They come for me at dawn.

  Dawn because I can feel it. The shift in the air, the change in pressure, my ribs responding to the world outside these walls. The marks they carved into Daniel are calling to the deep. And what sleeps there is waking up.

  Two guards. And the woman in pale blue. Celeste, she says her name is.

  Younger than I expected. Pretty, in a forgettable way. The kind of woman you'd pass on the street without a second glance. Who could do terrible things and never be suspected.

  "It's time." Calm voice. Professional.

  Daniel reaches for my hand as they lead me away. His grip is weak. Fever, maybe. Or despair. But his eyes are fierce.

  "Fight," he whispers again. "Don't let them break you."

  One squeeze of his hand. Then letting go.

  They lead me to a different room. Smaller, cleaner. A wooden table in the center, worn smooth by use. Buckets of water against the wall. A narrow window that looks out over gray sea and grayer sky.

  The moment my eyes find the ocean, my ribs pulse. Recognition. The sea calling to what's inside me, and it's answering.

  "Sit," Celeste says. "On the table."

  The wood is cold through my thin nightgown. The grain of it against my legs, polished by generations of bodies. How many children have sat here before me? Felt the wood, seen the window, heard that calm voice telling them to be still?

  Tools laid out on a cloth: knives of different sizes, bowls, cloths stained with things I don't want to identify. Her movements are practiced. Efficient. She's done this before. Many times.

  "I'm going to prepare you for the ritual," she murmurs. "The Deep One requires offerings to be properly consecrated. The marks are a language. A message. They tell it that you've been prepared. That you've been given freely."

  "I wasn't given freely. I was sold."

  "The distinction is theological." Voice flat. Uninterested. "The preparation is what matters."

  "How many have you done this to?"

  A pause.

  "Thirty-seven," she says. And continues laying out her tools.

  "And none of them survived."

  "Survival isn't the goal. Connection is. When the Deep One sees."

  "But they all died."

  "Seeing is enough." She selects a knife. Thin, sharp, almost delicate. The blade catches the light from the window. "Whether the offering survives is... incidental."

  Incidental. Thirty-seven children, and their lives are incidental.

  "This will hurt." A pause. "Try to stay still. The lines need to be precise."

  No response. Just gripping the edges of the table and staring at the ceiling. Counting cracks in the stone. Cataloging water stains. Anything but thinking about what's about to happen.

  First cut is almost gentle.

  A line of fire inside my torso, precise and controlled. A gasp, can't help it, but no scream. Screaming is what they want. What Marsh hoped for when he talked about fire and resistance.

  Won't give them that. Not yet.

  Celeste works in silence. Hands steady, focus absolute. Symbols carved into flesh. The same twisting shapes from the walls. Up close, they're forming: spirals that have no center, angles that don't quite connect, geometries that make my eyes water even as they're being cut into my skin.

  Counting the cuts. All I can do. My mother taught me to count when I was afraid. Thunderstorms. The dark. "Count to ten," she'd say. "By the time you finish, the fear will be smaller."

  She was wrong about that. But the counting helps anyway. Gives my mind a handhold while my body is being unmade.

  One beneath my left ribs. The blade slides through skin like it's nothing, parting flesh with neat precision. Blood wells up immediately, hot, bright red against my pale skin. Every millimeter of the incision felt. Pain sharp and clean. Clinical.

  Two. Three. A swirling pattern that burns as it forms. Each line connects to the next, creating what feels almost like language. Words, written in blood and pain.

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  Four. Five. Six. A different pattern on my right side, branching like coral or the roots of a terrible tree. Pain building now. A wrongness spreading through my body. My flesh knows these symbols don't belong. Trying to reject them even as they're carved in.

  Seven. Eight. Nine. Lower now, following the curve of bone. Celeste's hands wet with blood, but her grip doesn't slip. Eyes focused. Distant. She doesn't see me as human anymore. Just material.

  Counting girl comes to mind. Daniel. Sarah with her fever. I wonder if they sat on this table. Felt the blade. The silence, broken only by the sound of metal parting flesh.

  Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Blood runs down my sides, pools on the wooden table beneath me. Cooling on my skin. Blood becoming foreign. The puddle spreads slowly, fills the grain of the wood, follows channels worn by decades of other children's blood.

  Thirteen—

  Final cut is the deepest. It runs from just below my sternum down toward my navel, a vertical line that connects all the other symbols into a single unified design. The blade scrapes against bone. The vibration travels through my skeleton, a sound more than a sensation. And I bite through my lip to keep from screaming.

  Blood fills my mouth. Iron and salt, mixing with the tears I can't stop from falling. Pain constant now. Enormous.

  But it won't break me.

  Instead, focusing on cataloging. Counting. Memorizing Celeste's face. The small scar above her left eyebrow. The way her lips press together when she concentrates. The particular shade of pale blue she wears, like a mockery of innocence.

  "When this is over," I say quietly, voice rough with suppressed screaming, "when I survive—because I will survive—I'm going to find you. And I'm going to make you understand what this feels like."

  She doesn't waver.

  "Many have said similar things." She wipes the blade on a cloth, sets it aside with the others. "They all died anyway."

  "I won't."

  "We'll see."

  Examining her work, tilting her head, studying the symbols. An artist with a painting. Eyes tracing each line, checking angles. Precision matters. Canvas to her. Nothing more.

  "The cutting is complete." Her voice drops. "Now comes the ink."

  Another woman enters.

  Older than Celeste, dressed in the same gray robes as the cultists from the procession. Hands stained black. Permanently. The color worked deep into the creases of her palms and the beds of her nails. She's been doing this for decades.

  A bowl in her hands. Black ceramic, old, covered in those same twisting symbols that now adorn my flesh. Inside the bowl, something moves.

  Black. Darker than night. The cellar. The inside of my own eyelids. It doesn't reflect light—swallows it. Staring at it is like peering into a hole in reality. A gap where existence should be but isn't.

  It moves. Ripples. Not her steps. From within. Alive, aware, responding to my presence. It can feel me looking at it.

  Looking back.

  "Ink from the deep places," Celeste explains, voice hushed. "Collected by divers who descend to depths no human should survive. Most of them go mad in the gathering. The ones who return are... changed. Refined by priests who rarely survive the year. The substance is volatile. Hungry."

  "Hungry?"

  "It wants to connect." She takes the bowl from the older woman, sets it on a table beside me. Up close, the ink is clearer, and not quite black after all. Every color at once, shifting, blending, like light filtered through deep water. An aurora seen through dark glass. Inverse. Impossible.

  "When it's rubbed into the marks," Celeste continues, "it becomes permanent. The door between you and the Deep One stays open. Always."

  Fingers dip into the black substance.

  The ink clings to her skin. Crawls up toward her wrist before stopping, reluctant to leave the bowl. Moving. Actually moving. Against the pull of gravity. Not a liquid. Alive.

  Her face goes pale. Even she, after all these years, looks unsettled by what she's holding. Hands trembling slightly as the ink writhes against her skin.

  "This will hurt more than the cutting."

  She touches the first symbol.

  Pain, just pain, nothing but pain.

  The black ink sinks into the wound, but it doesn't stay there. Spreading. Moving. Worming beneath my skin. Cold and hot at once. Both alive and dead.

  Colonizing me.

  I scream. Can't help it. The sensation is too enormous, too alien, completely outside anything human nerves were designed to feel. Ice water in veins. Then pressure from inside my own skull, vast, cold, pushing to find a way in.

  Ink moves through the marks, following the paths she carved. Connecting them. Converting the thirteen individual symbols into a single unified network of burning darkness beneath my flesh.

  And then—

  Attention.

  Far away, it's impossibly far. In depths where sunlight has never reached and pressure would crush a ship like paper. But it's aware of me now. The ink has created a connection. A thread stretching from my carved flesh into the darkness of the ocean.

  Listening now.

  Beginning to notice.

  Whatever has been sleeping beneath the ocean floor, existed since before there were humans to fear the dark, is stirring. Shifting one tiny fraction of its attention toward the thread that now connects us.

  The ritual scars burn. Not with my heartbeat. With a different rhythm. Waves. The breathing of the sea.

  "Yes," she breathes. Her eyes are wide, wider than I've seen them, excitement breaking through her professional calm. "The marks are taking. The Deep One is responding."

  Shaking on the table, covered in blood and ink and sweat. The connection throbs in my chest like a second heart. The sea is inside me now. Or I'm inside it. The boundary between my flesh and the water has started to blur.

  Through the window, the ocean. Endless, stretching to the horizon. And somewhere beneath it, an ancient consciousness turning in its sleep.

  Dreaming of me?

  Trying to move. Can't. My body doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to the marks, the ink, the vast attention beginning to focus on this small room, this small building, this small island. A signal fire burning on a hilltop. Visible for miles. To things that shouldn't exist.

  Older woman begins cleaning blood from the blades with casual efficiency. She's humming a tune I almost recognize. A lullaby, maybe.

  It makes my stomach turn.

  "Rest now." Celeste's voice. Almost kind. Or what passes for kindness in this place. "Tomorrow, when the tide is high, we complete the ritual. Tonight, let the ink settle. Deepen."

  Blanket pulled over me. Tucked around my shoulders. Maternal gesture. Wrong in every way.

  "Try to sleep. You'll need your strength."

  Sleep won't come. Won't. Every time I close my eyes, the ink moves beneath my skin. The attention in the depths turns toward me, growing more focused with every hour.

  It's coming. The entity.

  It has been waiting for me since before I was born.

  And tomorrow, I'm going to meet it.

  "Perfect." Celeste, from the doorway. "You're ready for the ritual."