The Obsidian Shard

Silas hated the cold. Not just the ocean's chill that seeped through a thousand pounds of reinforced insulation, but the cold that settled deep in his bones, the one that came from knowing how alone you really were down here. Three kilometers down. That was the crushing truth. Light itself was a ghost story, a fading memory of the surface world. Down here, the pressure could crush a battleship into a soda can. Today, though, it wasn't just the cold. It was the hum. A low, almost imperceptible thrum that had started hours ago, during the descent, and hadn't stopped.

The dive pod, a hulking contraption of steel and reinforced viewport, shuddered, a constant low-grade tremor that rattled the teeth. Dr. Aris, all academic fuss and nervous energy, cleared his throat for the tenth time beside him. 'Estimates put it... pre-human, Silas. Potentially... extra-terrestrial,' Aris practically whispered, like the darkness outside could hear him.

Silas snorted, a dry, raspy sound that barely registered over the pod’s life support. 'Potentially a load of old wives' tales, Doctor. We're here for the mineral assays, remember? And for that 'miracle' energy signature.' His voice was flat, practiced. He didn't believe in ghosts, especially not extraterrestrial ones. He believed in physics, pressure gauges, and the cold hard fact of a paycheck. But then, he hadn't seen *this* before.

The pod’s powerful floodlights cut through the abyssal black. First, a glimmer. Not soft, not inviting. But a shard, impossibly sharp, glinting with a malevolent precision. Then another. And another. It wasn't rock. It wasn't coral. It was glass. Black, obsidian glass, stretching into towering spires, spiraling structures that defied physics and sanity. A city. A silent, utterly alien city forged from raw darkness.

The longer they looked, the more wrong it felt. The structures themselves weren't smooth. They were faceted, like impossibly large, ancient jewels, or the splintered remains of a cosmic mirror. The light from their lamps didn't just illuminate; it fractured. Every surface, every sharp angle, bounced the beams into a million disorienting splinters. It was like staring into a broken mirror, reflecting not just the pod, but… something else, something just at the edge of his perception. Shapes that weren't quite there. Movement in the periphery, gone the moment he tried to focus.

Aris was muttering, rapid-fire scientific jargon about crystalline structures, refractive indices, ancient construction. Silas just watched the viewport, a knot tightening in his gut. The city didn't just stand there. It felt… present. Aware. The structures didn't just reflect light; they seemed to *absorb* it, drawing the luminescence into their dark, polished depths, making the shadows around them even deeper, hungrier.

They decided on a short external survey, dropping a tethered probe first. Silas deployed it, watching the small drone’s lights disappear into the maze of sharp angles. The feed came back, glitching. Static. Then, a shriek through the comms, a sound that wasn't electronic feedback, but something… musical? High-pitched, cutting. Aris jumped, knocking his head on the console. 'What in God's name was that?' Aris gasped, eyes wide, breath catching in his throat.

'Interference. Pressure wave. Who knows,' Silas mumbled, but he didn't believe it. It had sounded like a violin string snapping, held too tight, for too long, only magnified a thousand times. The pod’s internal temperature gauge had dropped a full degree. He hadn't touched the thermostat.

He maneuvered the pod closer, an inch-by-inch crawl through the jagged urban decay. The city didn't have streets; it had canyons, chasms, all lined with the same dark, perfect glass. It was cold, so cold. His fingers were stiff on the controls. The air inside the pod, usually sterile, felt thick, heavy, like static electricity before a storm. He kept seeing glimpses of his own face in the glass, but twisted, stretched, a grimace not his own.

One massive structure, a spire that reached higher than the pod's lights could reveal, caught his attention. It looked like a needle, impossibly thin, almost vibrating. As they approached, the high-pitched sound returned, not a shriek this time, but a low, sustained hum, resonating through the very hull of the submersible. It wasn't just sound. It was *pressure*. His teeth ached. His eardrums throbbed.

'Silas, pull back!' Aris yelled, covering his ears, his face pale. 'It's resonance! It could shatter the viewport!'

Silas felt it too, a vibration deep inside his skull. But he couldn't. His hand was frozen on the stick. He felt a strange pull, a morbid curiosity that was stronger than fear. He had to see. What made this city? What *was* it?

The hum intensified. The glass around them, reflecting their pod, seemed to shimmer, to *breathe*. And then, in the depths of one of those spires, where the light couldn't quite reach, something shifted. It wasn't a reflection. It wasn't a trick of the light, no, not this time. A deep, oily blackness within the structure seemed to swirl, to coalesce, like ink dropped into water, forming and reforming shapes that had no business existing. Then, a pulse. A slow, sickening throb, deep within the black glass itself. Like a vein pulsating under dark, polished skin. Or an eye, impossibly vast, slowly opening, seeing him.

Silas choked. He tore his hand from the controls, slamming it onto the 'reverse' thruster, the pod groaning in protest, the hum now a raw shriek that tore at the fabric of reality. The viewport... it spiderwebbed. Not a full crack, but a network of micro-fractures, spreading like ice across a pond, right before his eyes. He squeezed them shut, the sound filling him, consuming him.

When he dared to open them again, Aris was unconscious, slumped against the console. The viewport still held, miraculously. The hum had receded to a low thrum. And the city... it was still there, vast and silent, waiting. But now, in every shard, every sharp angle, Silas saw them. Tiny, almost imperceptible flickers, like static, like eyes, watching from within the black heart of the glass. He felt cold, yes, but not the ocean's cold. Something far older. Far deeper. He just needed to get out. He had to. He pushed the pod away, slowly, agonizingly, back into the open, empty black, but he knew. He knew it would never truly be empty again. It had seen him.