Entry V

I woke to shouting.

Not the usual calls of men at work, but something sharper, ragged and breaking. Feet pounded across the deck above me, voices overlapping, each one louder than the last.

“Wake him, wake—!”

“There’s something—”

The ship lurched before the words could settle.

I was thrown from my bunk, the air knocked from my chest as the walls groaned around me. Another impact followed, deeper this time, not against the wood but through it, as though something had struck from beneath.

The captain’s voice cut through it all, clear and commanding.

“Hold fast! To your stations, MOVE!”

I scrambled to my feet, but the floor shifted again, sending me hard against the frame of the doorway. The ship was no longer steady, it rocked in violent, uneven pulls, as if caught in something far stronger than the tide.

Another impact.

The sound of splintering wood tore through the hull.

Men were shouting now, no order to it, no rhythm. Panic had taken hold. I pushed my way toward the deck, but the stairwell buckled beneath me, the lantern light swinging wildly as darkness bled in between each flash.

Then came the sound.

Not a crash. Not a wave.

Something else.

A low, dragging force against the ship’s body, followed by a sudden, violent tear. The vessel shuddered as if it had been seized from below.

We were no longer moving forward.

We were being pulled.

I reached the deck just as the water broke through.

It came fast, too fast, rushing across the boards, carrying men with it. The mast groaned overhead, ropes snapping loose as the ship tilted at an impossible angle. I caught a glimpse of the captain, still shouting, still fighting to command something that no longer listened.

“Abandon—!”

The rest was swallowed.

Another impact. Stronger. Final.

The world gave way.

Cold.

That is what I remember most.

Not the fall. Not the sound.

Just the cold.

It took me all at once as the ship broke apart beneath us. The sea rushed in, or perhaps we fell into it, I cannot tell which. My body was pulled down with the wreck, dragged into the dark as the surface vanished above me.

There was no air. No sound. Only the crushing weight pressing in from all sides.

Shapes moved around me.

Bodies.

They drifted past in silence, limbs loose, faces turned to nothing. One brushed against me as it sank, its eyes open but empty. I tried to push away, but my arms no longer answered as they should.

The ship followed.

Broken pieces of it spiraled downward, the hull split and scattered, swallowed whole by the deep. And among it, I saw him, the captain, falling without struggle. His form slow and still, as though he had already accepted where we were going.

I do not remember breathing.

I do not remember fighting.

Only the sinking.

Deeper.

Slower.

Until even the light above was gone.

For a moment, I thought I heard something moving in the dark around us.

Not the wreck.

Not the dead.

Something else.

Then even that faded.

And I could no longer tell if I was dying…

or if I already had.