The salty seawater choked her throat, and Su An'an's eyes flew open.
Sunlight pierced the shallow surface of the water, casting shifting patches of light on the coral reef below.
She instinctively kicked her legs to swim upward, but a tearing pain shot through them.
Her once slender legs were now a single fishtail shimmering with a faint pink luster. In the sunlight, its scales refracted a pearlescent halo.
The fin at its end, however, had an eerie transparency, as if it might dissipate at any moment.
"What's going on?"
She pressed her throbbing temples as fragmented images flashed through her mind.
Flickering torches in a dark cave, a man's sturdy back, a strange stone sculpture that suddenly came to life...
"Watch out!"
In her memory, the blurry figure of a man shoved her aside, and a black mist spewing from the sculpture instantly engulfed him.
"Ah!"
Su An'an curled up, her head splitting with pain. When she opened her eyes again, even those fleeting images were gone.
