Beneath the Wake

Bane dreamed of the ocean often, though his version was never gentle. It came to him in jagged pieces — cliffs carved by storms, waves that struck like fists, a horizon that never stayed still. The water was darker in his dreams, almost metallic, reflecting nothing but the faint shimmer of his own eyes.

He stood on a ledge of black stone, boots planted firm, wind tearing at his coat. The air tasted like salt. The sea below churned in violent spirals, as if something enormous moved beneath it.

He didn’t fear it.
He recognized it.

The ocean had always been the place where his mind went when he wasn’t guarding it.

Tonight, it was restless.

A ripple cut across the surface — small, subtle, wrong. Not the ocean’s doing. Something else. Someone else. He felt the shift before he saw it, a disturbance threading through the water like a pulse.

Then she appeared.

Not fully. Not clearly. Just a shape breaking the surface — a woman folding into the waves, surrendering herself to the cold. No splash. No struggle. Just a quiet descent, as if the ocean had opened to receive her.

He didn’t move.
He didn’t call out.
He only watched.

Her hair drifted around her like ink. The water swallowed her quickly, pulling her deeper, deeper, until she was nothing but a pale blur sinking into the dark.

He felt the echo of her fear — not sharp, not panicked, but a quiet ache, the kind carried by someone who had been holding too much for too long.

The ocean responded to her.
It shifted.
It listened.

He stepped closer to the edge, the stone beneath him vibrating with the pull of the tide. The darkness below thickened, turning into a depth he knew too well — the place where things hid, where memories twisted, where instincts sharpened.

A flicker of movement caught his eye.

Her.

But not her body — her presence. A pulse of warmth in the cold, sinking fast.

He reached out a hand, not to save her, not to touch her, but to feel the thread that connected them. It hummed against his palm, faint but undeniable.

The ocean surged upward in response, a towering wave rising like a creature waking from sleep.

His eyes glowed brighter.

And he woke — breath steady, pulse calm, the echo of her descent still vibrating in his bones with her scent in his nostrils.