive. You thanked the sea for what it gave, because taking without thanks made you something less than human.

This wasn’t like that. There had been no choice, no act of respect. Only violence. Automatic, blind, and absolute.

It hadn’t even felt like killing. It had felt like breathing.

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I tried to stop thinking about it, but my mind wouldn’t obey. The act played over and over again in memory: the sudden rush, the helpless surrender, the way the body had moved without asking for permission.

It wasn’t just hunger that frightened me. It was the loss of command.

When you’re at sea, control is everything. You keep your course, you tie your knots right, you make fast every rope before the weather turns. You plan, you act, you live or die by the choices you make.

But this thing inside me didn’t care for choices. It didn’t wait for thought or order. It didn’t know what mercy meant.

It knew only need.

The more I realized that, the more afraid I became.

I had thought drowning was the worst death a man could meet. It wasn’t. This was worse—being alive and watching myself slip away one instinct at a time.

I curled tighter in the water, trying to feel small again. My tail tucked close. My gills slowed. I could hear the faint hum of distant life in the dark, but I stayed still.

Don’t listen. Don’t move. Don’t answer it.

For a while, I didn’t.

The sea held me in place, silent and vast.

But hunger doesn’t stop. It only hides.

The ache returned slower this time, more cunning. It started as a whisper under the ribs, a hollow sound that deepened with every breath. I tried to ignore it. I counted the pulse in my chest, the beat of the water against my skin. But each count only made the silence between them longer.

And in that silence, the need grew teeth again.

I remembered the dock at home. The smell of fish drying in the sun. My own hands splitting them open, cleaning them, salting the meat before the flies came. My grandfather’s knife beside mine, both of us working in rhythm.

We never wasted. We never took more than we needed.

I had meant to live that way forever.

But down here, the sea had no mercy for promises.

A faint vibration touched my side—another cloud drifting near. I could sense the life in it before I saw the light. My gills flared despite myself. My tail twitched.

You can wait, I told myself. You can choose.

The ache laughed at that.

It twisted through me like a hand wringing cloth. My body began to move again, slow and inevitable.

The cloud drifted closer. Tiny sparks filled the water, soft as starlight. The sight was almost beautiful.

I hovered there, caught between two selves: the man who gave thanks before a meal, and the creature whose hunger didn’t know what thanks meant.

If I eat again, will there be anything of me left afterward?

I didn’t know.

The ache pulsed once more. It felt like being struck from inside. My mouth opened. The current shifted. The first taste hit me, and the rest followed.

I fed.

There was no fight this time, no pause, no hesitation. The motion was smooth, instinct perfected. I consumed until the ache softened, until the current no longer smelled of life.

Then it was done.

The cloud was gone.

I floated, full and empty at the same time.

And this time, I remembered.

You forgot to thank the sea.

The thought landed like a stone. I tried to say the words aloud. The water swallowed them before they formed.

My grandfather’s voice answered from the dark, steady as ever: The sea gives. The sea takes. But you thank her either way.

I tried again, forcing the words through the water, slow and careful. Thank you.

Only bubbles came out, silver and meaningless.

That was the moment I knew what frightened me most. Not dying. Not hunger. Forgetting.

The man I had been had rules. Beliefs. Habits that tethered him to something larger than himself. Each one was slipping away. Soon I would forget what it meant to bow my head before eating. Soon I would forget that there had ever been a reason to try.

I needed to remember, even if no one was left to hear it.

The sea gives, I whispered again in thought, and the sea takes.

The water didn’t answer. The sea didn’t care.

But I did.

And that had to count for something.

The current shifted again, slow and steady. I let it carry me. My body moved easily now, born to it. The hunger was quiet, but not gone. It waited, patient and sure that it would return.

Somewhere far below, a deep hum pulsed through the water. My body heard it before my mind did. The rhythm soothed the ache, reminding me that everything in this place lived by the same rule: take what you must, give nothing back.

I wanted to hate it. I couldn’t. It was too vast to hate.

I closed my eyes—or whatever replaced them—and tried to remember how the surface looked. The color of the sky after a storm. The smell of salt on a deck drying in sunlight. The warmth of a lantern in a wooden cabin.

The images came, faint and flickering, then faded into the same darkness that surrounded me now.

Hold on, I told myself. Hold on to something human.

But even that command sounded weaker than it used to.

The sea was winning.

Another tremor passed through me, smaller than before. The ache whispered again, not with hunger this time, but with memory. It said that feeding was right, that it kept me alive, that it was the only thing that mattered.

It was wrong. I knew it was wrong.

But what terrified me most was that one day soon, I might stop knowing the difference.

I would eat, and swim, and hunt, and forget.

The thought of that was worse than any death.

I curled myself into the current, whispering one last time in the dark, Thank you.

The words meant less now, but I needed them to exist. They were the last thing standing between who I was and what I was becoming.

That was when the lights came again, bright and cold inside my skull.

They flickered once, twice, like sparks under water. Then they steadied into shapes—hard lines, white against the dark.

[Biomass Acquired: +5 Units]

The voice, if it could be called that, was neither kind nor cruel. It simply recorded what I had done.

Another line followed, slower, almost gentle.

[Day Count: 1]

[Objective: Survive the Night]

The lights faded. The water pressed closer, heavy but calm.

Survive.

The word lingered like prayer and punishment both.

I drifted with the current, small and alive, my mind quieting at last.

I didn’t know if I had thanked the sea or if the thought had already slipped away.

All I knew was that I was still breathing.

For now.