Chapter 1: The Salvager's Debt

Chapter 1: The Salvager's Debt

The funeral for Elias Mercer was a quiet, damp affair, much like the man himself had been in Alex’s limited memory. A handful of strangers, their faces weathered like driftwood, stood awkwardly under a slate-grey sky that wept a persistent, drizzling rain. They shared no stories, only tight-lipped nods and gazes that drifted towards the churning North Atlantic, visible just beyond the crumbling cemetery wall.

Alex stood apart from them, a ghost at his own grandfather’s burial. He wore a borrowed suit that hung loosely on his lean frame, the damp wool smelling of mothballs and neglect. He hadn't seen Elias in over a decade, not since his mother had finally declared the old man's coastal shack and brooding silences a toxic influence. She wasn't here today. A curt phone call was all she’d offered. "He's gone, Alex. Just sign the papers. Don't touch anything."

He barely remembered his grandfather. The man was a collection of fragmented images and sensory impressions: the scent of salt and rust, calloused hands that trembled slightly, and haunted eyes that never quite looked at him, but rather through him, as if searching for something over his shoulder. He knew Elias had been a marine salvage diver, a man who made his living pulling treasure and scrap from the crushing depths. His mother called it glorified grave-robbing.

The impersonal eulogy ended. The strangers dispersed, swallowed by the mist rolling in from the sea. Alex was left alone with the freshly turned earth. There was no inheritance to speak of, just a small, water-stained house he now owned by default, a place filled with the echoes of a man he never knew. He felt no grief, only a hollow sense of obligation fulfilled. He just wanted to go home, back to the comfortable numbness of his data-entry job and the solitary quiet of his life.

Two days later, the package arrived.

It was a small, unassuming box wrapped in brown paper, bound with yellowed string. There was no return address, only his name and address scrawled in a shaky, spidery hand. The postmark was from a forgotten fishing village on the coast, not far from where Elias had lived and died. A final piece of administrative junk, Alex assumed.

He cut the string with his keys and opened the box on his cluttered kitchen table. Inside, nestled on a bed of what looked like dried seaweed, lay a single object: a ring.

It was made of a dull, pitted brass, thick and crudely formed as if by an impatient craftsman. There were no gems, no intricate carvings, just an uneven band that seemed to absorb the dim light of the room. A strange desire, a flicker of uncharacteristic curiosity, cut through his usual apathy. This was the only thing his grandfather had ever personally sent him.

He picked it up.

A jolt of cold, sharp and profound, shot up his arm. It wasn't the simple coolness of metal; it was a deep, penetrating chill, like plunging his hand into a bucket of ice water dredged from the bottom of a winter sea. He almost dropped it. He stared at the ring lying in his palm, his breath fogging slightly in the air. The heating was on, but the corner of the kitchen where he stood suddenly felt like a cellar.

Paranoia, he told himself, a familiar refrain. He was just tired, stressed from the funeral. It was just a piece of metal.

Against his better judgment, he slid it onto the ring finger of his right hand. It glided on with a strange, frictionless ease, settling at the base of his finger as if it were made for him. The cold intensified, no longer a surface sensation but an internal one, seeping into his knuckle, his bones. He looked at his hand, at the crude band of brass against his pale skin. For a moment, he felt a dizzying sense of vertigo, the sounds of the room fading into a distant, rushing roar, like the sea heard through a shell.

He pulled it off just as quickly, the motion frantic. The ring clattered onto the table, the sound jarringly loud in the sudden silence. Alex stared at his finger. The skin where the ring had been was pale and deeply wrinkled, puckered and white as if he’d been submerged in a bath for hours. He touched the flesh. It felt waterlogged and numb.

A wave of revulsion washed over him. He shoved the ring back into its box, along with the brittle seaweed, and thrust it into the back of a junk drawer, burying it beneath old batteries and instruction manuals for appliances he no longer owned. Out of sight, out of mind. It was just some weird reaction, an allergy, a trick of the light. He would throw it out tomorrow.

That night, sleep did not come easy. When it finally did, it was a thick, suffocating blanket that pulled him down into darkness.

He wasn't in his bed. He was floating in a vast, lightless abyss. The pressure was immense, a crushing weight on his chest that made every breath a desperate, liquid gasp. There was no up or down, only an endless, silent void of absolute black. He was alone and utterly, primordially terrified. The silence was the worst part—a heavy, waiting silence that promised something was there with him in the dark.

He tried to scream, but only a stream of silent bubbles escaped his lips. He flailed, his limbs moving with the slow, dreamlike resistance of deep water. Panic clawed at his throat, cold and sharp.

And then he felt it.

Something brushed against his ankle.

It was cold. Colder than the abyss, colder than the ring. It was a slick, deliberate touch that was not the random drift of water. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drum in the crushing silence. He kicked wildly, trying to pull away, but his movements were useless.

The touch returned, stronger this time. Something impossibly strong, slender and cold, wrapped around his ankle. It wasn't a rope. It wasn't seaweed. It felt like fingers. Long, cold, unyielding fingers. It began to pull him down, deeper into the suffocating black.

Alex awoke with a violent gasp, sitting bolt upright in his bed, drenched in a cold sweat. His sheets were twisted around his legs. The room was dark, the only light a faint orange glow from the streetlight outside filtering through his blinds. His heart was still pounding, the phantom sensation of the grip on his ankle so real he had to reach down and touch it to be sure nothing was there.

Just a nightmare, he thought, his breath ragged. A reaction to the funeral. The ring.

He swung his legs out of bed, intending to get a glass of water, to wash the taste of terror and salt from his mouth. He planted his feet on the floorboards.

And he froze.

A sound from downstairs.

A soft, rhythmic sound that didn't belong. It wasn't the house settling or the wind rattling a window frame. It was a wet, slapping sound. The sound of bare, soaked feet walking slowly, deliberately, across his kitchen floor.

Drip. Slap. Drip. Slap.

The sound paused directly below his bedroom. Alex held his breath, straining his ears in the suffocating silence. He was alone in the house. He knew he was. But the certainty was draining away, replaced by the same cold, absolute dread he had felt in the watery abyss of his dream. The debt his grandfather had left him wasn't a house. It was something else. And it was here.