At first I told myself it was only driftwood, or maybe a dead sea animal washed up with the tide. But the sand around it looked wrong — unusually dry, as though the ocean itself had gone out of its way to avoid it. Then I saw the body shift. Whatever lay on that shore, it was alive.

A Strange Shape on the Shore

Up close, the creature stretched nearly eight feet long. Its skin was translucent, with dark currents moving beneath its surface. When its tail dragged across the sand, it left behind a trail of black ash.

A deep sound rolled in from the ocean. The waves themselves seemed to hesitate, slowing before they ever reached the shore. Beneath the creature’s body, strange symbols had been carved into the sand — and one of them pointed directly toward my feet.

I stepped back without thinking. The creature’s tail shifted with me, pointing straight at me as I moved.

Something Beneath the Water

That was when my phone lit up with an emergency alert, warning me to move away from the water immediately. Seconds later, the ocean pulled back hundreds of feet, exposing the bare seabed. Far out, something enormous was moving beneath the distant surface.

Then the creature in front of me opened three dark eyes. It looked straight at me, and a voice formed inside my own mind, saying my name.

Terrified, I heard another message form in my head: You found me.

I ran for the dunes as a tremendous impact shook the entire shoreline behind me. When I finally dared to look back, the creature was gone. The ocean had settled back into its ordinary rhythm, as if none of it had happened.

Footprints That Weren’t There Before

All that remained where the creature had lain was a patch of black ash. But something else stopped me cold: a trail of footprints leading up from the water, unlike any I’d ever seen. They weren’t human, and they ended directly behind me — footprints that hadn’t been there a moment before.