The Silence of Oris – Part 1

Eric had always found the ocean comforting—until the night it answered back.

He was thirty-two, a marine acoustic technician stationed at the remote research facility of Blackwater Bay. His work involved mapping sonar disturbances, tracking whales, and documenting the sounds rising from the dark Atlantic shelf. It was quiet, lonely work, but after the death of his sister two years ago, loneliness had become a tolerable companion.

Then came the night of the signal.

A frequency unlike anything recorded before—harmonic, layered, almost… intentional. It wasn’t the groan of plates shifting or the bellow of a blue whale. It pulsed like a voice submerged beneath miles of pressure. His colleagues dismissed it as seismic interference, but Eric stayed late, running the audio through filters again and again. It was faint, but he could swear he heard a rhythm. A pattern. A call.

Three nights later, he saw her.

Or thought he did.

He was walking the shoreline near midnight, fog coiling around the rocks like breath. The moonlight cut silver paths across the water. That’s when he caught sight of movement offshore—something pale, slender, almost human-shaped just beneath the surface. It vanished before he could focus.

The next day, he didn’t mention it to anyone.

That evening, the signal came again, clearer.

Eric isolated the waveform and something inside him tightened—not fear, but recognition. The sound had cadence, like a whisper swallowed by saltwater.

Hours passed without sleep. By dawn, he boarded a small patrol skiff alone, ignoring protocols. The coordinates of the signal drifted further from shore, to a place where older fishermen claimed compasses failed and shadows moved in spirals.

Fog rose like a curtain as he reached the zone. The sea around him darkened unnaturally, as if light bent away.

He felt it before he saw her.

The water surface broke without a splash. A figure slowly emerged, rising with unreal grace. Her skin was iridescent—faintly luminescent like the scales of deep-sea creatures, yet soft and strangely human in form. Dark tendrils of hair floated around her like ink in water. Her eyes… they were large, haunting, and not entirely alien—green, but shifting with bioluminescent streaks.

Eric froze, his hands tightening on the sides of the skiff.

She didn’t speak, yet something brushed his mind lightly—a sensation without words, like the echo of someone calling your name in a dream.

Then his earpiece crackled with static so violent he flinched. The boat lights flickered. Every navigation instrument died for ten full seconds. When power stuttered back, she was gone beneath the waves without a ripple.

He returned to the facility drenched and shaken but unable to explain why he felt less afraid than… pulled.

Over the next week, the signal kept returning. Each time, he went back. Each time, she appeared—closer, clearer. She never crossed into the boat, but her presence pressed at the edges of his mind. He began to understand fragments of emotion from her: curiosity, sorrow, and an ache that matched his own loneliness.

On the seventh night, she touched his hand.

The water lapped against the skiff’s edge, and she reached out, fingers webbed only slightly, skin cool but not cold. The moment her hand brushed his, a rush of images thundered into his mind—cities of glass under miles of water, burning skies, something collapsing, and then… silence.

He yanked his hand back, gasping. She recoiled too, watching him with a grief so deep it unsettled the air around them.

He whispered without thinking, “What are you?”

Her lips parted as if to speak, but instead of sound, he heard the signal—inside his head.

Not words. Not yet.

Something closer to a name.

Oris.

He didn’t tell the others. He began lying about his assignments, using excuses to access the skiff at night. His exhaustion grew, but so did something else—an inexplicable bond. When he dreamed, he saw shards of her world, felt the heavy pressure of the deep, heard an entire language made of water and frequency.

He wasn’t afraid anymore.

Until the disappearances began.

A fisherman from the nearby village vanished near the cliffs, his boat found empty. Then, two divers from another facility went missing while inspecting underwater cables. Locals started whispering about old maritime curses again.

Eric felt a chill every time he heard the rumors. He wanted to believe Oris had nothing to do with it—but he had no proof either way.

One night, desperate for answers, he sailed farther than ever before. When Oris surfaced, she didn’t approach immediately. Her eyes held something new—urgency.

A feeling—sharp, like sorrow edged with warning—poured into him.

He whispered, “Is it you? Are people dying because of you?”

She closed her eyes, and the wind stilled. He felt a pressure in his chest, like being pulled underwater without moving. He sensed she wanted to explain—but something stopped her, like a wound she couldn’t uncover.

When she reached for his hand again, the water around them went unnaturally still. No wind. No current. Sound died.

She looked past him.

Not at him—behind him.

Eric turned.

In the distant fog, shapes moved across the water. More than one. Tall. Watching. The same iridescence flickering beneath the mist.

His radio went dead.

And Oris’s expression changed from sorrow—

—to fear.

[For PART 2 CLICK HERE]