The Abyssal Threshold

They said the ocean was unmapped and unknowable. Elira had always believed it, until she saw the door. It stood there, wedged into the seabed as if it had always belonged, its surface unmarred by time, glowing faintly like it remembered light.

She didn’t open it. It opened for her.

Now the jellyfish float through like messengers, slipping in and out with secrets trailing behind them. She waits just outside the frame, lungs burning in her dive suit, pulse loud in her ears. The currents don’t touch the door. The reef gives it space. Even the predators keep their distance.

Elira doesn’t know what’s on the other side. But whatever it is, it’s been waiting for her.

And she’s starting to wonder if the stories about the sea being unknowable… were never meant for humans.

They were warnings for the things on the other side.