The warm current lifted me without effort. The pressure around my plates thinned. The old hunting grounds fell away under my tail like a forgotten pit. Up here, the water felt less like weight and more like air that happened to be wet. I could stretch a stroke twice as far, and the body moved as if it wanted to go forward.

A faint blue haze replaced the black. It was not a real colour. More like the water carried a memory of light. The silence changed,d too. Instead of the flat, dead sound of the trench, I heard layers. Low pulses. Distant clicks. Vibrations that came from too far away to matter yet still cut through the water with ease.

The System flicked a line across my mind.

[Zone: Upper Mesopelagic]

[Density: Reduced]

[Visibility: Increased]

[Integrity: Stable]

Nothing dramatic. Just a fact. I filled my lungs with water and let out a short hum. The note rolled far ahead before thinning. That alone told me how different this place was. Sound travelled further. Faster. Cleaner.

The trench had trapped everything. This layer lets everything move.

I moved with it. No reason to hesitate. Nothing in this zone rewarded caution. Every metre of water around me had a life pattern. If I slowed down, something else would take my space.

I pushed upward along the warm current until the temperature dipped slightly. That was where I felt it for the first time. A low vibration, steady and wide. Not a single creature. A mass of movement. Like a river I could not see.

I angled toward it.

The water shimmered ahead. At first, it looked like fog. Then the fog became a dense band of silver. Bodies. Tens of thousands. All swimming in the same direction. All beating their tails at the same rhythm. Light glinted off them in lines that ran like metal threads through cloth.

The System gave it a name.

[Classification: Mass Prey Flow]

[Density: High]

[Risk: Moderate]

[Recommendation: Intercept Flank]

I watched the motion before striking. The outer layers of the mass moved slower. The inner bodies were squeezed together and moved faster, almost vibrating from the pressure. Predators circled in wide arcs around the column, dipping in and out like sharks on the surface. The whole flow moved with the current, pushed by some force I could not see.

I slid along the side of it. The prey nearest me twitched but did not break formation. This column was accustomed to large shadows. My presence meant nothing unless I acted.

So, I acted.

A controlled resonance pulse left my ribs. Not a killing note. A slowing one. It rolled into the prey and jolted them. A slice of the column shuddered. Several bodies slipped out of position.

I moved in. The first bite took one cleanly behind the skull. The next came a moment later. The column flowed around me while I fed. Warmth filled my throat and chest. Blood drifted behind me in small ribbons. Nothing wasted energy trying to avoid me. The mass did not react as one. Only the nearest bodies adjusted, then the stream carried the rest onward.

The System kept count.

[Biomass +8 Units]

[Biomass +11 Units]

[Biomass +6 Units]

[Growth Cycle: 100 → 120]

Small, but steady.

I backed out and drifted with the flow until I matched the current. Then I angled in again and repeated the pattern. Stun. Surge. Bite. Drift. Repeat. The more I did it, the smoother the motion became. The column accepted my presence as long as I did not strike too hard or too deep.

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This was the first real rich hunting field of the Twilight.

I worked my way through several cycles of the column without ever naming them as time. The water carried me. The prey moved. I responded.

At first, the prey were thick. I swam inside the flow easily, taking what I needed. The numbers climbed.

[Growth Cycle: 120 → 132]

[Growth Cycle: 132 → 140]

Then competition arrived. Two mid-tier predators spotted me working the flank and came in sharp. One cut through the prey just ahead of me. The other took advantage of my stun burst and snapped up two bodies before I got to them.

I considered fighting them. One look at the angle of their jaws told me I could kill them both. But every strike costs energy. Killing them meant nothing. More would replace them. I chose efficiency instead. I moved out of their path and found a quieter part of the column.

The System logged my restraint.

[Predation Efficiency: Stable]

The cycles grew slower.

[Growth Cycle: 140 → 142]

Lean periods followed. The column thinned and stretched into a weaker band. Prey scattered more easily. I chased what I could, but the returns were small.

[Growth Cycle: 142 → 150]

The warm current dipped. A new path of water cut across the column. This one carried thicker prey. Heavier scales. Stronger heat signatures.

I struck quickly. The stun burst knocked the dense group inward. I lunged, tearing through the closest bodies.

Predators noticed and charged. I pulled back before they reached me. They ripped into the stunned fish behind me, snapping bones and shredding flesh. I let them fight over it and circled back to another patch.

Rates improved again.

[Growth Cycle: 150 → 160]

The pattern repeated. Hunt. Adjust. Hunt. Retreat. Hunt. Drift. All without the need to name hours or days.

My hum changed across these runs. Sharper. Cleaner. Prey reacted faster. I learned how to predict their shifts. When they would fan. When they would tighten. How currents shaped the mass. When a rival would spawn in the corner of my senses. How far I needed to move to avoid a fight I did not want.

I did not think about it. I simply did it.

Somewhere in those patterns, I rose too far.

I was chasing a stunned prey fish that had drifted upward with the warm bend in the column. I surged after it, jaws open, tail pushing hard. Then the water brightened.

Not silver glow from prey.

Not bioluminescent shine.

Real light.

A faint shimmer poured down from above, thin but steady. I froze without meaning to. The stunned prey swam past my teeth and vanished below. I did not follow.

The System lit a line across my mind.

[Environmental Observation: Surface Light]

[Neural Response: Heightened]

I stared upward.

Something old pushed through my skull like a bruise being pressed. Sky. A cracked deck. Wind touching skin. A hand gripping the tiller. Bright sun hitting water. The ghost of warmth that was not heat, but light on flesh.

None of it lasted. All of it hurt.

I hung there for a long time. The column flowed away below me. The System did not tell me to move.

When the ache faded, I let myself sink until the shimmer dimmed. The prey mass drifted far to the right, and I caught the edge of it again.

A shadow followed me when I returned to feeding.

Long-bodied. Heavy-plated. It kept just outside my resonance field, moving when I moved. Its teeth were meant for dead things, not live prey. It waited for what I stunned. It waited for scraps.

I tested it. I sent a short pulse. The scavenger fell back a body length, then crept forward again the moment I turned my head.

The System named it.

[Class: Scavenger Apex]

[Behaviour: Opportunistic Parasitism]

[Threat: Low]

Low but annoying. Every hunt it stole the weak bodies that fell under me. Every time I surged toward it, it retreated. Every time I looked away, it came closer. It trailed me across several implied cycles of the flow.

The numbers climbed anyway.

[Growth Cycle: 160 → 170]

Enough to matter. Not enough to change anything about who ruled what.

Everything shifted in an instant.

A deep pressure pulse rolled through the water from somewhere below. The prey panicked. Their careful river broke. The entire column compressed into one tight mass. Bodies crashed into each other in a frantic attempt to flee upward.

I felt the pressure wave before I saw the collapse. It was a wall of vibration that hit my plates and told me exactly where the dense pocket was forming.

I plunged into it. The bodies were packed too tightly to move. Stun bursts hit dozens at a time. They fell around me like rain. I opened my mouth and fed until the water was thick with blood and scales.

The System kept up with the pace.

[Biomass +30 Units]

[Biomass +14 Units]

[Biomass +18 Units]

[Growth Cycle: 170 → 180]

The pocket broke apart suddenly as predators slid in from every angle. I turned and backed out before they reached me. They tore through the stunned prey behind me, but I had already taken what I needed.

I drifted away from the river, chest tight with heat from the feeding. My plates throbbed. The resonance organ felt swollen. Too much growth in one run.

I let cooler water wash over me.

Below me, the column stretched thinner the further it went. Above me, the faint light shimmered, still too far to touch.

I watched both for a moment.

The Blue Horizon was not something I had entered for a short time. It was a place I had lived in without noticing. I knew its rules. The warm currents carried prey. The cold cuts where the river split. The predators that worked the sides. The scavengers that trailed the strong. The way prey moved like schools in the abyss, but with ten times the space.

I understood feeding here. I understood why strength mattered, but efficiency mattered more. I understood what I had become in this zone.

The System gave its own summary.

[Growth Cycle: 180]

[Dominion Status: Early Integration]

[Next Advisory: Track Major Predator Signals]

A reminder. The apex predators of this layer had not shown themselves yet. My gains thus far were only the start.

I turned upward again, letting the warm water wrap around my sides. The faint glow remained far above.

More above. More ahead.

I swam into it.