His thing

The submarine was quiet.

Not the eerie, suffocating silence of fear, but the steady hum of a vessel functioning as it should. The low buzz of machinery, the occasional clang of metal as footsteps echoed through the halls. The scent of saltwater, oil, and something vaguely metallic clung to the air, grounding me.

Mira walked beside me, her arms crossed.

“You’re quiet today,” she noted, giving me a sidelong glance.

I blinked at her, frowning. “Am I?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Usually, you’re complaining about the food or how Graves looks like he hasn’t slept in five years.”

A small huff of amusement escaped me. “Maybe I just got used to it.”

Mira snorted. “Not likely.”

It felt normal. A brief pocket of peace in the crushing depths. I let out a slow breath, feeling some of the weight on my shoulders ease.

Then Mira turned to face me fully—

And her face twisted.

Her dark eyes bled into molten gold. Her features stretched, melted, reformed. The angles of her face sharpened, her cheekbones too defined, her lips curving into something unnatural. Her uniform darkened, fabric turning to fluid black, swallowing her figure.

My stomach lurched.

Fingers, long and impossibly cold, traced my jaw.

“Beautiful,” Light murmured, his voice slipping through the cracks of my mind like silk and venom.

I couldn’t breathe. My limbs locked in place, but my skin burned where he touched me.

His thumb brushed over my lower lip, pressing lightly. His gaze studied me, slow and methodical, like I was something fragile—something precious.

My heart pounded against my ribs. My thoughts screamed at me to move, to recoil, but his presence wrapped around me, suffocating yet intoxicating.

“You always make such lovely expressions,” he mused, tilting my chin up. “So easy to read. So easy to break.”

I shuddered, trying to wrench my head away, but his grip tightened—not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me he was stronger. So much stronger.

“Get away from me,” I rasped.

He chuckled, low and indulgent. “You say that,” he leaned in, lips a breath away from mine, “but you tremble so sweetly under my hand.”

Something cracked.

The air shifted, thickened. The scent of salt and oil turned putrid, laced with something ancient and rotting.

My breath stilled.

No.

This wasn’t real.

The submarine—

I had left the submarine.

The realization hit me like ice water, and suddenly, I couldn’t stand the feeling of his hand on my skin.

I shoved at him, the pressure against my chest vanishing instantly.

The warmth of his breath disappeared.

The walls of the submarine flickered, warped, peeled away like the skin of a rotting fruit.

Something was wrong.

I turned a corner, my bare feet slapping against the cold metal floor. The ship felt emptier than it should. Silent. But not in a peaceful way—no, it was the kind of silence that pressed in from all sides, heavy and unnatural.

Then I saw them.

Bodies.

Crew members slumped against the walls, their limbs twisted, their faces frozen in grotesque expressions of terror. Some had their hands clutched over their ears, as if trying to block something out. Others had carved symbols into their own flesh, deep, jagged lines forming patterns I didn’t understand.

My stomach lurched.

I stumbled forward, stepping over the lifeless forms, my breath coming in shallow gasps. I didn’t want to look too closely, but I couldn’t stop myself. Their lips were still moving. No sound came out, but they were mouthing something.

A whisper slithered through the corridor.

“His thing.”

I froze.

The bodies twitched.

“You’re his thing. You belong to him.”

Their heads jerked toward me all at once. Their dead eyes—black, endless voids—locked onto mine. Their mouths stretched into wide, unnatural grins.

“Only his thing.”

I stumbled back.

The submarine groaned again, but this time, it wasn’t the ship. It was something else. Something outside.

The metal walls trembled. The lights flickered violently, plunging the corridor into flashes of red and darkness. The pressure in the air grew thick, suffocating.

And then—I saw it.

A glimpse.

A shadow too massive to comprehend.

Tentacles, stretching beyond anything possible, each one embedded with countless eyes. They pulsed, blinked, watched. Not just with sight, but with something deeper, something older.

I was too small. Too fragile. I wasn’t supposed to be seeing this.

The moment stretched, the weight of his presence crushing, seeping into my bones. The eyes flickered—some human, some monstrous, some voids of nothingness.

They all turned toward me.

The abyss lurched forward.

And I woke up.

My body convulsed as I gasped for air, my lungs burning. Sweat drenched my skin, my hospital gown sticking to me uncomfortably. My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out everything else.

The nightmare clung to me, thick and suffocating. My hands trembled as I ripped the IV drip from my wrist, the sharp sting barely registering. Blood welled from the puncture, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.

I stumbled out of bed, my legs weak, my body barely holding itself together. The hospital room was dim, the only light coming from the hallway outside. The walls felt too close. The ceiling too low.

I needed air.

I staggered toward the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind me. My knees hit the cold tile as I collapsed in front of the toilet. Bile burned its way up my throat, and I vomited until there was nothing left.

The nightmare clung to me—no, not a nightmare. A memory.

Or at least, I thought it was.

But the more I tried to grasp it, the more it slipped through my fingers, like mist unraveling in the wind. I had seen something. Something vast. Something endless. But my mind refused to hold onto it, as if the mere act of remembering would unravel me from the inside out.

Light’s true form—if I had really seen it—was beyond description, beyond comprehension. My brain recoiled when I tried to recall its details, reducing it to flashes of color, writhing shadows, and a deep, unfathomable gaze that had swallowed me whole.

I gagged, bile rising in my throat. My hands gripped the cold porcelain of the sink as I coughed, my body trembling. The world around me felt wrong—too solid, too stable, after what I had just seen.

I forced myself to breathe, to focus on the here and now. The sterile scent of the hospital. The beeping of distant monitors. The smooth tiles beneath my bare feet.

Real. This was real.

I forced myself to breathe. To calm down.

Slowly, I raised my head, my gaze locking onto the mirror above the sink.

And I saw her.

A middle-aged woman stood behind me.

She was perfectly still. Silent.

Watching.