Chapter 4 — The Bond That Breathes

  The first thing Celeste felt was the hum. It was a vibration that traveled through the crystal floor, up into her ribs, and settled deep in her marrow. It was steady, warm, and rhythmic, like the heartbeat of something much larger than her.

  She didn't want to open her eyes. Not yet. In the dark behind her eyelids, she could still pretend she was in her apartment in Seattle. She could pretend the smell of salt was just a candle and the pressure in her ears was just a clogged sinus.

  But then she breathed. And the water moved through her gills with a smooth, effortless glide. It didn't burn like the last time. It didn't taste like the stagnant, metallic abyss. It tasted pure, almost sweet.

  Celeste’s eyes snapped open.

  She was lying flat on a slab of translucent, white crystal that glowed with a soft, inner light. Above her, a massive dome of glass arched into the darkness, held up by pillars of obsidian etched with pulsing violet runes. Everything was too sharp. Too clear in her eyes. The light from the crystals stung her retinas, and she could see the microscopic particles of gold dust dancing in the water with terrifying detail.

  Fuck

  She rolled onto her side, and the reality of her body hit her all over again. Her tail, heavy and covered in lavender scales that shimmered like oil on water, slapped against the crystal floor with a wet, heavy thud. Celeste tried to right herself. Her arms felt like wet noodles. She looked at her hands. The bruised, sickly grey was receding, replaced by a vibrant, pulsing lavender. The golden dust from the ruins was still settled in her scales, glowing as it melted into her skin like starlight.

  She stared at them, her chest heaving. The memories of the last hour came back in a violent rush: the ship splintering like a toy, the Leviathan’s golden eye, the unbearable agony of the energy transfer, and the way her mouth had felt against a stranger's just to keep his soul from leaking out.

  It hadn't been a nightmare. It was her life. It was real.

  [Energy: 48% — Ambient Recharge Peak Reached.]

  [Note: Human Core capacity reached. Further evolution required for full charge.]

  [Mission Time Remaining: 8 hours 11 minutes.]

  "Hey… are you awake?” she croaked as she stared at the man to her left.

  Her voice was the scariest thing yet. It didn't muffle or bubble. It was terrifyingly clear, vibrating through the water with a crispness that made her flinch. It sounded like a bell ringing inside a cathedral, echoing off walls she couldn't see yet.

  The man turned his head slowly, his movements jerky, like a broken puppet. His eyes fluttered open. The once brown orbs, now veined with a flickering, borrowed blue light, fixed on her. He took in her white hair floating like a halo of ghost-silk, her violet eyes, and the jagged, half-healed tears on her shoulders where the stone had chewed her up.

  He scrambled back, his heels clicking frantically against the crystal floor as he tried to push himself away from her. He looked at her claws, then her tail, and his face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.

  "What... what are you? Where— where the fuck am I?"

  His voice was a garbled mess of bubbles and frantic gasps, but Celeste heard him perfectly. It didn't feel like sound hitting her ears; it felt like his words were vibrating directly into her inner ear, rattling her brain.

  “Hey, just calm down.” Celeste lifted her hands, her claws catching the violet light of the cavern. It was a human gesture, a peace offering, but on her, it looked like a predator cornering its prey.

  The man didn't calm down. He clapped his hands over his ears, his body jerking as he seemed to realise his lungs were pulling in liquid instead of air. "Why can I hear you?" he choked out, the words vibrating through the water and rattling Celeste’s teeth. "Why is your voice... inside me? And why am I fucking breathing underwater!"

  "Your voice is in my head too, so calm the fuck down!" Celeste snapped. Her temper flared, fueled by the 48% energy buzzing like a live wire under her skin. She hovered a few inches off the floor, her tail curling into a tight, defensive spiral. "And I'm the person who just turned her marrow into ice to keep you from imploding. So, a 'thank you' would be a great start."

  The man stopped. For a second, the only sound was the low, rhythmic hum of the crystal spires. He looked at his hands, watching the borrowed golden glow pulse in his veins. He touched his throat, and his eyes rolled back slightly, the white showing. He looked like he was about to faint, or vomit, or simply shut down.

  “How—” He choked, a cloud of silver bubbles momentarily masking his face. “How are you talking in my language?”

  His voice was a jolt of electricity to her frontal lobe. It wasn't telepathy, it was worse. She realised it’s the "Link" that made his panic her panic.

  “Because I was living like you just a few hours ago! I don’t remember clearly!” She scoffed, the sound coming out as a haunting, choral hiss.

  He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, his blue-veined eyes searching her face for a punchline that wasn't coming. “What do you mean you were living like me? Like a... a human?”

  “Was a human. Until I woke up in this fucking skin.” Celeste looked down at her lavender scales and the violet glow of her skin making her feel sick. The look on his face told her he found her words as ridiculous as she did. It was pathetic.

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  “You… make no sense,” he whispered, his voice jagged with a growing, cold distrust.

  That snapped something in her. “Fuck yeah? No sense? It didn't make any sense to me either!” She surged forward, her tail lashing the water into a violent swirl. She bared her teeth—sharp, predatory, and white—it wasn’t because she wanted to eat him, but because it seemed like she didn't know how to be human anymore. “But guess what? I need to survive this. And I need your help.”

  The man flinched, drifting away from her with uncoordinated, panicked movements. He seemed to have a hard time looking away from her white hair floating like ghost-silk and her gills fluttering with every breath. He probably didn't see a human she was claiming to be but a monster that spoke like a person.

  “Help you how?”

  “How did you get here? The water should have crushed you to pieces. But you were alright.” She pointed a sharp claw at the pendant hanging from his neck. Its light was long since dead, a cold piece of metal against his damp shirt. “There was magic in that. That thing was putting out some kind of field. It kept the current from killing you. It’s the only reason you’re not a red stain on the rocks.”

  He stared at the pendant, then back at her, his expression vacant. It wasn't just shock in his face, but a total lack of connection. “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t fucking lie,” Celeste hissed, her violet eyes pulsing. “The pendant. Who gave it to you? Where did it come from?”

  His face crumbled. He gripped the gold in a white-knuckled fist, “I… I can’t remember.”

  “What do you mean you can’t remember! It saved you!” Celeste screeched. The resonance of her voice hit the crystal walls, magnifying until it felt like a physical blow to his head. “Do you have a System? Powers? Anything? Is there a way to get back to the surface?”

  “I can’t remember a thing!” He roared back, grabbing his head as if he were trying to hold his brains together. “It’s all a blur! Every time I try to look back, it’s just wood breaking and... and ice! My head hurts, god dammit, it hurts!”

  His desperate voice rang in her head, a discordant, vibrating ache that made her vision swim. He’s not lying, she realized with a sinking horror.

  [Shared Energy Flow: 18% Drain.]

  [Warning: Linked Entity Mental Instability detected.]

  Celeste recoiled, her heart thumping a frantic rhythm. She was tethered to a hollow man. A man who was literally bleeding her dry because he couldn't remember who he was.

  “Great,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m linked to someone who doesn’t have a single memory to give back. We’re both dead.”

  He stared at her, his eyes wide and trembling, “Why?” he choked out. The vibration of his voice felt like a dull ache in her jaw. “Why did you save me?”

  Celeste looked at the smooth, glowing crystalline floor, then back at him. She didn't have a "heroic" answer to that. “Because my system demanded me to,” she said, her voice flat.

  “What?” He blinked, bubbles escaping his lips in a confused rush. “System? What are you talking about?”

  “The voice in my head! The floating red numbers! The fact that I’m currently a five-hundred-pound fish because something decided I should be!” She snapped, her tail lashing out and sending a plume of silt into the water. “I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart. I did it because the screen in my eyes told me I’d fail a quest if I let you drown.”

  She drifted closer, ignoring the way he winced. “I thought you were the key. I thought that pendant meant you were important, that maybe you got the answers for me. But you’re just a blank slate.”

  He looked at her as if she were insane. To a man with no memory, a woman claiming a "System" turned her into a siren was just another layer of the nightmare.

  “I don’t see any numbers,” he whispered, his voice jagged. “I just see... you. And this place.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Celeste muttered, rubbing her temples with her fingers. “Why would anything be easy?”

  She looked at the HUD flickering in the corner of her vision.

  [Energy: 30% — Draining...]

  [Linked Entity Stress: High]

  “Look,” she said, her tone softening into something weary and real. “I don't know who you are, and apparently, neither do you. But we are physically tied together now. My energy is keeping you breathing, and your panic is eating my energy. If you don't stop looking at me like I’m about to eat you, we’re both going to be dead before I can figure out how to work the ‘exit’ door.”

  The man looked at the glowing gold in his own skin, then back at the dark, arched tunnels of the cavern. He didn't have a choice. He didn't have a past. He only had the monster in front of him.

  “So this is all real?” He asked, he was looking at her as if he was searching for a flicker of something human in her gaze. “What you’re telling me is real?”

  “Very real,” Celeste replied. She felt the weight of her tail drifting behind her. Oh, how she wished this was just one of those nightmares.

  “Then make me believe.”

  Celeste’s eyes narrowed, “How?”

  “What’s your name?”

  It had been so long—or maybe just a few hours that felt like a lifetime—since she had heard it, or thought about it. “Celeste,” she said. It sounded fragile coming out of her throat. “What’s yours?”

  “Rowan.” He said, then he leaned back against the obsidian pillar, his eyes fixed on her. “Where did you live before you... turned into this?”

  “Seattle.”

  The man, Rowan, let out a breath, a tiny stream of bubbles escaping his lips. He looked at the impossible crystal ceiling, then back at her. “Yeah… there’s no way a siren knows about Seattle,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. He took a shaky breath, his hands still trembling. “What did you do for a living?”

  “I was a barista.”

  The word felt ridiculous in this tomb of glass. It conjured images of steam wands, people, rainy mornings on Pike Place, and the smell of roasted beans in her head. Things that felt like they belonged to a different species.

  Rowan’s face settled into a look of profound, hollow exhaustion. “Oh. So this is real.” He cupped his cheeks with his hands, his fingers digging into his skin as he seemed to realise the nightmare wasn't going to end when he opened his eyes. “This is fucked up.”

  “Yes,” Celeste said, “I agree on both.”

  “Fine,” he breathed, his voice barely a ripple in the water. “What do we do now?”

  “We move,” Celeste said. “Before whatever built this place decides to come back and check the traps.”