The sea had been still for three days.
Not calm - still. Not a whisper of breeze. Not the usual crash of waves against the rocks that framed the black sands of Bahia Oscura. The tide had frozen at its highest reach, lapping against the salt bitten stilts of the fishing shacks like a thing that had forgotten how to breathe.
Old women clutched their rosaries tighter. Fishermen lit candles to saints they'd long stopped believing in. Deep in the mangroves, something ancient stirred.
At dawn on the fourth day, Marisol climbed barefoot onto the roof of her grandmother's palapa. From there, she could see the bay curve like a dark crescent, hugged by cliffs and wild jungle. The sea glittered silver, as if someone had poured quicksilver across the water. Far beyond the reef, she saw a shimmer - like shape moving beneath the surface, just too deep to name.
She blinked. It was gone.
Behind her, the rooster crowed late again. Nothing was waking on time anymore. Not the animals. Not the tides.
A bell rang - low and hollow. Not the chapel bell. This one came from the sea.
Marisol's skin prickled.
"It's the canpana de los ahogados," whispered a voice behind her.
Her grandmother stood in the doorway, wrapped in her shawl despite the morning heat. Her eyes were sharp with memory, with warning. "It only rings when something lost comes looking to be found."
Marisol turned, "is it a storm?"
"No." The old woman looked out to the sea.
"It's older than any storm."
A silence fell between them. Then, a sound rose from the mangroves, frogs chanting like monks, a pulse of rhythm older than language. In the bay, something broke the surface.
A head. Human - shaped. Crowned with barnacles, eyes like deep - sea pearls.
It looked straight at Marisol.
It did not speak - not with words. The thing in the water simply stared, its gaze dragging through Marisol like an anchor through silt. She couldn't look away. Couldn't breathe.
Then, the bell rang again.
Not from the sea this time.
From inside her.
She staggered backward, clutching her chest. Her heartbeat skipped, then thundered, then slowed to match the rhythm of the frogs, water, and something older still - a cadance like chant.
The creature raised one barnacled hand and pointed toward the cliffs.
Marisol's vision blurred. The black rock at the edge of the bay rippled. Her grandmother shouted her name, but the world has already begun to slip.
In the blink of an eye, she was somewhere else.
Not asleep. Not awake.
She stood upon those same cliffs, but the sea was gone - vanished, sucked away into the horizon. What remained was the gaping maw of the bay, cracked and dry, the sea floor revealed like the bones of some vast, long - dead creature. Coral bleaching in the sunlight. Ships broken and half buried in the black sand.
From the jungle behind her came fire. A wall of it. Moving fast. Faster than any storm.
Marisol turned - and saw the village. Her village. Her people.
Screaming. Running. Too late.
The water did not return. It rose.
A monstrous wave - dark, oily, miles high - crawled across the sky. It shimmered with faces. With voices. With names whispered in languages she did not know.
Then - she was back.
The creature was gone. The tide had begun to ebb.
Her chest ached. Her grandmother held her tightly.
"What did it show you?" The old woman asked, her voice trembling.
Marisol looked at her with eyes that weren't entirely her own anymore.
"Not what's coming," she said softly. "What we called."