The air grew damp.
Not just cool, not just stale—damp. The kind of moisture that clings to the lungs and weighs on the skin, as if I had descended into a cavern beneath the earth. Yet I hadn't moved.
The Archive itself was changing.
The lantern buzzed, struggling against the heavy dark, and with each flicker the shadows rippled like water. Pages on the floor sagged, curling as though soaked. And beneath it all, steady and patient, came the sound again:
drip … drip … drip.
File IV: The Pale Diver
The heading sprawled across the page in a hand more jagged than ink should allow.
In every sea, in every depth where light does not reach, it waits.Some call it the Diver.Others, the Last Sailor.It wears no face, yet the drowned recognize it.
Do not follow its light.
A sketch followed, blurred as though the artist's hand shook while drawing. A figure in a deep-sea diving suit—bulky, archaic, with leaden boots and a round glass helm. But where the faceplate should have shown reflection or shadow, there was nothing but an abyssal blackness.
Beneath, words scrawled in a rush:
Its lamp glows where no lamp should.If you swim toward it, you will never return.The Diver does not search for the drowned.The Diver makes them.
The Flooding Stacks
The page bled. Not metaphorically—the ink actually bled across the parchment, spreading like ink dropped in water.
The ground beneath me squelched.
I staggered back as water seeped up between the tiles, trickling fast into streams, streams into pools. The books drank deep, their covers swelling, spines splitting with wet cracks.
The lantern hissed as droplets spattered its flame.
And then I smelled it.
Salt.
The air reeked of brine, heavy and metallic. It filled my mouth, stung my eyes. My breath fogged like mist rolling off the sea.
Between the shelves, I heard a groan. The creak of wood under strain. A mast? A hull? No—impossible.
Yet the Archive was becoming ocean.
The Light Below
I stepped back as water climbed my boots. Knee-deep. Waist-deep. Books floated past like lifeless fish.
The shelves stretched taller, impossibly tall, their tops vanishing into a drowned sky.
And then, beneath the surface, I saw it.
A glow. Faint, sickly green, swaying as though carried in the deep.
The Diver's lamp.
It moved slowly, steadily, cutting through the murk. With each pulse of light, I glimpsed its form below: the rounded helm, the heavy boots dragging across the unseen floor.
Yet no bubbles rose from its mask. No sound but the eternal drip.
And though it never looked up, I knew it saw me.
The voice filled my head like pressure at depth.
Follow.
The Drowning Vision
The water surged higher, dragging me off my feet. I thrashed, clutching the lantern tight as the tide pulled me under.
Darkness swallowed me whole.
The Diver's light grew brighter, guiding me downward. I couldn't resist. My lungs burned, yet I breathed—somehow—breathing water that felt like knives.
I sank into a drowned city.
Stone spires jutted from the abyss, carved with symbols too vast to read. Bridges stretched across black chasms, broken and unfinished.
And among the ruins floated corpses. Sailors in ragged coats, fishermen with nets tangled in their bones, entire crews locked forever in the moment of drowning. Their eyes bulged, mouths gaped, hands reached upward.
Every single one turned as I drifted past.
Not to beg for help.
But to watch.
The Diver passed between them like a priest among worshippers. Its lamp swung in slow arcs, and with each sway, another corpse stirred—jerked upright, twitching, then began to walk across the seafloor in stiff unison.
Not alive. Not dead. Recruited.
The Diver's Face
It turned toward me.
The lamp flared.
And for the first time, I saw inside its helm.
No face. No skull. No bone.
Just the endless black of an open trench. A void that stretched deeper than the sea itself.
And in that void, something vast moved. Fins the size of ships. Eyes larger than cities. A leviathan curled in eternal sleep—or perhaps eternal hunger.
The Diver was no creature. No sailor. No ghost.
It was a window.
A mask worn by something watching from below.
The Warning
The voice thundered through me, shaking marrow and soul alike.
There are depths deeper than the sea. You carry the Archive downward. You carry it toward Us.
The drowned corpses surrounded me now, pressing closer, cold hands dragging at my arms and legs. Their mouths opened, expelling only saltwater, yet their eyes begged silently: Join us. Sink. Become part of the record.
The Diver reached for me. One gloved hand extended, impossibly slow, impossibly certain.
I screamed—though no sound escaped.
And then—
The lantern blazed.
Its flame erupted, searing the water to steam, and the world cracked apart.
Surface
I lay gasping on the Archive floor.
Dry. No water. No drowned city. No corpses. Only endless shelves.
But the salt lingered on my tongue. The dripping still echoed faintly in the distance.
And the book before me had turned another page.
The heading glared up like a wound.
File V: The Glass Mother.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement—small, pale, hollow-eyed. The Children had returned.
But now, they weren't watching me.
They were pointing toward the new file.
And smiling.