After a long night, Ira kicks off her soaked shoes in the doorway and colpses onto her beat-up mattress. Another shift of deliveries, completed.

  And for what?

  She lies there for a while, staring up at the ceiling fan as it turns in slow, uneven circles. Eventually, she sinks into a restless sleep.

  The sleep is long, dreamless. When she wakes, her eyes fix on the same peeling spot on the wall. Her thoughts go dark, fast.

  Is this it? Is this all life really is?

  She knows this state well. She’s been here before. Countless times. Constantly, even. She’s sat in support groups, rooms filled with mismatched chairs and too-bright lights, listening to other creatures talk about this... condition. That’s what they called it. Just a condition. Not real. Just her brain distorting things. Morphing reality into something sad.

  But how could it not be real when it feels like this?

  Every time it returns, it drags her under like it never left. Like it owns her. Gives her amnesia — makes her forget she was ever anything else.It convinces her that this — this heaviness, this stillness — is all there ever was, and all there ever will be. But she’s never gotten used to it. Not really. She refuses to let it be her normal.

  Determined, she wills herself to get up and go outside, even as her brain screams at her to stay put. That it’s pointless. That nothing will change.

  But she’d made a promise — one she still clings to. Seven years ago, before her mother died, she swore she’d fight the thoughts. That she’d never try what she’d attempted that night again.

  The memory moves across her mind, wet and heavy like the rain. Waking up in the hospital after trying to hack through her veins — just to end the monotony of it all. Her wrists, wrapped in comically thick gauze. Her mother sitting at her bedside, eyes red, face tired.

  She and her mom had never been close. They were two people who could not have been more different. Her mother had grown her inside her. Had birthed her. She’d been born from her blood. And that meant something. To her, at least.

  She’d made a promise.

  Ira holds her dark, cwed hand up to the spinning light of the ceiling fan.

  Her mother’s ring.

  It’s the one thing she has left to remember her by — a deep ocean hued sapphire set into the middle of a silver band, with delicate spindles curling out from the center. Sometimes, Ira swears they move.

  She never takes it off.

  She gazes down at her hand, eyes locking onto the ring. The silver strands begin to dance. The sapphire swims as tears form in her eyes.

  Time to get outside.

  Beyond that, it’s her day off. Time to get to the ocean.

  She pulls on her still-damp coat — chilled and clinging to her skin uncomfortably — and steps out into the rain, unlocking her scooter with stiff fingers that barely notice the cold.

  The whole city slouches toward the sea. Cracked roads and moss-eaten alleys all funneling downward into the open jaw of the coastline, like everything is trying to return into the deep — the ocean waiting patiently to swallow the city whole.

  Good. I hope it does, she thinks, smugly.

  She races downhill, the wind screaming in her ears, the scent of brine and rotting kelp hitting her nose like a sp. She exhales — not quite relief, but close.

  Behind her, a massive jungle looms — lush, ancient, pulsing with magic. It hums at the edge of her senses like a memory she can’t quite name.

  Ira leans low over her scooter, urging it faster. Away from the forest. Toward the water.

  Rain pelts her face, soaking her hair, her sleeves, her bones. She doesn’t care.

  Here, now — she’s free. Too fast for the trap of her mind to close around her.

  Her stringy hair streams behind her, whipping in the wind, exposing the sharp, pointed ears she tries to pretend aren’t there. Even in Noctreign — a city of hybrids, misfits, and monsters — Ira’s bloodline is a question mark. Her mother, entirely human, had looked at her newborn daughter with fear in her eyes from the start.

  The other kids used to call her Kludde. Said she must have been born of one. Only half-joking, Ira had always felt. But she’d never believed it. The only simirities were the ears — and the way her eyes sometimes glinted red for no reason at all.

  And of course, she’d always had an eerie affinity for water.

  But a Kludde? Those were the stuff of myths.

  Her train of thought is interrupted as her scooter makes contact with the damp, bumpy sand covering the beach. So lost in thought, she’s already reached her destination.

  No one else comes out here when it rains. Most creatures in Noctreign fear the sea, call it cursed, say it swallows things that aren’t meant to be found. Say it whispers your name when no one’s listening.

  Ira’s never heard it whisper.

  But she wouldn’t mind if it did.

  More water for her. More space to disappear.

  She drops the handlebars and begins stripping off her wet clothes. She removes her shoes st, carefully tucking her socks inside them, then sprints to the shoreline and dives in.

  Whatever’s broken inside her, it disappears in the sea.

  Her cwed hands slice through the current, and her oversized feet churn the water like fins. On nd she moves like she’s too much, feels like she’s too much.

  In water, she’s precision.

  She swims into the bck, icy depths, eyes wide open. The cold takes her breath away — and with it, everything else.

  Kelp tendrils drift around her like fingers. Bioluminescent pnkton swirl in her wake, flickering like stars. The deeper she goes, the more the light bends and breaks, until the world becomes a cathedral of motion and silence.

  Once, she’d sworn she’d seen a mermaid down here — at least, something like one — with translucent skin and eyes too ancient to belong to a human. But that had been a while ago.

  Usually, it’s just weed sprites. Tiny, cursed things with leaf-thin wings and teeth like sewing needles. They’re known for ruining lives — causing madness, theft, heartbreak, long after their victims re-surface.

  But when Ira swims by, they scatter.

  Like they know something about her she doesn’t.

  Good. Let them be afraid.

  As time passes, and she enjoyed the thoughtlessness of the water, she notices something pale flickering below, deep on the ocean floor.

  She pauses, floating in the deep sea. Watching.

  A small, ghost-white creature hovers just above the ground — round and trembling, like a blown-gss blowfish. Its body glows faintly, and its huge eyes blink slowly. It looks young. Alone. Frightened.

  Where’s your mother? Ira thinks to herself.

  She floats toward it cautiously, her dark hair blooming around her like seaweed. The creature doesn’t flee.

  Instead, it watches her. Intently. As if beckoning.

  It burrows into the sand suddenly — only partway — and resurfaces again. It nods to her. A soft flicker of movement. Like an invitation.

  She hovers there, holding her breath, long limbs anchoring her in the soft undercurrent.

  Again, the fish digs. Pauses. Looks at her.

  Then digs again.

  A tunnel begins to form in the sand. Small, narrow, only just wide enough for it to slip inside. But as Ira watches, the creature begins to swim in tight, fast circles around the entrance — stirring the silt, churning the water.

  The tunnel grows.

  And grows.

  Wider.

  Deeper.

  Until—

  She gasps, choking on saltwater, and kicks to the surface in a panic. She breaks through with a violent breath, water streaming down her face.

  A tunnel.

  It had opened a tunnel.

  A tunnel that had exploded into a captivating red light.

  One that seemed to call to her by name.

  A tunnel rge enough for her to fit through.

  She floats there, stunned, rain hammering her skin.

  Where does it lead?

  Should I go?

  Of course not - even I can’t breathe down there.

  But as the thoughts fly through her mind, she knows she’s already made the decision.

  Maybe I’ll drown, she thinks. Maybe it will finally be the end. At the very least, I’ll feel something.

  But there’s something else at py. She can feel it. A pull — low and ancient and aching in her belly, like a tether that’s been waiting for her to notice it.

  The truth is, she can’t keep living like this. Day after day of damp apartments and meaningless deliveries and hollow smiles. Something has to break.

  Whether it’s death or… whatever this is, she’d rather that than one more day of fruitless monotony.

  So she fills her lungs with one st breath.

  And she dives.