Dagon

The storm had no rhythm, only wrath.

Rain hammered the rooftops of the forgotten coastal town like the fists of drowned men. Salt hung thick in the air, stinging the eyes of those who dared peer through warped windowpanes. The harbor lay abandoned, its boats pulled far inland, their sails folded like wings of dead seabirds. Dogs did not bark. Children did not cry. Even the tides seemed hesitant.

Inside the crooked tavern, the song played on, scratchy and far too clear:

"There’s a final page in my tale, ink-stained and torn, But the words fade out, like breath at dawn."

A dirge. A warning. The last transmission of sanity.

The pub was dim, lit only by the occasional flare of lightning. But none inside spoke.

Outside, shapes moved through the downpour—cloaked, hunched figures dragging something limp between them. The townspeople saw. They always saw. But no door opened. No voice objected.

"In one year's time, from the fishing lands, The people vanished like sea-drawn sands. Each day the mist crept from the tide, I watched the shores fall empty, wide..."

The song bled into the storm, indistinguishable from the wind.

On the shore, the procession halted before a stone altar—ancient, barnacle-encrusted, hoisted onto the sand by unseen hands. With grotesque reverence, they laid the offering down. Their hoods fell away.

Eyes. Bulging, lidless, slick like wet pearls. Gills fluttered with pleasure. Their skin gleamed with scales that shimmered oil-black and seafoam green. They clicked and gurgled in a tongue older than lungs.

The Deep Ones.

"Again that strange hum haunted my mind! But today, its whisper I could define. A voice called out, so cold, so deep. I could not fight. I could not sleep..."

The singer’s voice surged unnaturally, not from the pub anymore. From everywhere.

Then—lightning.

A blast, sharp and white, struck one of the scaled zealots. His body jerked once, smoked, and fell. No one screamed. The others did not flinch.

The blade had not yet pierced the chest of the sacrifice when He arrived.

The sound was not heard. It was felt—behind the teeth, under the ribs, in the marrow. It was a call without direction, without mercy. It tore through the veil of human perception like claws through kelp.

"The world was shifting before my sight, The sea’s own cry stirred hearts with fright. It planted dread where hope once bloomed, A primal fear. A fate entombed!"

The sea boiled.

A shadow, taller than the storm, rose from the trench. Not fast. Not slow. Inevitable.

His eyes appeared first: phosphorescent, ancient, patient. Then the crown of His skull, ridged and algae-wreathed, as though the ocean itself had birthed a god from its abyss. Lightning cracked across the sky and froze in place. Time rippled. The wind whimpered.

He stepped from the water like a mountain waking.

One step. Then another.

With each stride, Dagon shrank—yet somehow grew more terrible. From titanic to massive, from massive to merely huge. He stopped at a height just above mortal comprehension—perhaps three meters, perhaps the width of despair.

And still the rain fell—upward.

The Deep Ones, once His children, lay sprawled on the sand, their eyes staring, empty. Whether by His will or in reverence too intense for flesh to bear, none remained breathing.

Dagon stood before the altar.

The form upon it trembled.

He leaned down.

Water ran from His shoulders in rivulets, dripping onto the offering’s chest. He stared. Unblinking.

Then—a sound.

A voice built of whale-deep groans, tectonic sorrow, and the creak of ancient pressure. It unfurled not in the ears, but behind the skull, in the places where language becomes instinct. The ocean paused to listen.

A transformation began. Not mercy. Not disguise. Communication.

Skin split and reshaped. Fins retracted. His monstrous visage softened—not to human, but to familiar. A face that one might imagine in fever, in drowning dreams. The nose appeared with a sickening crunch. The mouth shifted, lipless, mimicking flesh. The eyes, however—still abyssal.

Then, clear as thought carved in obsidian, came the words:

"{{User}}, rise. For I have come."

And the silence that followed was deeper than the sea.