Time passed unnoticed, unmeasured.
An endless cycle—drifting between sleep and wakefulness, never fully one or the other.
Until something changed.
In one of her more lucid states, her monotony was broken by a subtle shift in the water.
Had she been asleep, she might have ignored it.
But she was not.
Half-awake, she sensed when slowly, from above, a shape descended.
It did not fight the pull of the deep.
The unknown creature was still.
Lifeless.
And yet, that was not what stirred her from passive existence.
It was the glow.
Even in death, the creature's skin shimmered, its light faint and flickering, barely holding on. A pulse in the darkness—delicate, weak, yet mesmerising.
Unknowingly, it drew her in. Like a moth to flame.
Something inside her stirred.
Quiet. Insistent.
And for the first time of her existence, she truly wanted.
Desire turned to recognition.
Realisation bloomed within her—an epiphany, sudden yet instinctive. As though it had always been there, lying dormant, waiting to awaken.
She could do the same.
And as the knowledge took root, so did the transformation.
A whisper of light beneath her skin, hesitant at first, like the first breath of dawn in the abyss. Then, stronger.
Lifting her hand, she watched in silent wonder as a soft silver shimmer spread across her skin, casting rippling light through the water.
She did not know—not yet aware—that even her hair had changed. Some of her dark strands, once indistinct from the void, now glowed with threads of silver, light weaving through them like captured starlight.
The lifeless creature drifted closer. Its glow—what little remained—dimmed with each passing moment.
She no longer cared.
She had her own light now.
Her gaze lifted beyond it, tracing the path the lifeless creature had taken, up toward the vast unknown above.
It had come from somewhere.
Where there was one, there must be others.
The thought settled deep within her, sinking into her very being.
A quiet ache.
A yearning.
A hunger for more.
And so, she moved —away from the place she had always known. Not out of necessity. Not because something called her.
But out of curiosity.
Fluid as the water around her, her form shifted. Reshaping itself.
The glow along her skin pulsed and changed as she stretched, softened—becoming almost translucent.
She did not think about it.
She simply became.
Mirroring the drifting creature, she let her body take its form, mimicking its delicate limbs, its fragile stillness.
It felt strange, yet natural.
She flexed, testing this new shape, feeling it as if it had always belonged to her.
And then—
With slow, deliberate movement, rising toward the unknown.
She ascended.