“You feel it?” the captain whispered, knuckles white on the wheel. “The pressure.”

The ocean squeezed. Her ears popped, then rang. Bubbles streamed past like reversed shooting stars. She could see the ship’s wreckage tumbling above, a wooden constellation dissolving into the blue-black.

The knife shattered. But so did the plate.

The monster didn’t roar. It hummed . A low, subsonic thrum that vibrated in Kayana’s ribs, turning her courage to jelly. Then it dove.

The old hunter called it the Drowning Dark. "Not a leviathan," he’d said, tapping a gnarled finger on the ale-stained map. "Not a sea dragon, either. It’s the trench itself, come alive."