Cold. Suffocation. Despair.

  Gabriel’s consciousness drifted, suspended in the abyss of the sea. He felt himself being pulled down by an unseen force, drawn ever deeper into the void. The weight of the water pressed upon him, relentless and crushing, squeezing the last remnants of air from his lungs. He could hear the sluggish pulse of his own blood coursing through his veins, a faint murmur like waves lapping against distant rocks. The rhythm was fragile, as if at any moment it might cease entirely, swallowed by the infinite silence of the ocean.

  His limbs were rigid with cold, his skin numbed to sensation. His mind wavered on the threshold of consciousness, teetering between the tangible and the hallucinatory.

  But he did not struggle.

  It was not that he could not struggle—he knew, with an unsettling clarity, that resistance was futile. Against the vastness of the sea, human will was meaningless, a futile gesture in the face of an ancient, indifferent world. He closed his eyes, holding what little breath remained in his lungs, allowing himself to sink further, to drift closer to the precipice of death. Perhaps, in the depths of the abyss, he would glimpse the truth of it all.

  And then, his body began to change.

  The agony of suffocation began to fade, retreating like a tide withdrawing from the shore. Gabriel’s eyes flew open. His lungs were still moving, albeit sluggishly, but the searing pain of oxygen deprivation was subsiding. Water seeped through his nostrils, down his throat—yet, impossibly, he did not choke. Something deep within him had stirred, something he did not understand, some mechanism buried in the very core of his being that now granted him the ability to extract oxygen from the water.

  Instinctively, he inhaled.

  The water slid into his lungs, weaving through his insides like invisible threads. His chest still felt tight, the ingrained terror of drowning not yet relinquishing its hold. But something ancient, something more primal than fear, had awakened within him. It was not acceptance, nor was it adaptation in any natural sense—it was mutation, manifesting in the raw and unrelenting necessity of survival.

  He did not feel relief.

  If anything, what he felt was a deep and gnawing unease.

  This was no gradual evolution. This was something else.

  The water moved sluggishly, carrying with it minute particles of organic debris, drifting aimlessly in the sun-dappled currents. Gabriel propelled himself forward, though his movements were clumsy, his muscles still heavy with the memory of the land. The resistance of the water felt unnatural to him, as though he had yet to master the rhythm of the sea.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  But his own awkwardness was not what unsettled him most.

  It was the silence.

  The shallows should have been teeming with life, a bustling theatre of motion, yet here, there was only emptiness. A few trilobites crawled sluggishly across the ocean floor, their segmented bodies dragging across the sand like relics of a forgotten past. A sparse scattering of straight-shelled nautiloids drifted overhead, their delicate tendrils extending warily into the water as if sensing some unseen threat.

  Gabriel observed them in stillness, an inexplicable chill passing through him.

  This was not a thriving ecosystem. It was a ruin.

  It was as though something had scoured the shallows clean, leaving behind only a handful of survivors—like ghosts wandering the remnants of a fallen empire. The waters here were lifeless, stagnant, waiting. But waiting for what?

  He had once thought the shallows would be a sanctuary. Instead, they felt like an abandoned battlefield, a place where something had already passed judgment, leaving only the faintest traces of what once was.

  If this was a wasteland, then where did the real world begin?

  Gabriel turned his gaze towards the distant abyss.

  He did not hesitate.

  The shallows had nothing for him. Whatever life remained, it had retreated into the depths, into the unknown blackness beyond. There, in the cold and crushing dark, the true test of survival would begin.

  And with every stroke forward, he felt it—the slow, inexorable transformation. His skin, once taut and unyielding, became smoother, more hydrodynamic, offering less resistance to the currents. The slight folds of skin between his fingers adjusted subtly, capturing more water, increasing the efficiency of his movements. These changes were not conscious, nor were they sudden. They were simply there, as if they had always been, as if the body had long known what the mind had yet to comprehend.

  He did not look back.

  The deep was calling to him, and he was already answering.

  The water darkened as he descended, the last remnants of sunlight dissolving into the vast and impenetrable gloom. The temperature plummeted, sinking into a numbing cold that pressed against his bones. Here, the world felt different—less like a place of mere existence and more like a domain of hidden laws, where only those willing to submit to its rules would endure.

  From the shadows, a sea scorpion crouched atop a distant rock, its black exoskeleton glistening in the dim light, its multifaceted eyes tracking his every movement. It did not lunge, nor did it flee. It merely watched.

  Farther still, a great straight-shelled nautiloid drifted in the distance, its tentacles twitching ever so slightly. Gabriel did not know whether it was a warning or a summons.

  But he knew this much—this was where life persisted. This was where the true struggle lay.

  The barren shallows had been nothing but a threshold.

  And the real adaptation had only just begun.

  Closing his eyes, he let himself sink further, deeper, feeling the water press against him, feeling his body respond in ways he could not yet understand.

  He could not turn back now.

  The darkness lay ahead, and he had no choice but to meet it.