Into the Maelstrom

The horizon undulated, a grotesque semblance of sleep, the sea heaving in its forgotten stupor.

The ship was no more than an insect, struggling against the dark abyss, flung helplessly into the wild frenzy of black waves.

The sea struck the hull with the fury of an ancient grudge, each impact a blow that reverberated deep into the soul, not just the ship. Wood screamed, metal twisted in protest, as if the very bones of the vessel had begun to shudder in dread.

The crew, those pale, trembling shapes in the sickly, unnatural glow of the storm, hung on like madmen to a threadbare existence. Faces contorted in terror, illuminated only by the jagged rifts of lightning, their expressions a cruel mockery of life. They were not men but shadows—reflections of some doomed eternity. The rain whipped the air with its bitterness, the deck groaned beneath them as if the world itself were disintegrating, and the briny taste of salt clung to the air, like an omen too old to remember.

A rogue wave—monstrous, inevitable—rose from the depths, swallowing them whole. Time fractured in the fall, a suffocating descent into some bottomless abyss.

The faces, contorted by primal fear, grasped at the ship’s rusted edge, holding on not to life but to the hollow, fleeting illusion of it. Reality itself began to dissolve, swallowed by the storm's relentless, indifferent assault.

And then, the inevitable.