Mana whales—creatures the size of buildings, their translucent bodies glowing with slow pulses of blue and violet light—glided lazily through the water nearby. They moved in wide, graceful arcs, humming low and mournful, a sound that vibrated through my bones like a choir of depressed ghosts singing about regret and inevitability.
Above them, the sky darkened further as seabirds circled in frantic, screaming spirals. Gulls and stormwings cried warnings to one another, refusing to land, wings catching flashes of lightning as they wheeled through the air. A few brave—or stupid—ones perched briefly on the iceberg's upper ridges before immediately taking off again, as if realizing they'd made a terrible life choice.
And then I noticed the sharks.
