A subtle *thrum* vibrated through the ancient hull, a discord in the deep’s eternal hum. Elsewhere, in the Shifting Squalor, others slept the shallow slumber of the surface-bound. Kaelan felt the intrusive tremor, a foreign current against the steady pulse of his own domain. Awakened, not from sleep but from profound stillness, Kaelan flowed to the salvaged viewport-hatch. His chamber, a sanctuary carved from the heart of a colossal, drowned leviathan, existed in perfect symbiosis with the surrounding ocean. Water filled it, an extension of his own being. Within this liquid embrace, he saw the faint, desperate glow of a handheld lumen-orb on the other side of the thick, pressure-sealed viewport. *Click. Clunk. Sluuuurp.* A rasping, metallic groan echoed as the internal pressure-seals yielded. The hatch, scavenged from an ancient submersible, shuddered inward a fraction, disgorging a small plume of trapped air bubbles. A gaunt figure, silhouetted against the murky glow of the outer passage, squinted into the aqueous darkness. One hand clutched a crudely sharpened shard of deep-coral. His breath hitched, a faint gurgle escaping the rebreather mask strapped to his face. Grent, the salvage-rat from the adjacent, derelict hull-section. His eyes, magnified by the viewport, darted through the gloom, searching for Kaelan’s stored resonant shard. Patient, Kaelan watched. This was his territory. Every current, every tremor, every particle of silt was known to him. The intruder, buoyed by ill intent, pushed further into the chamber. *Screech!* A sudden, violent current, unseen but keenly felt, snatched at Grent’s leg. He cried out, a muffled gasp through his mask, as his balance faltered. His foot snagged a barely visible thread of ancient, reinforced kelp-fiber Kaelan had stretched across the entry. A sharp *snap* followed, the sound barely audible over the rush of disturbed water. *WHAM!* A powerful jet of localized pressure, compressed and released by Kaelan, slammed into a hidden mechanism. A venomous spine, harvested from an abyssal lionfish and honed to needle-sharpness, launched from its concealed niche. It struck Grent’s side with a dull thud, piercing the thin fabric of his hydrostatic suit. “Aaaaargh!” Grent thrashed, a convulsive spasm of pain rippling through his body. His lumen-orb tumbled, casting wildly dancing shadows across the water-filled chamber. He clawed at his side, trying to dislodge the embedded spine. Like a shadow unbound, Kaelan moved. No splash, no discernible displacement. He was simply *there*, a sudden, formidable presence. He seized Grent’s own coral-shard from his fumbling grip, the weapon suddenly impossibly heavy in the thief’s hand. Pinning the man against a water-logged bulkhead with an imperceptible surge of current, Kaelan brought the coral-shard to Grent’s exposed throat. The rebreather mask fogged with the man’s desperate, rapid breathing. “Wha—the… K-Kaelan! You… you little ghost!” Grent stammered, his eyes wide with terror, not just from the blade, but from Kaelan himself, a being whose nature was rumored and feared among the surface-scavengers. “A ghost does not claim what is his,” Kaelan’s voice, a low rumble, seemed to resonate through the very water, an ancient echo. “You trespass. And you covet.” Grent’s desperate eyes darted to the small, crystalline shard embedded in a crevice within the chamber. It pulsed with a faint, internal luminescence—a resonant shard, a fragment of forgotten power Kaelan had recovered from the deepest trench. “I saw it! A glowing gem, just sitting there!” Grent gasped, fear giving way to greed. “In this… this flooded hole. What right do you have to such a treasure, little phantom? My Elder… he’s a High Current-Speaker! He’ll gut you for touching me!” “A Current-Speaker in the Squalor?” Kaelan’s voice held a chill that bit deeper than the abyssal cold. “Your claim strains the memory of the deep. Why would such a master lurk in these shallow currents?” “He’s… here for reasons! Temporary! You let me go, or you’ll face the wrath of Elder Joric!” Grent pleaded, his body trembling, the paralytic venom from the lionfish spine beginning to take hold. “Temporary. Yet you steal from a child of the deep,” Kaelan mused, tilting the coral-shard slightly. “A strange mission for a master’s kin.” Kaelan had seen the man last cycle, lurking outside his sanctuary, a hungry glint in his eye. He had dismissed it, a foolish oversight. The Shifting Squalor, a tangled mess of salvaged hulls and sunken structures where the lost and the desperate clung to existence, knew no law but strength. Here, weakness was a death sentence. And in Kaelan’s solitude, he had almost forgotten that lesson. Born from the memory of a drowned world, Kaelan had existed through ages, his earliest awareness unfolding amidst the slow decay of a civilization beneath the waves. He had seen empires rise and fall, felt the pressure of ancient grief settle like silt. To survive, to guard the secrets entrusted to him, he had learned the harsh realities of this broken world. He knew the depths of greed, the shallow brevity of mortal life. But to shed life… that was a different current. Suddenly, Grent’s eyes gleamed with a desperate, cunning glint. His free hand, hidden from Kaelan’s direct view, twitched. A secondary, smaller spike, a stiletto of obsidian, slid from a sheath strapped to his forearm. “Die, you abyssal brat!” Grent shrieked, the sound distorted by his rebreather, and lunged. The obsidian stiletto flashed, aimed for Kaelan’s vitals. Kaelan reacted not with speed, but with the fluid certainty of the ocean itself. A sudden vortex of pressure formed around Grent’s arm, twisting it unnaturally. The obsidian blade veered wide, scraping harmlessly against the bulkhead. With an effortless surge, Kaelan reversed the coral-shard. The sharpened tip found its mark, plunging into Grent’s chest where the rebreather tank offered no protection. A guttural choke escaped Grent’s mask. His eyes, unfocused, stared at Kaelan in disbelief, then horror, as his body went slack. A cloud of crimson bloomed in the water, quickly dispersed by the subtle currents Kaelan commanded. Grent slumped, lifeless, against the bulkhead. Silt settled slowly. Kaelan remained, his presence heavy, observing the dead man. The act was done. His ancient memory held countless deaths, but this was a fresh stain upon his current solitude. A bitter taste, like brine, filled his awareness. “Why did you come…” Kaelan’s voice was a whisper, a ripple in the vastness. “Why did you not leave the deep undisturbed?” He knew what had to follow. If the man’s brother, Elder Joric, truly was a High Current-Speaker, this place was no longer safe. His very presence here was an affront, a disruption. Erasing the body was a task Kaelan was more than capable of, but the ripples of such an event would spread. It was better to leave the carcass here, a testament to Grent’s foolishness, and to disappear into the currents. Securing the hatch with a burst of intensified pressure, Kaelan slipped out into the labyrinthine passages of the Shifting Squalor. Barnacle-crusted hulls, lashed together with ancient chains and new, scavenged ropes, formed a treacherous maze. He melted into the murky passages, becoming one with the shadowed currents. --- “A High Current-Speaker. Lee Joric, they called him. A maelstrom given form. What ill fate binds me to such a wake?” Kaelan’s thoughts, like deep-sea echoes, resonated within the armored confines of the Dredge-Skiff *Leviathan*. This hulking vessel, built for the crushing pressures of the true abyss, was a cage for him, yet it was his only passage out of the Squalor. Lee Joric, Grent’s older brother, was a force of nature. A master of the abyssal currents, capable of conjuring localized maelstroms and pulverizing jets of water. Among the scattered fragments of humanity, only a handful commanded such power. To be hunted by him was to be stalked by the ocean’s wrath itself. Joric’s pursuit had been relentless. His fury, a palpable thing, had scoured the Shifting Squalor, churning currents that disrupted Kaelan’s own silent movements. Even in his solitude, Kaelan had felt the tightening net, the encroaching pressure. He had been cornered, forced onto this deep-sea transport. *Lee Joric. You disturbed the deep’s stillness. You will regret this.* Kaelan’s promise was a cold, patient current, destined to erode even the mightiest rock. Beyond the safety of the Coral Spire, the vastness of the Sundered Expanse stretched. Not a desert of sand, but an endless, turbulent ocean. Rogue currents tore at forgotten wrecks, titanic abyssal beasts patrolled the unfathomable darkness, and other scavenger crews, ruthless and desperate, stalked slower vessels. Safety was a fleeting illusion, even for the powerful. That was why the struggling masses clung to the precarious stability of the Shifting Squalor, ever in the shadow of the Coral Spire. But with Joric’s vengeful hunt, even that desperate refuge had become a hunting ground. If only Kaelan could manifest the full, untamed power that simmered within his ancient core. But his nature was to guard, to observe, to maintain the delicate balance of the drowned world’s memory, not to unleash its destructive potential carelessly. Not yet. His only recourse: the Dredge-Skiff *Leviathan*, bound for the Sunken Veins. Seventy kilometers into the crushing depths, the Veins were a treacherous, perpetually collapsing maze of tunnels within an ancient geological fault. There, resonant shards—the very lifeblood of the Coral Spire’s technology—were meticulously extracted. The work was brutal. The environment, lethal. Many perished, crushed by shifting rock, or lost to the deep’s monstrous inhabitants. Labor was perpetually scarce. Thus, the Spire tolerated any who volunteered for the Sunken Veins, asking no questions, peering into no pasts. It was Kaelan’s path to temporary oblivion. *I will endure the Veins. And then, Lee Joric, the deep will remember you.* Kaelan’s resolve hardened, cold as the abyssal waters. He peered through a thick viewport. The *Leviathan* was filling with other prospective harvesters, their faces etched with desperation and resignation. “Hey, ghost-child! Heading for the Veins, are we?” A gruff voice rumbled beside Kaelan. A man, immense and scarred, filled the adjacent seat. His name was Thrakk, his reputation as foul as the reek of spoiled chum. Kaelan’s awareness sharpened. “What of it, scavenger?” His tone was a flat, unyielding plane of ice. “Sharp tongue for a fragile thing.” Thrakk chuckled, a sound like grinding barnacles. His gaze, heavy and possessive, raked over Kaelan’s lean form. “Those Veins are a dark place, full of appetites. Many would see a phantom like you… claimed.” He ended with a lewd, suggestive grin. Thrakk’s words hung in the pressurized air. Kaelan felt the cold burn of ancient fury stir within him. His hand, subtly, almost imperceptibly, clenched. The very water around his seat within the *Leviathan* hummed, an unseen current coiling, waiting.

Currents of Necessity