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The darkness of the trenches was absolute, a perfect and total blackness unlike anything Coralina had ever experienced. Even in the deepest, most secluded chambers of the royal palace, there had always been some source of light, some bioluminescent fixture or glowing coral to ward off the shadows. Here, there was nothing. Only the faint, pale blue glow of her own body, a light she struggled to keep minimal, kept her from being utterly blind. More light would attract attention, and in these depths, attention meant death.
The pressure was immense, a constant, crushing force against her body. Coralina was adapted for deep water, as all merfolk were, but the Whispering Trenches tested the very limits of that adaptation. Her ears ached constantly with a sharp, piercing pain. Her lungs worked harder to pull oxygen from water that seemed thinner somehow, less nourishing. The cold was a living thing, seeping into her bones.
Strange sounds echoed through the darkness. The clicks and whistles of unseen creatures communicating in the black. A deep, rumbling groan that might have been the shifting of ancient rock or might have been something vast and alive. The trenches were called "whispering" not because they were quiet, but because the sounds that emerged from them were unsettling, almost voice-like, as if the abyss itself were trying to speak.
Coralina navigated carefully through the rocky terrain. The trench walls rose up on either side of her, jagged and unforgiving. There was no straight path, only a disorienting maze of narrow passages and deep chasms that twisted through the depths of the ocean floor.
She had been swimming for hours now, or what felt like hours. Time became a meaningless concept in the unchanging darkness. Her muscles screamed with exhaustion. Her stomach cramped with a persistent, gnawing hunger. She had not eaten since the night before her wedding, too nervous about the ceremony to manage more than a few bites of food.
The wedding. The thought sent a fresh wave of complicated emotions through her. By now, the entire court would know what she had done. News would have spread beyond Caelumaris to the neighboring kingdoms. Prince Caspian’s family would have been informed. The alliance would be shattered. Her father would be dealing with the political fallout, the public humiliation, the rage of nobles who had traveled great distances to witness a wedding that never happened.
Guilt threatened to overwhelm her, but she forced it down. There was no room for guilt now. She needed all her focus just to survive.
A shape moved in the darkness ahead. Coralina froze instantly, dimming her bioluminescence even further until she was nearly invisible. The shape moved again, closer. It was large. Predatory. She could not make out any details, but she did not need to. The trenches were home to creatures that existed nowhere else, ancient species that had adapted to the crushing pressure and absolute darkness. Most of them were hungry.
The creature passed within ten feet of her hiding place. She pressed herself flat against the rock wall, not daring to breathe, her heart hammering so hard she was certain it could be heard. The creature moved with a lazy confidence, a massive serpentine form with rows of pulsing bioluminescent spots along its body. It was both beautiful and deadly.
It did not detect her. After a long, tense moment, it disappeared back into the darkness, moving deeper into the trenches.
Coralina waited several more minutes before moving again. When she did, she swam even more carefully than before, her senses on high alert, hyperaware of every sound and movement.
By her third hour in the trenches, the journey had become a blur of darkness and fear. She moved when she felt it was safe, and hid when she detected any sign of danger. Once, she heard voices echoing through the water and realized a patrol had followed her into the depths. She hid in a narrow crevice while their powerful lights swept past, the guards clearly uncomfortable with the hostile environment.
"We will never find her in this darkness," one guard said, his voice carrying clearly through the water. "We should return to the kingdom and report that she has fled beyond our reach."
"King Theron ordered us to search the trenches." The second voice was harder, more determined. "So we search."
But after another hour, their lights retreated, heading back toward Caelumaris. The trenches had defeated them where Coralina’s escape had not.
She allowed herself a small, fleeting moment of relief. They would not stop searching for her, she knew. Her father was too stubborn, too furious. But they would likely focus their efforts on more accessible routes now. The trenches would buy her valuable time.
Eventually, the passage began to rise. Coralina felt it in the subtle decreasing of the pressure, in the way her ears slowly stopped aching. She was ascending, moving away from the absolute depths toward something closer to habitable water.
She found a small cave in the trench wall, barely large enough for her to curl up in, and decided she had to rest. She could not continue without sleep. Her body was shutting down from exhaustion, and swimming while half-conscious would only lead to mistakes she could not afford to make.
The cave was cold and uncomfortable, but it was hidden. She wedged herself into the back corner, pulled a loose rock over the entrance to further obscure it, and allowed her eyes to close.
Sleep came quickly, heavy and dreamless at first. But then the memories surfaced, as she had known they would, pulling her back to a time of sunlight and warmth.