The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 231

The safety tether snapped. Static hissed in her earpiece...

Sloane felt completely severed from the civilized world, plunged into an endless, desolate void.

Time and space held no meaning here.

She had no idea how far she had swum. The beam from her headlamp grew weaker as the impenetrable darkness thickened around her. She started counting her heartbeats. One, two, three—not to track time, but to remind herself she was still alive.

In the distance, a cluster of hazy shadows loomed, growing larger with every kick of her fins.

Finally, she reached a massive rock formation and swam around it.

Her headlamp cut through the black water like a blade, revealing a towering wall rising from the lakebed.

Sloane held her breath, a chill racing down her spine.

Because the "wall" wasn't made of cold, lifeless stone. It was alive.

It was entirely covered in dense, interlocking mycelium.

They looked like feathers, or tentacles, or the fronds of some ancient fern. They were translucent, emitting a soft, ethereal glow.

The light was a milky white, like crystallized moonlight or a physical manifestation of frosted breath on a winter night. They sprouted from the crevices in clusters, layered upon each other, swaying gently in the current like an inverted, luminescent forest.

When her headlamp hit them, they shimmered with a deep azure luminescence, like fallen stars resting at the bottom of the lake.

The glow wasn't static. It pulsed rhythmically, brightening and dimming in perfect sync with her own heartbeat.

Sloane stared at the breathtaking sight, her eyes wide with awe.

In her twenty-six years of life, she had witnessed miracles. She had seen the timer flash record-breaking numbers at swimming competitions, and she had watched her husband perform surgical impossibilities, giving terminal patients a second chance at life.

Those could all be considered the triumphs of humanity.

But compared to this ancient, silent spectacle before her, human miracles felt insignificant.

These unknown organisms were thriving in the pitch-black abyss, surviving under crushing pressure, devoid of sunlight, oxygen, or anything typically required for survival.

They were alive, soft and enduring, existing in absolute silence.

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