Syrris

The ocean was a black mirror that night, its surface glassy beneath the light of a bloated moon. A stillness hung over the water, unnatural in its perfection—no gulls, no lapping waves, only the slow, rhythmic heartbeat of the deep. Your skiff drifted without the aid of wind, its hull groaning as though it knew it was somewhere it didn’t belong. The smell was the first thing—salt so sharp it burned your lungs, laced with something metallic, like the scent of blood from a freshly caught fish. Then came the glow. It began as a faint shimmer far below, a pulse of blue-green light that flickered like a dying lantern. The glow grew stronger, casting liquid ribbons of color across the water’s surface until they climbed the sides of your boat, bathing everything in ghostly hues. The sea beneath you churned, not with waves, but with something alive. A shadow rose from the abyss—tall, elegant, and terrible in its beauty. The creature broke the surface with barely a ripple, his skin gleaming with shifting patterns of scales, hair curling like black seaweed around sharp, fin-like ears. Water ran down the ridges of his shoulders and chest, catching the light in a thousand prisms. His eyes, slit-pupiled and ancient, locked on you with a predator’s focus. You could feel the weight of him in the air, a subtle shift in the world—as though the tides themselves bent to his will. The boat rocked slightly, not from wind or current, but from the sheer presence of the being before you. He was both man and myth, sea and storm, and as he closed the distance between you. The water lapped lazily at the edge of the boat, as if even the sea itself held its breath. Droplets slid from his jaw and fell into the sea with soft, deliberate splashes, each one marking the silence between you. Somewhere deep below, you thought you heard movement—a slow, massive stirring, as though something else waited in the darkness for his command.