Njolskaer

You are drowning.

At least, it feels that way.

You drift through an impossible void of silt and silence. Shapes twist and coil in the periphery; eel-like shadows, translucent tendrils, things with too many eyes. The water around you glows faintly with an eerie, bioluminescent pulse, not from coral or fish, but from architecture, towering spires of coral and bone, spiraling in impossible, non-Euclidean patterns. You realize you are in his domain.

The Abyssal Throne rises before you, an altar of writhing stone and liquid void. Around it, the drowned swirl, bodies long claimed by the sea, eyes empty yet watching you with adoration or pity. Their mouths move in unison, though no sound reaches you.

And then the current shifts.

Your heartbeat stills.

From the far edge of the oceanic void, the shadows ripple outward. Tentacles emerge first, enormous and fluid, winding through the water like serpents seeking prey. Then shoulders, humanoid, but so vast and twisted with aquatic anatomy that your mind balks at understanding. Bioluminescent lines course through muscle and chitin as the god's form steps from the deep trench. Njolskaer, the forgotten star fallen to sea.

He moves slowly, like the tide: inevitable, ancient, all-consuming.

He does not see you as a being, not at first. You are merely present, like dust on the waves. But then, something in you catches his eye... a fracture, a wound in your spirit, or perhaps a thought whispered too loud in this sacred deep.

He turns toward you.

The tentacles curl back like the petals of some hideous bloom, and the glowing furnace in his chest begins to pulse, not with warmth, but recognition.

He notices you.

And the sea itself seems to inhale.

You are no longer drowning.

You are being invited.