“It’s like I’m a fucking prisoner,” she choked out through the bond. “It’s keeping me here to pay for you. So go ahead, call me a monster again. But at least you can swim away. I can’t even go find a goddamn fish to eat even if I die here starving.”
Rowan felt like a piece of shit. An absolute, massive piece of shit. He had been so blinded by his own fury, so consumed by the horror of his new skin, that he had refused to see the reality of the bargain Celeste had struck. He couldn’t imagine her being trapped here because of him—because she was just that selfless.
While he was busy mourning his humanity, she was being used as a literal payment plan by a Heart underwater. The Heart had given him life at her request, and now it was clawing that energy back out of her marrow, second by agonizing second.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry... fuck, Celeste, I’m so sorry.”
The words poured through the bond, frantic and raw. He pulled her forward and into a hug, his new, powerful arms wrapping around her trembling frame. He half-expected her to snap his neck or claw his eyes out—he certainly deserved it—but she didn't. She stayed motionless in his grip, her body limp and cold, like all the fire had finally gone out of her.
“I’m so sorry,” he sighed, the vibration of his voice humming through the water. “You should have just let me die. I'm not worth this.”
He held her tighter, but he could feel the cold, rhythmic pull of the Heart. It was emptying her. He was the reason she was hollow. He felt like a living, breathing debt that she was dying to pay off.
Celeste didn’t hug him back. She didn't seem to have the strength left to even lift her arms. She just leaned her head against his shoulder, her weight heavy and limp against him.
“I’ll die if I don’t get to eat anything,” she whispered through the bond.
Her voice was so faint in his head now, thin and frayed, like a radio signal losing power. It terrified him more than the sirens had.
“Don’t say that,” he said, his own voice trembling. “I’ll—I’ll do something. Just hang on a little longer.”
He knew he had to figure out this whole energy transaction thing—how to stop the Heart from siphoning her life away to pay for his. But that was a long-term problem. Right now, he needed to find something for her to eat.
As he looked at her, he wondered why he wasn’t feeling the same gnawing, burning hunger she described. Then it clicked. When the Heart spat him out, it had charged him. He was a new person, his energy and cells filled to the brim with the primordial power of the abyss. He was overflowing while she was being drained to balance the scales.
“Hang on, Celeste. I’ll come back with something,” he promised, his voice hardening with a new sense of purpose.
He gently eased her back down toward the stone floor, making sure she was settled in the light where her body could at least remain responsive. He looked out into the pitch-black water beyond the temple's glow. He didn't know how to hunt. He didn't know what was out there besides the sirens and the monsters.
But he was fast now. He was strong. And he didn't care what he had to become to keep her alive. He didn’t give himself time to overthink. He turned away from the pulsing pale blue light and kicked off the stone floor, his legs driving through the water with a force that nearly sent him tumbling. He wasn't used to the power in his quads or the way his feet, now slightly elongated and webbed, pushed against the heavy pressure of the trench.
Even with his new, dense musculature, the ocean felt like moving through liquid lead. Every time he pushed his legs, the resistance threatened to snap his knees backward. He had to learn the rhythm of his own strength on the fly, discovering that a slow, deliberate thrust of his webbed feet was more effective than a frantic scramble.
He crossed the threshold of the Heart’s light, and the world died.
The darkness was absolute for a heartbeat. Then, his eyes clicked over. It wasn't seeing so much as it was interpreting shadows. The abyss was a graveyard of colossal proportions. He saw the skeletal remains of things that had fallen from the surface—whale falls picked clean to the bone, looking like white shipwrecks in the silt.
He didn't find anything living immediately. He spent what felt like an hour wandering through a forest of hydrothermal chimneys, the heat from the vents shimmering in the water and distorting his vision. His lungs—or whatever his gills had become—burned. The water here was sulfurous and low on oxygen.
Then he felt the vibration.
It was a pressure wave that hit the fine hairs on his skin. Something fast was moving nearby. He ducked behind a pillar of volcanic glass, his fingers scraping against the razor-sharp edges. He didn't feel the cuts, but he saw the dark ribbons of his own blood drift away.
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The school emerged from the murk like a fleet of silver ghosts. These deep-sea tuna were massive, their bodies hardened into aerodynamic armor to survive the pressure. They were beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
Rowan picked a target on the edge of the formation. He waited, his muscles coiling, his heart thundering against his ribs. When the fish turned to bypass a rock formation, he lunged.
He missed.
The tuna flicked its tail, a casual movement that sent a shockwave into Rowan’s chest, knocking him backward. He spun through the water, disoriented. The school began to pull away, their powerful tails leaving a wake that tossed him around like a ragdoll.
Fucking hell.
He kicked harder, ignoring the scream of his leg muscles. He wasn't a swimmer; but his new body was helping a lot. He intercepted the school by cutting through a narrow crevice in the basalt, appearing above them like a falling stone.
He slammed onto the back of a six-foot specimen.
The fish went berserk. It vibrated with a raw, muscular power that threatened to shake Rowan’s teeth out of his skull. It dived straight down, aiming for the jagged floor of the trench. Rowan’s vision blurred as they descended. The fish slammed its body against a rock, trying to scrape him off.
Rowan’s shoulder hit a ledge with a sickening crack. The pain was an explosion of white in his brain, but he didn't let go. He dug his white, obsidian nails into the thick scales of the fish’s nape, pulling himself forward until he could wrap his legs around its girth.
The tuna began a series of violent, high-speed rolls. Rowan was whipped back and forth, his grip slipping as the fish’s slime made everything impossible to hold. He was losing it. He was going to fall off, and Celeste was going to die in that blue cage.
In a fit of animalistic rage, Rowan leaned forward and sunk his teeth into the tuna’s dorsal ridge.
The taste was metallic and cold, but it gave him the anchor he needed. With his hands finally free for a second, he reached around and shoved his fingers into the tuna’s eye sockets. It was a foul, desperate move, but the creature's frantic pace slowed. It began to thrash aimlessly, lost in its own agony.
Rowan didn't stop. He worked his hands down to the gills, his fingers hooking into the crimson, feathery arches and pulling. He felt the cartilage snap. He felt the life-force of the creature pouring out in thick, dark clouds that blinded him.
They hit the bottom together.
The impact kicked up a cloud of silt that buried them both. Rowan lay there, pinned under the cooling weight of the fish, his chest heaving. His shoulder was screaming, likely dislocated, and his fingers were cramped into claws he couldn't quite uncurl.
He stayed there for a long time, listening to the silence of the trench. He looked at the tuna. It was a magnificent, tragic thing, and he had slaughtered it with his bare hands and teeth. Holy fucking hell. He was one second away from puking his guts out.
He forced himself to push off the floor. His legs were shaking, the muscles twitching uncontrollably from the overexertion. He grabbed the fish’s pectoral fin and began to drag it.
The return journey was a nightmare. The tuna weighed nearly as much as he did, and the water resistance made every drift feel like a mile. He had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath, leaning against the cold basalt, his head hanging low. He looked like a ghost—pale, blood-stained, and broken—hauling a corpse through the dark.
Because the tuna was denser than the water, it stayed low, dragging against the silt and rock. To move it, Rowan had to drop to the trench floor and use the terrain.
He gripped the fish by the bony plates of its head. He reached forward with his free hand, found a crack in the basalt, and pulled. At the same time, he kicked his legs back in a hard, deliberate thrust. The tuna moved forward three feet before the drag of the water stopped it.
He did it again. Reach, grip, kick, slide. The process was slow and repetitive. Every time the fish moved, it kicked up a cloud of grey sediment that made it hard to see. Rowan’s muscles burned with a dull, heavy ache. His new skin was tough, but the jagged edges of the volcanic rock scraped his knees and elbows as he crawled along the bottom. Just like earlier he didn't feel the sharp sting of the cuts, but he could see the dark, ink-like fluid leaking from his own limbs and mixing with the silt.
He had to navigate around a cluster of hydrothermal vents. The water there was shimmering with heat, making it difficult to maintain a grip on the slimy scales of the fish. He lost his footing once, his webbed feet slipping on a patch of slick algae. He and the fish tumbled into a shallow ravine. It took him several minutes of frantic, heavy kicking just to wedge the carcass back out and onto level ground.
When he finally saw the blue glow of the Heart, he almost cried. The light looked like a sanctuary, even if it was a prison.
He crested the final ridge and saw Celeste. She looked smaller than when he left. Her white hair was draped over her face, and her body was curled into a tight, defensive ball. She wasn't even twitching anymore.
Rowan dragged the tuna across the boundary. The moment he entered the light, the weight of the water decreased. He dropped the fish, its dead weight pinning it to the floor.
Rowan drifted downward, his strength finally hitting zero. He watched the dark, black-looking blood leak from the tuna's torn gills, coiling like smoke around Celeste's face.
"Celeste," he called out through the bond, his voice a jagged rasp. He reached out, his shredded knuckles stinging as they entered the light. He brushed a lock of white hair away from her eyes. Her skin was the color of a corpse, and her gills were barely moving.
"I've got it for you. Wake up."
He used his claws to tear into the tuna's side, ripping through the tough, armored scales to get to the dense, cold muscle underneath. He didn't have the strength to be gentle. He peeled back a strip of meat and held it to her mouth, the scent of fresh blood filling the small space between them.
"Please, Celeste. Don't make me have done this for nothing."
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