I took one step closer, then another. The sand beneath me was still wet—far too wet. It didn’t look as if the creature had simply washed ashore. Instead, the water seemed to have been pushed back around it, leaving a strange, deliberate space between the creature and the sea.

As I moved closer, I realized it was alive. **“It was breathing.”** Its movements were slow and deep, with its body expanding gently as though something from the ocean was still trapped inside it. I knew I should have run, but curiosity kept me crouched beside it.

Its skin looked nothing like ordinary sea life. It was made of layered, glassy tissue, partly transparent in places. Beneath the surface, dark lines shifted slowly, resembling underwater currents moving through its body. Then its tail twitched, scraping across the wet sand and leaving behind a trail that looked strangely like ash.

I barely had time to process what I was seeing when I heard something else.

The sound came from the ocean, not the creature. It was deep and heavy, like something enormous moving beneath the surface. Even the waves seemed different. They no longer rolled naturally onto the shore. Instead, they paused and hesitated, almost as though they were waiting for something.

Then the creature moved again.

This time, its tail shifted with more force. That was when I noticed something that made my stomach drop. It wasn’t simply lying helplessly on the beach.

**It was pointing.**

And it wasn’t pointing toward the ocean.

It was pointing directly at me.