As the research vessel descended into Neridia-7's twilight zone, Elara felt the weight of history pressing down on her. This mission had been her life's work, a beacon of hope in an increasingly unstable world. Earth was in crisis-climate disasters, wars over dwindling resources, and the slow collapse of society had left the planet teetering on the edge of ruin. Funding for scientific exploration had dwindled, but Project Neridia was one of the last great efforts to reach beyond Earth, a desperate attempt to find new frontiers before everything fell apart.
She had ignored the news reports, the rising panic back home. She refused to believe that Earth's brightest minds would give up. As long as there were new worlds to explore, there was still hope.
But fate had other plans.
The vessel's instruments flickered, alarms shrieking in the tight cabin. A gravitational anomaly-something impossible-pulled at the ship like an unseen hand, dragging it downward. The crew's frantic voices crackled through the comms, but Elara barely had time to react before the crushing blackness of the deep swallowed them whole.
Pain. Cold. A brief, final moment of clarity.
Then-nothing.
Years passed on The World Moved On.
On Earth, Project Neridia was abandoned.
The world Elara had known was dying. Governments collapsed, cities burned, and the desperate struggle for survival consumed everything. Scientists, engineers, and visionaries-those who once dreamed of reaching the stars-were forced to put down their research and pick up weapons or flee underground. There was no time for space exploration, no resources left for deep-sea discoveries.
The research station orbiting Neridia-7 remained silent, its cameras drifting over endless waves, collecting data that no one would ever see. The files containing the last moments of Dr. Elara Voss lay buried in forgotten archives, her name lost among billions who had vanished in the chaos.
It was as if she had never existed.
And Yet... She Awoke.
Elara's first sensation was movement-the slow, rhythmic pull of the current. She felt light, her body swaying with the water. At first, she thought she was dreaming, her mind piecing together the fragments of a life that had already ended.
But then she opened her eyes.
The world around her was alien-a vast underwater kingdom bathed in shimmering blue light. Massive coral towers stretched toward the surface, glowing with bio-luminescent life. Strange, shadowy creatures lurked in the distance, their eyes glinting with unnatural intelligence. And when she looked down...
She was no longer human.
Her legs were gone, replaced by a long, elegant tail covered in iridescent pink scales. Webbed fingers, gills along her neck-a body built for the ocean.
She had died as Dr. Elara Voss, marine researcher-but she had been reborn as something else.