A gentle warmth surrounded her. Not the artificial warmth of a heated room or the fleeting warmth of a passing sunbeam, but something weightier, fuller—like an embrace she had long since forgotten. Her senses floated on the edge of awareness, neither asleep nor awake, only drifting in a golden haze.
Aurelian clouds.
They moved like ocean currents, slow and smooth, their soft puffs twisting together into larger, nebulous masses. The colors were vibrant but muted, like viewing the glow of a candle through frosted glass. Gold, orange, faint hints of red—all swirling, all circling. No beginning. No end. No sky. No ground.
It was a world with no horizon.
Her fingers flexed. No…not her fingers. Someone’s fingers. They moved in time with her own, but the sensation was one step removed, like wearing gloves made of fog.
Isla’s breath caught as she watched her own hands stretch out before her—not quite her hands, but hands nonetheless. Her skin was soft and smooth—wrong. Too smooth. Too perfect. Like everything in the Endless Sea. Her eyes tracked the faint line that should be a crease in her palm, but it wasn’t there. Not a scar. Not a blemish. Not a flaw.
Fingers brushed against the air like it had weight.
Not her fingers. Not her.
The thought echoed, but something warm pushed it down, pressed it smooth like flattening wrinkles in silk. Her breath came slower now, softer, and she exhaled, watching the faint glow of her breath fade into the clouds. She blinked slowly. The fog of sleep still lingered on her mind, and with it came that strange, distant presence.
A weight.
No, not a weight. A gaze.
Her heart didn’t race, didn’t spike with fear the way it should have. The gaze wasn’t sharp or cutting. It was…soft. Patient. Not like she was being hunted, but like someone was sitting beside her, watching her sleep.
Isla’s mind fought the instinctual flicker of unease, trying to push it away, but something else pressed against her thoughts—a feeling, not a voice. It wasn’t like Evelyn’s sharp, commanding tone or the jagged sensations the fog had carved into her nerves. No, this was…calming. It hummed softly, like a lullaby whispered in a language she didn’t know but had somehow always understood.
The warmth grew stronger, wrapping around her like a second blanket.
“We’re here,” a feeling—not a voice—seeped into her thoughts.
She blinked, eyes widening just a fraction as her gaze darted around the endless clouds. Her fingers twitched, curling in and out of fists. Her breath came sharper now, her chest rising and falling. She took a step forward—or at least, she thought she did. Her feet didn’t connect with anything. She moved, but the clouds moved with her, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure if she was walking or drifting.
“Who’s we?” she muttered, her voice barely a breath of sound. She heard it. It wasn’t a thought. It wasn’t internal. Her voice echoed softly, like speaking underwater.
The warmth pulsed once, like a heartbeat, gentle but present. “We.”
Her breath stilled. The clouds shifted, folding inward, compacting. The soft golden glow dimmed at the center, and for a split second, she saw something in the fog. Not a shape. Not a face. Not eyes. But something…familiar.
I know you.
Her breath hitched, heart slowing to a crawl. Her lips parted, her body going still as her eyes tracked it. Her mind flickered with the pale glow of recognition, but it was so faint she wasn’t sure if it was hers or something it was placing in her head—her soul.
It reminded her of something. A dream? No. Earlier than that. Childhood. Yes, that was it. There had been a moment like this. A dream she’d had when she was younger.
It wasn’t a dream.
I was never a dream.
Her gaze lifted, and this time, she felt it. Not like a touch, but like warmth on her neck—like someone leaning close, their breath soft on her skin, eyes locked on her from an angle she couldn’t see. Her eyes darted to the side.
Nothing.
Her gaze flicked the other way.
Still nothing.
But she knew. She knew.
It was there. It had always been there. Not stalking. Not hunting. Just…watching.
A sharp sense of loss hit her so suddenly it felt like a punch to the chest. Her eyes widened, breath stolen from her lungs. Her body swayed, feet planted but unsteady. The golden warmth pulled back, curling away like a tide retreating from the shore. Her fingers reached out, trembling, trying to grasp it—to stop it from leaving.
“Wait,” she gasped, her voice louder now. “Wait! I don’t—I don’t want you to—”
The warmth slipped further away. The fog rolled back, pulling itself into coils, unwrapping from around her limbs. Her fingers curled into fists as something swirled at the edge of her vision—a flash of light like two distant stars flickering in sync. It was faint, so faint, but she saw it for a moment.
A child’s voice—her voice. Faint. Fading. “You forgot me…but I kept everything for you.”
Her throat tightened, her breath quickening as her chest rose and fell with sharp, frantic pulls. She reached again, her fingers stretching out, and the warmth surged, pulsing like a distant, low drumbeat.
The glow of it. The light of it. The presence of it.
Gone.
Isla’s fingers grasped nothing. Only fog. Only mist. Only clouds.
Then the noise hit her.
The sharp roar of something tearing through the air. The low, hollowed hum of a huge engine thundering overhead. It wasn’t a slow sound. It hit hard—sudden—like being struck by a wave. Her heart jerked, her eyes snapped open, and breath sucked into her lungs like she’d been drowning.
Her back arched as she shot upright, gasping, heart hammering in her chest. Light struck her—blinding. Blinking, her eyes darted wildly around, sharp breaths rattling her ribs.
The fog. The glow. The gaze. The other her. Gone. She sat in the ship’s cabin, a blanket wrapped around her on the ground, the cold metal walls pressing in tighter than before. Her breath fogged the air before her, but not from warmth—from cold.
Her fingers moved before she realized it, touching her chest, her shoulders, her face. She wasn’t sweating. She was freezing. Her body was damp with sweat but cold. Ice cold. Her fingers shook, twitching as she pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to still the rapid thumping in her head.
A blanket had been wrapped around her. She didn’t remember covering herself.
Her heart still hurt. Not from fear. From loss.
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Isla’s vision lifted slowly, locking on the window. The Fog outside was lifting, curling away like misty tendrils as the all-encompassing light strengthened. Her heart rate didn’t rise. It should have. She should be terrified. She should be screaming. She should be thinking about the thing in The Fog. The thing that watched her…but she wasn’t.
Her eyes turned to the others. Brigid was at the window above her, fingers pressed against the glass as she leaned forward, eyes sharp, lips parted. Maeva was right beside her, squinting into the fog, her head tilted, her eyes scanning the endless gray.
“Did you hear that, Captain?” Maeva’s voice came, tight and sharp. “That sounds…like engines. Captain?”
“Yeah,” Brigid muttered, leaning in closer. “I heard it. Over there. To the left of the boat. Do you see anything? Dr. Reyes?”
Isla sat still, her eyes on them but her mind…her mind wasn’t with them. Her breath came slow. Too slow. Her fingers stayed on her chest. The warmth she’d felt. The hum she’d heard. Her heart didn’t hurt because of fear. It hurt because it was gone—she was gone.
“Did…you two have any dreams? Meet…someone?”
“What?” Brigid glanced at Maeva, who shook her head. “No, Doctor. I just closed my eyes and woke up. We can check the cameras.”
Her eyes fell half-closed, staring through The Fog in her mind, Maeva and Brigid’s voices fading into the background. Her gaze drew distant as she tried to calm herself down.
This loss in my chest isn’t something I’m…feeling. It’s something I knew. I felt it when I was a child… No, she felt it. How did I forget her? No, this isn’t right! Wake up! I should be terrified. I should be afraid of that…thing that’s been watching me for…ever. But…but I’m not. And that’s the most terrifying part… I miss her.
“Hey, ladies!” Kael shouted. “Ladies, you gotta get up here… We may have a problem.”
Her gaze lifted back to the window as she slowly rose to her feet, the other two women looking unsure as Isla caught her own reflection. It didn’t move for a second. Her lips curled slowly, eyes narrowing. She blinked, and it was normal.
But it had blinked first.
Is she gone? No. Forgotten, but always present.
Maeva gently touched her shoulder. “Doctor, you don’t look too good.”
Isla dragged her fingers down her face, wiping away the cold sheen of sweat that clung to her skin. Her pulse was steady now, but the hollow ache of something lost lingered in her chest. Not gone. Not entirely. Pressed into the cracks of her mind like a photograph tucked into a drawer she’d never meant to open.
She glanced at her reflection in the window. Her eyes. Her own eyes. No flicker. No hesitation. No other. Get a grip! Deal with the present, not the past!
“I’m here,” Isla muttered, giving her head a final shake to clear it. Her fingers twitched, pressing firmly against her ribs to anchor herself. Her breath came slow, steadying as she forced herself back into the moment. “Just…just an episode. Probably lingered in The Fog too long while you two slept.” Her gaze drifted toward the window, eyes narrowing as time seemed to speed up again. “Could’ve been worse if I stayed in it longer than ten minutes.”
She exhaled through her nose, glancing at Brigid. “This isn’t aliens or new worlds. The Endless Sea is something else. Something older. Something more…primal, is what I’m getting so far. How are you two feeling?”
“Ladies?! Are they dead?”
“We’re fine! Brigid, pull the camera feeds,” Isla ordered, eyes sharp now. “Hallways. Deck. Everywhere. I want to see if we drifted off course or if anything got on the ship while we were out.” Her eyes shifted to Maeva. “Check the others. Full physicals. Look for anything—temperature shifts, skin abnormalities, nerve responses, anything. I want every detail.”
Maeva straightened, nodding once before glancing toward the hallway. “You got it, Doctor. But the way you’re acting… Should we even go out until…”
Realizing they’d been staying put due to fear of what the men might have experienced during The Fog, she remembered Evelyn’s warning about most of the team basically being chickens, needing someone to make decisions.
“No, we’re good. Let’s go.” Isla took one more breath, steady and slow, then spun toward the closed door. She promptly exited, her feet striking the metal stairs with firm, deliberate steps as she climbed to the upper deck, her mind sharp as frostbite.
No drifting thoughts. No fog. Focus on regrouping and identifying any problems.
Her boots clanged hard against the steel, echoing up the stairwell. Each step chased away the distant hum that still lingered in the back of her skull. It was like walking away from the warmth of a fire—she felt it leave her. The moment it was gone, her chest ached again. Her teeth clenched, and she forced her mind forward.
The cold air hit her like a slap to the face—not warm, as it had been near Site-X0. The deck stretched out before her, drenched in mist and sea spray, The Fog still hanging low, though thin. The sea was calm, eerily so, the waves lapping gently against the hull. The smell of saltwater and metal filled her lungs. Her team was already gathered, the two women behind her.
Kael leaned against the rail, arms crossed, sharp eyes cutting through The Fog like a hawk on patrol. Hollow was further back, hands shoved in his pockets, but his eyes kept darting to The Fog. James stood by the mast, a scoped gun held up while observing the horizon.
“Ladies!” Kael’s voice boomed over the low murmur of the sea. “Ladies, you gotta get up here. Do you see that?.”
Isla stepped onto the deck with a final thud as she stepped forward, her eyes scanning the light mist; it wasn’t night, at least. “What kind of problem, Kael?”
The first sign was the pop. Sharp, hollow, and sudden, like a bubble bursting deep inside Isla’s skull. Her ears rang in the aftermath, followed by the faint vibration of something she couldn’t place. Not sound—sensation. It crept up from the soles of her boots. It pulsed in sync with something overhead.
Isla’s gaze lifted. She squinted through the dense mist, eyes narrowed into sharp slits. The fog wasn’t just gray anymore—it shimmered faintly. An oily sheen of muted blue, green, and purple moved like veins under the sky’s skin, stretching and twisting together like something threading reality itself.
“Kael,” Isla called, her fingers tightening on the rail. “Please tell me you’re seeing that.”
Kael’s head snapped toward her. He glanced up, his hand resting on the sidearm at his hip. His mouth pressed into a hard line, eyes narrowing like a hawk tracking prey. “What do you think I’ve been screaming about? Feels like a subsonic hum.” He flexed his jaw, testing his ears. “Like…standing too close to a reactor. Maybe a jet engine?”
The colors sharpened. Blues bled into green, green into gold, the edges turning a bruised purple. Each shift sent a soft ripple through the air, but it didn’t spread outward—it pulled inward, all folding toward a single point.
“That’s not from below.” Brigid’s voice carried down from the deck above, her hand shielding her eyes. Her head tilted back, and Isla followed her gaze. “Look up!”
Her heart stopped.
The mist peeled back. It wasn’t light, and it wasn’t shadow. It was absence, a void where the world folded in on itself. Concentric waves rippled out like a stone dropped into water, only the water was the very fabric of reality. Isla sucked in a breath as something pressed down on her chest, the sensation sharp and primal—something was reaching out.
A shockwave shuddered through the air, and Isla felt it in her teeth.
The ripple spread faster, faster—then, at its center, a line tore open. It wasn’t clean or smooth. It ripped like wet fabric stretched too tight. Reality split. The sky buckled inward, distorting in a flash of liquid blue, and from the seam, dark purple clouds oozed free.
“Is that…smoke?” Maeva muttered, one hand gripping the railing as she leaned closer, eyes unblinking. “No, it’s…it’s thicker than that.”
Isla tracked it with narrowed eyes. It’s moving too slowly to be smoke… And what kind of smoke twists like that? Like oil dispersing in water. It’s preparing for something—moving toward that breach in space.
The clouds unfurled, dense and bulbous, folding into themselves as they floated from the sky rift. Scarlet lightning crackled between them, the glow so sharp it left streaks in her vision, illuminating something inside of it.
Shit…
“Back up! Everyone, back up!” Isla shouted. “James, we need to secure ourselves. Something tells me we’re in for some rough waters!”
Maeva’s head jerked toward her, and Kael was already moving toward the center of the deck, eyes locked upward. James shrugged his pack off, extracting climbing clips, knives, and paracord. His voice was low, but it carried.
“Tighten your belts to the point it hurts. Keep your knife secure in case you need to cut yourself free. Don’t be stupid.”
As they moved to get the supplies, Isla’s gaze snapped back to the rift. It was subtle at first, giving them time to prepare, as if laughing at their efforts. A shifting shape within the clouds, twisting and curling to some unheard tune. It moved too smoothly to be wind.
Isla’s nails pressed into the flesh of her palm as the shape unfurled and she followed James’ instructions; her practiced fingers swiftly tightened the climbing knot around the clip and she stuffed the blade clip into her pocket. Yet, all of them paused in their actions when it solidified.
A limb. A tendril. A tentacle. Its movement was unmistakable for all of them to know exactly what they were seeing. It curled, then vanished back into the fog.
You have to be kidding me… Eve, I’m going to punch you in the face when I get back! Dimensional alien tentacles?!
“Oh, hell no!” Maeva choked.
Brigid came jogging out of the hallway from the navigation room. “What?!”
“Don’t ask,” Isla growled, rushing over to grab her by the belt, making the woman squeak as she tightened it another loop before connecting the clip and paracord. “How are the recordings?”
“Eh, they’re all operational. Why does Kael look like he wants to pass out?”
He shook his head, face white as ash as Hollow coughed and looked at the edge of the boat, as if considering if he should jump over.
Isla finished tying it and looked up, spotting a new ripple in space. Great… What now?