The ocean was eerily calm as Riku anchored above the sunken ruins. The moon hung low, a thin sliver of silver barely piercing the thick haze. Below him, the water darkened into an endless void. Every instinct warned him not to go in. Every story he'd ever heard told him that entering the sea at night was asking to vanish forever.
But he had no choice.The answers he needed were below.And the Umibōzu was already watching.
Riku secured the oxygen tank, tightened the straps, and lowered himself into the water. The cold hit him like a wall, stealing his breath for a moment. He descended slowly, the world above dissolving into rippling streaks of light until only darkness remained.
Shapes began to emerge.Broken pillars.Collapsed stone arches.A carved pathway leading into the heart of the ruin—a drowned temple swallowed centuries ago.
The carvings on the stones were clearer here. Figures with bald, elongated heads. Waves curling upward like hands. Eyes—always eyes—staring from every surface.
The deeper he went, the more oppressive the silence became. Not even the sound of his own breathing seemed to belong here. Then he reached it: an arched entranceway, half-buried in silt, marked with symbols matching the ones in the shrine.
He shone his flashlight inside.
A vast chamber stretched before him, filled with drifting sediment and ancient relics. In the center stood a stone altar, cracked down the middle. Murals lined the walls—scenes of villagers offering bowls, lanterns, and carved effigies to a towering sea figure. But the final mural was different: it depicted the same villagers running, boats capsizing, waves swallowing their homes.
The balance had been broken.The ocean had taken everything.
Suddenly, the water shifted.A cold current swept through the ruins.Riku froze.
A silhouette drifted past the entrance. Massive. Slow. Deliberate.The Umibōzu.
Riku pressed himself behind a pillar, heart hammering in his ears. The creature moved with terrifying grace, its enormous shadow stretching across the chamber like a living eclipse. The water darkened around it, thick and murky, as though the sea itself bent to its will.
Then—A voice slid into Riku's mind again, cold as the deep."You seek what should remain forgotten."
Riku swallowed panic, clutching the pillar."I seek understanding," he answered quietly in his thoughts, not knowing if it could hear.The eyes turned toward him—two voids that swallowed every glimmer of light.
The pressure around him increased. The chamber trembled. Cracks formed in the stone walls. Sand poured from above. He felt the crushing weight of the sea pressing in, threatening to collapse the entire ruin.
The voice returned, sharper this time:"Leave."
A surge of water exploded through the chamber, throwing Riku backward. The flashlight spun away into darkness. Alarms screamed in his mask as he tumbled through a cloud of debris.
He kicked upward, fighting the current, struggling to find his direction as the ruins crumbled behind him. Columns shattered. Stones fell like meteors. The temple collapsed in a roaring underwater avalanche.
Riku burst to the surface, gasping wildly. The moonlit waves rocked violently, churned by something moving beneath. Something massive and angered.
He grabbed the edge of his boat and hauled himself in, coughing seawater, his entire body trembling. As he looked back at the sea, a single realization chilled him more than the dive ever could:
The Umibōzu had spared him—not out of mercy, but because it had issued a warning.And warnings were the last step before destruction.
The balance was broken again.And now the Black Tide was rising.