The water was a perfect, placid mirror when Elias cast his line. His small wooden boat drifted in the dead center of Lake Veridian, a place locals avoided after dusk. He’d laughed off their warnings—old superstitions for simple minds.
The first tug was gentle. Then the line went taut with impossible force, nearly pulling him overboard. He reeled it in, heart thudding. On the hook wasn’t a fish, but a tattered shred of denim with a rusty button still attached.
A low murmur began, rising from the deep. It wasn’t water against the hull. It was a chorus of clicks and wet, guttural chattering.
Elias peered over the edge. Dozens of pale, almost human eyes stared back from just below the surface. They weren’t fish. They were wrong. Their bodies were elongated, their mouths a horror of needle-teeth, but it was their eyes that froze his blood—they held a cold, calculating intelligence.
*Thump.*
The boat shuddered. Then again. *Thump. Thump. Thump.* A coordinated assault from below. The murmuring grew louder, a cacophony of hungry sounds. A silver-scaled head breached the surface, its mouth opening to reveal rows of serrated, rotating teeth. It let out a sound like a drowned man’s sigh.
Panic seized him. He grabbed an oar, swinging it wildly at the water. The school didn’t scatter. They swarmed the oar, their teeth shredding the wood to splinters in seconds.
The boat listed violently. Water sloshed over the side. The murmuring was in his head now, a psychic pressure promising a swift, tearing end. He was no longer