DARK DEPTHS

Elias Harren had always been drawn to the sea. Raised in a coastal village in Cornwall, England. He spent his days exploring cliffs, hidden inlets, and daring the tides. While others feared the deep, Elias embraced it, teaching himself to dive and recover what the sea had claimed.

By young adulthood, he had gained a reputation as a daring diver, unafraid to plunge into the unknown. Yet, for all his skill, Elias was not a man driven by greed. He understood the risks of the ocean and its unyielding strength. Word of his skill had spread, his uncanny ability to navigate treacherous waters and read the sea like the lines of a familiar map had made him a sought-after asset. It wasn’t long before he found himself recruited into a crew of ocean explorers, drawn to the mysteries and secrets of the seas.

The day that sealed Elias’ fate began with whispers of a wreckage, a ship carrying treasures long lost to the sea. The wreck lay deep, buried in centuries of silt, but that was of no concern. What mattered was what lay inside: riches enough to change their lives forever. Warnings came with the tide that morning. Clouds choked the horizon, and the air carried the scent of an impending storm. Elias urged caution to the crew, but his voice was drowned out by their promises of fortune.

Against his better judgment, he was sealed into his diving suit and lowered into the water. Elias descended into darkness. The world above faded, replaced by the muted sounds of the deep and the slow rhythm of his breathing through the air hose. The wreck loomed below him, a skeletal mass shrouded in shadows. As he explored the vessel, strange sensations crept over him: fleeting shapes in the periphery of his vision, whispers carried by the currents. It was as if the ocean itself protested their intrusion.

Above the surface, visions of riches drove the crew as they worked furiously at the manual air pump, their shoulders straining as they forced air down to Elias. A cold rain began to fall; the sky darkened, and the clouds thickened, swallowing what little light remained.

As the storm worsened, panic grew amongst them, some muttering curses, others glancing nervously as waves lashed at the boat. The crew’s greed turned to panic. The vessel was small and fragile against the fury of the sea, and survival became their only thought. They shouted at one another, their voices raw with fear, their focus no longer on Elias or the treasure below but on saving themselves. Attention turned to the air hose, still running taut into the depths, tethering them to the man they had sent down. It was a liability now, another weight dragging them closer to ruin. Without hesitation, in a frenzy of self-preservation, one of the men slashed at it with a blade, severing Elias’ only connection to life. The hose vanished into the abyss. No one hesitated, no one mourned. Their thoughts were fixed solely on survival as they fought to steady the vessel. They made for the horizon, leaving Elias to vanish into the crushing dark of the sea.

Water surged violently through the severed air hose, gushing into the confines of Elias’ helmet with a suffocating roar. He thrashed against the encroaching flood, his hands clawing desperately at the edges of the suit, searching for a release that wasn’t there. His breath turned to shallow, frantic gulps as ice cold water filled his lungs. A dark and impenetrable fog, unlike anything he had seen in the depths poured, filling his vision. Voices rose within it, low and guttural, a language not meant for human ears. Elias reached out, desperate, and something reached back. An icy grip seized his soul and pulled him into oblivion.

The ocean had claimed Elias Harren, but what returned was something far worse. A terror born from the dark depths, driven by the eternal tides of rage and sorrow.