The Silence of Oris – Part 2

Eric couldn’t breathe—not from the cold, but from the realization that Oris was not alone. The figures in the fog were not shadows or tricks of moonlight. They were like her, but different—taller, with sharper features, their silhouettes flickering with faint bioluminescence. Their eyes glowed faintly, unblinking.

As they drew nearer, the surface of the water remained unnaturally still, as if the sea itself feared to move.

Eric’s instincts screamed to start the engine and flee, but the skiff was dead—just like his radio, compass, and GPS. The water had become silent as a grave. Oris hadn’t moved, but her fear radiated like a current through his bones.

He whispered, barely audible, “Who are they?”

Her eyes didn’t meet his. Instead, a single word brushed his mind—not spoken, but felt.

Hunters.

For the first time since he’d met her, Oris retreated—lowering herself partly into the water, gaze still locked on the approaching beings. Eric understood something then: she wasn't summoning them.

She was hiding from them.

One of the figures emerged nearer through the fog, rising halfway out of the water. Its form was humanoid, but the face was smooth, almost mask-like, with no visible nose or ears. Bioluminescent veins pulsed beneath pale, translucent skin. When it opened its mouth, no sound came out—but Eric felt a pressure in his skull like teeth digging into thought.

Oris flinched.

The creature's gaze shifted to Eric. It didn’t recognize him as a threat—only an anomaly. Something that shouldn’t be there… something she had let too close.

Without warning, Oris surged upward, putting herself between Eric and the approaching beings. Her glow brightened, no longer faint but vibrant, rippling across her body like the shimmer of oil on water. The air vibrated.

Eric felt something then—her voice, clear for the first time.

Run.

His breath hitched. “I’m not leaving you.”

The water around the skiff began to churn violently, though no wind blew. The three figures from the fog formed a semicircle around the boat, trapping them. Their eyes brightened.

Oris turned to Eric, her expression carved with sorrow and decision. Images flooded into his mind with painful clarity—her world collapsing, her kind hunted to the brink of extinction, and the remnants scattered in the deepest trenches of alien seas. She had fled across cold stars… alone.

And now they had found her.

Eric felt his vision blur—not from tears, but from the weight of her memories crashing against his own.

A deep hum vibrated through the hull of the boat, rising in pitch. The water swelled beneath them as if the ocean itself were being pulled upward by invisible strings.

Eric’s survival instinct screamed, but his heart refused to abandon her.

He reached out, grabbing her wrist. “Tell me what to do.”

Her eyes locked onto his—an impossible mingling of human tenderness and something ancient. A warmth spread from her touch into his chest, then deeper. His heartbeat slowed as hers quickened.

She was giving him something.

A memory. A part of herself. A goodbye.

The hunters drew closer. The sea around them abruptly dropped into dead calm again, the stillness more terrifying than the storm. Eric saw one of the creatures raise a hand, fingers long and jointless.

Oris leaned forward suddenly and pressed her forehead against his. He felt like he was drowning in starlight and salt and grief.

A voice—her voice—echoed in his mind, clearer than breath.

Live. And remember me.

Then she pushed him back.

Before he could protest, the skiff lurched violently as if struck from below. He lost his balance and fell into the boat as the water split with a roar—not outward, but downward, dragging Oris and the others into a vortex of black and impossible light.

The sea folded over them like a wound closing.

Eric scrambled to the bow, screaming her name into the night until his voice broke. But the water was silent again. The fog retreated. The sky cleared.

Everything was gone.

Except for the echo of her presence—the warmth still lingering on his skin where she touched him.

He was found at dawn drifting miles from the research station, the skiff half-flooded but intact. He remembered only fragments when they questioned him. The disappearances stopped. The signals never returned.

For weeks, he tried to convince himself it was hallucination, exhaustion, trauma. But at night, when everything was still, he heard it—the faintest resonance beneath his heartbeat. Not a voice. Not a word.

Her name.

Years passed.

Eric left Blackwater Bay but remained by the coast in a small weathered house facing the sea. People whispered about the solitary man who stared at the horizon for hours, listening to something no one else could hear.

On the quietest nights, when the tide withdrew and the world held its breath, the ocean seemed to shimmer faintly with light deep below the surface.

And though he never saw her again, he knew with unshakable certainty:

She had loved him.

And somewhere in the cold dark beneath, she still remembered.

Even if the rest of the world forgot.