Beneath the Silent Beacon

Precursor: The Diving Suit[part of a grander story being written]

Part 1: Found in the Deep

The morning broke calm over the Gulf, with a flat sheet of silver water reflecting the pale sky. The Fernwind cut through the surface with practiced ease, its old diesel engine rumbling like a tired animal. On the bridge, Gina kept one hand on the wheel, her eyes narrowed behind polarized lenses as she guided the boat away from the man-made harbor and into the open sea.

Beside her, Lou scanned the water with binoculars. The years had carved lines into his face, but the spark he carried on every expedition still burned bright. After several minutes, he stiffened, lifting the binoculars a little higher.

“There,” he called over the engine, his voice roughened by the wind and salt. “The marker is about thirteen degrees south—five miles out.”

Below deck, Seth—tall, wiry, and already halfway through checking his gear—stopped to listen. He rapped the steel bench with his knuckles to wake Fin, who was slumped against the wall in a half-asleep sprawl.

“Up,” Seth said. “We’re almost on site.”

Fin blinked awake with a groan, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he reached for his wetsuit.

A week earlier, Gina and Pines had spent long hours monitoring their portable scanning rig. Pines, who juggled front-desk paperwork with marine biology coursework, was the one to detect the anomaly: a metallic mass far below safe free-diving limits, positioned almost exactly where an old job file indicated it might be.

The job had been sitting in a cabinet for sixteen years—older than some of their equipment. It was a request from a research institute that had since vanished from the world, having closed quietly and without explanation. Back then, Lou and his young wife, Carol, had tried to find the lost experimental diving suit, but their gear hadn’t been strong enough to reach that depth, and they turned back before pushing their luck too far.

It was the only job Lou had ever failed. With retirement drawing close, he had decided it was time to finish it—if only for his own peace of mind.

By the time they reached the marker, the wind had died, leaving the water eerily smooth. Seth and Fin stood at the edge of the deck, tanks strapped in place, regulators checked, and lines clipped. One final nod passed between them before they stepped backward into the ocean.

The world immediately muted—the surface shifting above them as they descended through the cold blue. Their lights cast narrow cones across drifting sediment and ancient ridges of stone. When Seth checked his depth gauge, they were already beyond where Lou and Carol had turned back all those years ago.

Five feet above the seafloor, they followed the old path from Lou’s notes. Their beams swept across a half-buried diving flag, its colors long since bleached to bone white. Fin paused to look at it before continuing.

The water grew darker and thicker, pressing in from all sides. The temperature dropped another degree.

The suit they sought had been a prototype—an armored, mechanically assisted exoshell designed to withstand crushing pressure. Bronze-plated, engine-backed, and absurdly heavy, it had been tested by Cain Grey. His final transmission was still stored in Lou’s old records, warped by age but unforgettable:

“Oh God!? What’s that—fuck, it’s burning! Help! Help! Ahh—eyes of fire—”

No one had ever explained what he had seen.

As they neared the coordinates Pines had isolated, a thin line of static crackled through Seth’s comms. He frowned and tapped the side of his mask.

“Fin, are you getting that?”

The static rose like a breath being drawn in, and then a layered voice—several voices blending—slid through their earpieces. Male and female tones merged in a way no human throat could produce.

“Those who invade the sea… heed my call. Enthralled by my siren song, let fire burn your soul, and the sea take your flesh. Carry out my will… the sea commands you.”

Both divers froze.

Seth whispered, “Uh… surface, did you catch that?”

Gina’s reply came through, brittle and forced-steady. “Yeah, Seth. It’s that foreign broadcast we keep picking up out here. Probably bouncing off a thermal layer. Stay on the line—you’re close.”

Fin exhaled shakily. “Could be interference. Right? Just… interference.”

But neither of them dared to move for several seconds.

Then the whispering cut off—cleanly, unnaturally.

Just ahead, their lights glinted off curved metal. Something massive lay half-buried in silt, barnacles clustered across its hull like a second skin. As they approached, the shape became unmistakable: the bronze experimental diving suit, larger than either of them had imagined, its joints fused by years underwater.

Seth’s voice steadied. “Gina, Lou… we’ve got visual. Hooking it now.”

Above, Lou nearly knocked over his chair in his rush to the winch controls. When Seth confirmed they were clear, Lou hit the switch. The pulley groaned, the boat listing as the ancient suit broke free from its grave below.

Seth and Fin began their ascent from the depths of the blue ocean, exhaling slowly and carefully, making sure every movement was measured. Their bodies rose toward the surface, while below them, silt drifted lazily back to the seafloor, settling over the space once occupied by their suits. It was as if something else had been there before. Something was now missing.

Day 0: Growth

Breathe.

Grow.

Consume.

Spread.

Mutate.

Repeat.

Cain Grey surfaced from dreamless darkness, gasping as the air scraped against his throat. The world around him was made of black stone and cold moisture, the air sharp enough to sting his lungs. Pushing himself upright, he felt the cave's silence pressing in around him, almost as if it were listening.

A thin spill of sunlight streamed through a winding passage ahead, pale and wavering. It painted shifting patterns across the walls, revealing ridges of rock that looked disturbingly organic in the half-light. Cain blinked until his vision steadied.

He then realized that he wasn’t lying on stone at all. Under his palms, he felt the chill of a slab of bright red—an altar of some kind, carved with runes so ancient that they seemed to have grown rather than been etched. Each sigil pulsed with a soft internal glow. Grotesque tendrils, the color of raw muscle, anchored the slab to the cave floor, with veins snaking outward like the root system of a sickly tree. They pulsed too, in the same slow rhythm, as if sharing one heartbeat.

He jerked away from it, suddenly sure that the thing was still alive.

Instinctively, his hands searched his back for balance, injuries—anything. What he found made his breath hitch: six raised shapes, fleshy and warm. Two bulged beneath each shoulder blade, two pressed beneath either side of his ribs, and deeper bumps throbbed along his lower flanks. They pulsed in sync with the altar behind him, as if echoing its heartbeat or answering it.

For a moment, nausea threatened to drop him to his knees.

He forced himself to check the rest of his body. His frame felt hollow, as if someone had scooped mass out of him; yet his skin was unmarked—no bruising, no sagging, and no scars from whatever change had hollowed him out.

He wore knee-length cotton pants dyed a shade of red that matched the altar a little too closely. A folded white shirt rested crookedly on his head, as if someone had draped it there without finishing the task. He pulled it on, if only to stop staring at the movement beneath his skin.

The cave air shifted, carrying the faint smell of salt.

Cain followed the narrow passage toward the light. The transition from shadow to sunlight hit him harder than expected. He squinted, blinking against the brightness as he stepped out onto the rocky rise of an island.

Below him stretched a scene that didn’t make sense.

A long, weather-beaten dock jutted out from a short lighthouse. The light tower was in good condition, aside from a few vines, but the lowest living area leaned slightly, its windows darkened with rot. A half-sunken boat listed in the water beside it, waves nudging its cracked hull as if trying to push it farther underwater. Beyond that, the sea sprawled in an impossible blue, calm enough to mirror the sky.

But on the horizon, something far less peaceful caught his eye.

What remained of a larger island—if it could still be called that—sat broken and scattered, torn apart into jagged fragments. Blackened rock, shattered cliffs, and a single plume of dust drifted lazily upward. The pattern of destruction didn’t look natural; it appeared as though something had detonated from within.

He stared for a long moment, trying to impose order on the chaos. None came.

Questions pressed at him, cold and relentless. Why this cave? Why the altar? Why the growths on his body? And where had he been before waking on that slab?

Memory flickered—brief and unfocused.

Water was closing over his helmet.

A red glow burned through glass.

Pressure crushed inward.

Eyes—too many and too bright.

Hands he couldn’t see gripped him as everything went black.

He staggered, steadying himself against a sun-warmed boulder as the images dissolved. His name was the only rope he had left to hang onto.

Cain Grey.

And somehow, he was alive.

For now.

Day 4: What Remains

Cain sat at the end of the weather-beaten dock, watching the sun slip toward the horizon. The wood beneath him creaked with every shift of the tide, swollen and soft from years of storms. His feet dangled in the cool water, tracing faint ripples as if he might disturb something lurking beneath.

Four days. Four days of wandering every corner of the island, searching for answers—or at least reassurance that he hadn’t gone mad. The place felt abandoned for years, yet oddly familiar, like an echo he couldn’t place.

He had scavenged enough to keep himself alive: canned peaches, preserved fish, and jars of pickled vegetables stacked behind collapsed shelves. Near the ruined back patio, he discovered a surprisingly intact freshwater pump. Its metal frame had rusted to a flaky orange, but when he worked the lever, cold water still gurgled out. A small miracle.

He set up camp in what remained of the lighthouse’s lowest floor, a once-cozy living space now crowded with overturned furniture and sand drifted in from cracked windows. It had clearly been a home—living room, dining area, kitchen, even a cramped office—all choked by debris and silence. The plumbing was long dead, but the pantry was stuffed with toilet paper, piled high as if someone had stocked up in a panic. That sight hit him hard.

He remembered shoving through a crowd during the plague seven years ago, reaching for a plastic-wrapped bundle of toilet rolls while tempers flared around him. He recalled the fluorescent lights, the chaos, and the smell of hand sanitizer. But he could not remember the name of the store, the street, or where he lived at that time. The memory felt misfiled and distant.

In the basement, he discovered something even stranger. A stone altar, eerily similar to the... thing he had awakened on—but stripped of flesh, runes, and pulsing veins. This one was cold and dead. Dust had collected in its carvings. On top of it sat a heavy, weather-worn metal lockbox.

He had spent the last two days trying to open it. First, he smashed it against the rocks, but it shrugged off the abuse with nothing more than dents. Next, he pried at the latch with a length of twisted metal scavenged from the dock—some instinct guiding his hands, though he had no memory of learning how.

Later, while walking along the strand with the lockbox tucked under one arm, he noticed something unnerving: the edges of the box didn’t quite look like metal. They appeared to be layers of bone, grown together over time. The six small holes on the bottom matched the six lumps on his own back perfectly. A cold prickling crawled over his skin.

He ran back to the basement, heart pounding. Standing before the altar, he hesitated only a second before setting the box atop the stone slab. Nothing happened. He sighed and turned away—of course nothing would happen. It was insane to think—

Then a soft click sounded behind him.

Cain spun around. The lockbox hovered an inch above the altar, lifted by tendril-like growths that hadn’t been there moments before. Six bony teeth rose from the altar’s surface and twisted into the holes at the bottom of the box, turning with a wet grinding motion.

The lid sprang open.

Cain stared, breath caught in his throat. It felt like mere seconds had passed, but his watch insisted several minutes had gone by. Time had slipped away from him.

“What… what did it do?” he whispered. “And what did it do to me?”

Inside the box lay three objects: a journal—its pages brittle and yellowed at the edges; a knife—fleshy and bone-lined, more organic than crafted; and a necklace—a charm shaped like a woman half-consumed by waves, with one exposed eye set with a ruby that gleamed like a single drop of blood.

He opened the journal first. Most of it was written in a language he shouldn’t have understood, yet the words flowed clearly in his mind. Only the last three pages were in English, written in newer ink.

January 3rd, 1957

Father was taken like all males in our family at sixty—the curse laid by our great-great-great-grandfather, that fool who ripped the Eye of the Sea Mother from her brow. He got wealth, yes, but dooms us. Doomed us to this island where her gaze always returns, hunting her stolen piece through our bloodline.

Cain swallowed hard.

January 26th, 1957

The first Red Night is near. The altar in the Mother Cave stirs. I prayed it would banish the intruder—whoever the sea chooses this time—but it seems the tides carry different intentions.

A shiver crawled up his spine.

February 3rd, 1957

The Red Night was a massacre. They came swarming from the surf—coral-riddled corpses shaking seawater from their ribs. Mother sat upstairs in Father’s old chair, rocking and staring out the window. She whispered about heavy waves and a red sky. Then she rose for the first time in months, gripping the pendant of the Sea Mother as though she expected someone—or something—to claim it.

Cain closed the book and sat in silence for a long time. The basement felt colder, the air heavier.

Where had the altar taken him?

Who was the Sea Mother?

And why—out of everyone in the world—had he been chosen?

The island offered no answers, only the quiet hiss of the tide and the whisper of distant waves, accompanied by a deep, unsettling certainty that none of this was a coincidence: not the altar, not the suit, not him.

Day 7: Eyes Of Fire

Cain sat in an old chair on the porch of the lighthouse at night, watching the strange blue light of the beacon. He looked down at the hunting knife he held, which he had found in a metal box. The blade was stained red, and its handle was made of bone. Surrounding the edge where the blade met the handle was a mass of thick, fleshy growth that extended into both. Every so often, he could see a small pulse in the flesh, resembling a heartbeat. He didn’t know its purpose, but he felt it was important to uncover the mysteries of the island and the Sea Mother, along with how to escape.

In addition to the knife, he had a necklace with the Sea Mother’s symbol. He recalled the journal and realized this might be the same necklace mentioned in it. Just as Cain began to stand up, it started to rain. As the rain fell, a memory washed over him—the memory of standing in the rain while talking to a man in a lab coat, whose nametag read "Dr. Greger," head of engineering for the Institute for Abyssal Phenomena and Mechanics. Suddenly, a chill of fear washed over him as he remembered their discussion. Dr. Greger had stated firmly, “Remember, Cain, this isn’t just a test of the suit but of whether the Sea Mother will let us get that close to her hatchery.” In response, Cain had replied just as firmly, “Yes, I know, but are you sure the suit can withstand her power if she notices?”

As the memory faded from his mind and the rain grew heavier, he recalled Dr. Greger's final words: “Does it matter? Either way, you’re marked already from the first test with her hatred.” The rain pelted Cain’s face as he looked towards the sky, his only thought being whether he believed these memories or not.

[End of this part of a grander story]