The gulls always came before the fishermen. Greta Galdner leaned against the rail of the pier, her notebook pressed to her chest, and watched the birds swirl like scraps of paper in the Baltic breeze. Lübeck's harbor was quiet this early in the morning—just the creak of ropes and the groan of hulls shifting in their berths. It was the only time of day she truly felt alone.
Except she wasn't.
"Früh aufgestanden, Greta," said a voice in her head, thick and watery, rolling like bubbles in the surf.
Greta sighed, brushing her copper hair back beneath her cap. You're supposed to be sleeping, Tilo.
The reply was a ripple of amusement, followed by a playful splash below the pier. From the shadows, a bright yellow octopus lifted one tentacle above the waves, curling it into a crude salute before sinking back down.
"You'll get us caught," Greta muttered aloud in German, glancing around to make sure no one else was nearby. The dockhands wouldn't arrive for another hour, but still—her Tintenwächter had no sense of subtlety.
Another presence stirred in her mind, deeper and slower. Caught or not, the tide is uneasy. We feel something moving in the black water.
That voice belonged to Olrick, the largest of the guardians, a deep green brute whose arms could crack steel. His warnings always left a cold pit in Greta's stomach.
She straightened, hugging her notebook tighter. "What kind of something?"
No answer came. Only the distant thrum of a ship's engine across the water, and the faint vibration in her skull that meant her companions were listening but choosing to remain silent. That, more than anything, unsettled her.
Greta turned away from the sea, heading back toward the maritime institute where she worked cataloging barnacles and algae samples. To everyone else, she was just a shy twenty-three-year-old with thick glasses and a tendency to talk too much about plankton.
But beneath the surface of the harbor, seven pairs of alien eyes followed her every step.
---
Inside the institute, the fluorescent lights hummed. Greta tied her hair back, slipped on her lab coat, and settled into her desk crowded with sample jars. She tried to lose herself in the comfort of routine: labeling, recording, sketching cross-sections of mollusks. Yet the voices wouldn't leave her alone.
The tide is restless. Something is hunting. Something old.
She pressed her pen harder against the paper until it nearly tore. "You're just being dramatic," she whispered.
That was when the glass jars rattled.
The vibration was low at first, like the rumble of distant thunder, but soon the entire institute trembled. A technician shouted from another room. Greta leapt to her feet just as the overhead lights flickered, one bursting with a sharp pop.
From the direction of the harbor came a sound no one in Lübeck had ever heard before: a long, hollow bellow, deep enough to shake the water in its basins.
Greta's Guardians screamed into her mind all at once, a chaotic flood of warnings.
It has found us.
And suddenly, Greta knew this morning would be the last quiet one she'd ever have.