There was once a city at the bottom of the ocean, though no one could remember when it had sunk. It had been forgotten by the world above—no maps, no legends. Only those who lived there remembered, and even their memories were starting to blur, like an old photograph left in the rain.
Lina sat on the edge of what had once been a bridge, her legs dangling over the deep abyss where the city crumbled into the darkness below. The water was thick and heavy around her, pressing against her skin like a blanket that never lifted. It wasn't uncomfortable, but it wasn't quite right, either—nothing ever was down here. The light that filtered through the distant surface was dim and sickly green, casting long shadows that twisted and swayed as if they had a life of their own.
She had forgotten how she got here. Forgotten what the sun looked like. Maybe she had lived up there once—on the surface, where people breathed air instead of water, where the sky was blue and not this eternal, darkened haze. She tried to recall the feeling of sunlight on her skin but came up with nothing. All she had were fragments, like pieces of a dream slipping away the moment you wake.
The city stretched out before her, vast and broken. Buildings that had once scraped the sky now lay on their sides, half-buried in silt, their windows dark and empty like hollow eyes. Fish swam lazily through the ruins, their scales catching the faint glimmer of light, but there were no other people. Not anymore. She hadn't seen another person in years—if time even existed here.
Sometimes, she wondered if she was the only one left. If the others had simply faded away, dissolved into the water like ink bleeding into paper.
The city sighed with the weight of its age, the sound a low groan carried by the current. Lina closed her eyes and listened to it. The quiet was comforting in its own way, like an old friend who didn't need to speak to be understood. It was all she had ever known, this silence. It cradled her like a lullaby she couldn't remember the words to.
She stood and began to walk, her bare feet sinking into the soft sand that covered the once-bustling streets. There were still traces of life here, though they were faint—an overturned chair, a cracked picture frame, the skeletal remains of a fountain where no water flowed. The city had been beautiful once. It still was, in a way, though the beauty had turned strange and distant, like the reflection of a face seen through murky glass.
As she wandered, she found herself at the edge of the old park, where the trees had long since petrified into twisted, stone figures. Their branches reached out like hands, grasping at the water above them, forever frozen in the moment of their drowning. Lina touched one of the trunks, her fingers tracing the rough, cold surface. She could almost feel the life it had once held, the pulse of something warm and alive, but it was gone now. Everything was gone.
"Are you lonely?"
The voice startled her, though it was soft, almost a whisper carried by the current. Lina turned and saw a figure standing near the broken fountain. It was a man, though his face was pale and blurred, as though he had been underwater for too long, his features eroded by time and the sea. His clothes, too, were strange—tattered and floating gently around him, as if they had no weight.
She hadn't seen another person in so long that, for a moment, she didn't know how to respond. Her voice felt foreign in her throat, like she had forgotten how to use it.
"I don't know," she said finally, her words sounding small in the vastness of the city. "I think I've forgotten how to be lonely."
The man smiled, though it was a sad, distant thing. "That's the first thing we lose down here. The memory of what it was like to have others."
Lina stepped closer, unsure if he was real or just another fragment of the city, another ghost wandering its sunken streets. "Have you been here long?" she asked.
He laughed softly, the sound barely a ripple in the water. "Long enough to forget why I came."
They stood in silence for a moment, the weight of the ocean pressing down on them. Lina felt an odd sense of connection with him, though she didn't know why. Perhaps it was simply the presence of another voice in the quiet. Or perhaps it was something deeper—an unspoken understanding between two people who had been left behind.
"Do you ever think about leaving?" she asked, though she wasn't sure where the question had come from.
The man's smile faded, and he looked away, toward the distant horizon where the city disappeared into the darkness. "There's nowhere to go. The surface… it's too far, too bright. I don't think we belong there anymore."
Lina looked up, squinting toward the faint light above. It was so distant, so unreachable, like a star seen through layers of fog. She wondered if she had ever been up there, if she had ever breathed air instead of water. But the memory was gone, washed away by the currents of time.
"No," she said quietly. "I suppose we don't."
Lina felt a strange sense of peace settle over her, though it was tinged with melancholy. There was no escape, no return to whatever life she had long forgotten. But there was a kind of beauty in that, too—in the endless quiet, in the slow decay of the drowned city. She would stay here, with the ruins and the whispers, until she, too, faded away.
And when that time came, she would be just another piece of the forgotten city, lost to the world above, but not alone.
Never truly alone.