No one told her there were black holes in the ocean.
If they had, Maya Akari wouldn't have dusted off a scuba license she'd earned five years ago during a post-breakup spiral. But here she was, twenty meters beneath the surface off Okinawa, wrapped in neoprene and bad decisions.
Her fins ticked out a steady rhythm. Above her, the surface shimmered like a warped postcard.
She just wanted to see something magical. A sea turtle. A manta ray. Maybe the Grim Reaper. Either way, she'd have a story.
Her rental wetsuit pinched like it held a grudge. The mouthpiece tasted like disinfectant and regret. She checked her gauge: enough air. She looked around. Nothing but endless blue and whatever particles the ocean collected when no one was watching.
She hadn't told anyone she was diving. Not her boss. Not an ex. Not a friend. She didn't really have those anymore.
Unless you counted the barista who drew smiley faces on her cup, which felt like a stretch. Her apartment plant had died last month after she overwatered it three times in one day. That, she figured, proved she was trying. The plant disagreed.
Then the water grabbed her ankle.
Not metaphorically. Not a current.
The ocean yanked her down like an aggressive pop-up ad. Full screen. No X button.
Her goggles ripped off. Her fins spun away. Her brain offered one final coherent thought:
OH COOL, THIS IS HOW I DIE.
The blue turned black. The pressure folded in on itself.
And then—light.
Not water. Not air. Just light.
She was falling sideways through glowing windows—panes of symbols and looping diagrams spinning like an eldritch spreadsheet gone rogue. Glyphs shuffled. Diagrams reconfigured. Something felt like it was choosing.
A box blinked up in front of her face. She tried to swat it away. Her hand passed through, and the box politely scooted left.
"Great," she muttered. "I'm being A/B tested by God."
The windows tilted. Symbols stuttered. Something pulled.
Maya landed hard.
Stone beneath her. Incense in the air—thick and sweet, the kind that smelled like temples full of secrets. Her oxygen tank clanged against the floor. Her mask slapped her collarbone.
Shrieks erupted around her.
"It has fins!"
"And a black steel shell!"
"The prophecy said nothing about breathing tubes!"
She rolled onto her back. Eleven robed figures ringed her, wide-eyed and sweaty, like cosplayers realizing their ritual handbook wasn't satire. Their hoods drooped. One held a staff. One clutched a tiny bell.
"You summoned me mid-dive?" Maya croaked.
The oldest jabbed his staff at her. "Stay back, monster! We meant to summon the Hero of Light!"
Another flipped frantically through a thick book. "There's no mention of a sea beast in the Codex! What if it's from the Deep Layer? The Deep Layer is explicitly discouraged!"
Maya sat up. Her wetsuit clung. Her oxygen tank dug into her back like a bad idea. "I'm not a sea beast. I'm an app designer. I fix broken interfaces and cry at bad form fields."
They gasped like she'd spoken a demon's true name.
She'd seen enough isekai anime to recognize the setup: magic circle, robed weirdos, dramatic yelling. Either she'd been summoned to another world, or she was dreaming something she couldn't wait to tell someone about—if she had someone to tell. No friends. No family. Not even a cat. Just a notes app full of half-finished UI critiques and one very dead plant.
"Quick!" barked Grandpa Beard. "Contain it before it escapes!"
Robe Three and Robe Seven slammed their palms to the floor. Lines of light sprang up, building bars around Maya a span at a time. The bars hummed—a musical saw noise that made her teeth ache. For a moment, it looked impressive.
Then the top corner flickered. One side of the cage dissolved into fading sparks.
The cultists froze.
"Why won't it hold?" someone whispered.
Maya squinted at the geometry. Even without knowing what half the symbols meant, the mistake was obvious—the way a misaligned submit button screams forever. One line hovered near a diamond-shaped rune, not touching. Not connecting. Like an awkward elbow at a buffet.
"Um," she said, pointing. "Wasn't that line supposed to connect to the little diamond? It's just… floating."
Robe Three recoiled like she'd thrown a snake. "It identifies the Relay-Point! It names the Runic Forms by sight!"
"Sure," Maya said. "Let's go with that."
She reached out. Her fingertip brushed the gap. The rune flared. A surge of light locked the rogue line into place. The bars snapped solid. Something hummed, pleased.
Heat needled up her fingers and into her forearm—like an arcane version of carpal tunnel. Her vision freckled. The floor did a tasteful wobble. And she had the sudden, idiotic certainty she could taste the light.
It tasted like coin-metal and old stone.
Half the cultists screamed.
"It completed the binding by touch!"
"It has rewritten the sacred geometry!"
"The circle is devouring our souls!"
"No—it's just really tight in here!"
The cage pulled harder. The nearest robed figures slid across the floor and slammed into the bars like the world's worst group hug.
"Okay," Maya winced. "Yeah. That one's on me. I may have over-connected it."
"It has rewritten the sacred bindings!"
"We're trapped in here with it!"
"No—it is trapped in here with us!"
Maya tapped the bars. They hissed. She drew her hand back.
"Maybe we roll back to your original version? You had a gap. It was charming. Very artisanal. We could reopen that, let in some airflow, and—"
"She speaks Old Engineer," someone whispered.
"High Adept," said codex-boy, voice climbing. "Protocol requires we ring the House Gong to summon an Inquisitor."
"Absolutely not," said the High Adept.
"But Protocol—"
"Not until we decide what story the Inquisitor should hear. There will be questions about why our finest binding now imprisons our own brethren."
The trapped cultists offered several helpful suggestions, most of which centered on "because you are incompetent," and one of which was simply, "ow."
Maya tried to shift her tank into a less spine-hostile angle and instead clanked the valve against the floor. The sound echoed like a blacksmith dropping a hammer in a holy church.
The cultists flinched as one.
"See how it bears its steel lung! A device of the Deep Layer!"
"It's called an oxygen tank," Maya said. "I used it to breathe. In the ocean."
"So you admit it is your lungs," said the bell-ringer, as though it were checkmate.
"Fair."
She raised her hands. "Look. I'm not anything. I'm a person who got swept up by a rude whirlpool and fell through your corporate onboarding process. I don't know your runes. I just saw the gap. It was bothering me."
"You see the circuits of power. You have the sight."
"I have eyeballs."
"Silence," said the High Adept. He lowered his staff. "Creature, if you mean us no harm, undo what you did. Free my brothers."
Maya squinted at the runes. She didn't know what they meant. But she could see the flow—the way lines wanted to meet. Like a bad UI layout asking for help.
She stood, swayed, and reached for the corner. Heat bit her palm. Her vision freckled. The rune resisted, then gave with a damp pop. The glow sagged. The pull eased. The trapped cultists slumped like a choir losing power.
Maya's knees considered quitting. She negotiated them into a tactical crouch.
"We will move it to the Red Study," said the High Adept. "Chains, sigils. Gently. No one is to touch its shell or breathing tube."
"Because it might explode?" asked the bell-ringer.
"Because it is rude," the High Adept said, surprised to find he meant it.
Maya raised a hand. "Counter-proposal: a towel and some electrolytes."
They stared like she'd asked for a dragon.
"We have water," offered codex-boy. He pointed at a cracked jug that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since kings compared beards. "And a cloth."
"Sold."
Two cultists approached with the solemnity of people carrying a sleeping bomb. They wrapped a scratchy cloth around her shoulders. It smelled faintly of thyme and chalk. She did not cry into it, which she considered incredible restraint.
The water tasted like the air had been stored in it for a century. She drank anyway. Her pulse slowed from its frantic drum solo.
"You're not going to kill me?" she asked.
The High Adept looked at her with ruler-drawn caution. "If you are what you say, you deserve food and a bed. If not, the Inquisitor can confirm it."
"Comforting."
Codex-boy stepped forward. "How did you see where to connect the line?"
Maya hesitated. "I see patterns. Lines that want to meet. Loops that cancel each other. The rest is guesswork and regret."
He brightened. "You speak as a scribe."
"I speak as someone who's argued with a dropdown menu."
Blank stares. Fair.
They prepared to escort her. The cage dimmed. The bars softened. Maya stood, grateful for the scratchy cloth. Two cultists guided her to the edge of the circle. As she stepped past the boundary, the rune-hum cut out like static going silent.
From their perspective, she'd rewritten their strongest binding and trapped them inside it.
From hers, she'd debugged her way into being the scariest monster in the room.
Which, honestly, wasn't the worst way to make an entrance.