In the deep — deeper than light, deeper than sound — far beneath the tides where men sail and legends roam, the sea becomes something else.
A place of silence. Pressure. Cold. Death.
A world of absolute black.
In this abyss, nestled between cracked stone walls and dying coral, hidden in a forgotten trench where Sea Kings fear to glide, something trembled. A thing not quite alive. Not quite awake. Barely a thought, barely a body — a translucent larva clung to the underside of a drifting rock like slime.
It had no name. No memory.
Only a hunger so deep it gnawed at its cells.
Its body pulsed — weakly. Barely enough to drift forward in the thick, unmoving water. No fins, no mouth, no light. Just a squishy, translucent shape with soft poisonous tissue coating its surface. A creature not yet meant to live.
And yet, it lived.
Not by choice, but by need.
Something moved ahead. A flicker of vibration. A pattern — sharp, deliberate. Alive.
The larva stilled.
It had no eyes. It could not see. But its soft body was tuned to pressure, to ripples, to the way water whispered against its skin. And now, that whisper had turned into a beat.
A beat with rhythm.
Gliding through the trench, weaving between stalagmite-like coral, a Glassfin Dartfish darted. Barely the size of a finger, its skin was glassy and thin, its insides faintly glowing like starlight beneath water. Its fins were sharp and controlled, its movements like flashes of lightning between the shadows.
It was small, but confident.
It knew this trench.
It ruled here.
And it never noticed the larva.
The larva floated dumbly past it — a blind, drifting nothing. Its soft body twitched. It had missed the target by inches.
But there was no thought. No disappointment. The hunger pulled it around, again, again. It followed the pressure. It followed the life.
This time, the Dartfish noticed. It spun. Tail arched. Bone spines flared.
To the fish, it was prey. Nothing more.
It attacked.
A blur. A ripple. A strike.
The larva twitched — just once — just enough to shift its weight with a tiny pulse. It missed being impaled by a hair's width.
Then it latched on.
Its soft filaments clung to the Dartfish's flank — squishing into the thin scales. The Dartfish panicked instantly. It darted, flipped, spun. It slammed into coral. It twitched and thrashed.
But the larva held.
It didn't understand winning. It didn't even understand that it was killing something. It only knew that it had caught something warm. Something thrashing.
And so it released its only weapon — a thin, clear film of venom that oozed from its skin and seeped between cells, into the fish's blood.
The Dartfish jerked. Then again. Its movements slowed. Its glow dimmed. The twitching became sluggish, uneven.
The larva climbed forward, wrapping tighter, curling around bone and flesh. It nestled against the weakening body.
And waited.
Time didn't exist in the trench.
There was no day. No cycle. Only stillness.
And over that stillness, the Dartfish slowly died.
It was not a noble death. There was no battle cry, no final flash. It simply grew still, then cold. And when its gills stopped moving, the larva began to eat.
Not with a mouth — not yet. But it absorbed. Soft skin pressed into tissue. Cells pulled apart. The Dartfish's body melted piece by piece into the parasite now eating its way into its core.
The larva pulsed again — but something was different.
It twitched violently, as if electricity sparked through it. Its soft skin began to harden in strange places. Its body folded, shook, and then tore.
From the sides of its bulbous head, something formed.
Two spheres. Black. Wet.
Eyes.
The larva jerked — blinded by sudden sensation. For the first time, it saw.
Not clearly. Not with understanding. But it saw light. Movement. The shimmer of coral. The fading glow of the Dartfish's guts. And color — green, blue, red.
Its instinct flared again. It didn't know what sight was, but it knew this was power.
Then another pain.
Along its soft back, something pushed outward. It bulged, then split. A ridge formed and then calcified into a thin, sharp fin. The larva pulsed again — this time faster, smoother. It could steer. It could dodge.
It could hunt.
Its face — once just a rounded edge — now twisted into a basic mouth. Tiny teeth, barely visible, jutted out like glass shards. They weren't made for chewing. They were made for tearing.
The larva opened its mouth and bit into the last bit of Dartfish left. Flesh gave way easier now. It felt right.
It didn't understand joy. It didn't need to.
But for the first time, the hunger… slowed.
Not gone. But… quieter.
The light around the larva flickered. Somewhere above, something massive passed overhead — a slow, groaning pressure in the trench walls.
The larva felt it. Not fear. But respect.
It turned away, drifting deeper into the black — eyes blinking, dorsal fin twitching, teeth glinting in the bioluminescence around it.
Something inside had changed.
It wasn't just surviving anymore.
It was becoming.