The Abyssal Monastery

The rope burned Erik's palms as he hauled. The net surfaced. Gray dawn light caught on something that shouldn't exist.

Scales. Webbed fingers. A face.

Erik's breath stopped. The thing tangled in hemp wore a monk's tonsure. Gills fluttered at its neck like obscene mouths.

His hand reached for the gutting knife. Cut the net. Let it sink back to hell.

"Nolite timere."

The words froze him. Perfect Latin. The creature's voice gurgled like water through stone.

"Do not be afraid," it repeated, in accented Danish this time.

Erik's fingers found his iron cross. The metal dug into his palm. The creature watched him with too-human eyes.

"Is it not written—" Erik's voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "Is it not written that Rome spawns abominations?"

The creature's lips moved. Scripture. Proverbs 3:5. "'Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.'"

Erik squinted his left eye. The gesture he couldn't control when certainty crumbled. His father had quoted that verse the night the mob came.

The thing wept.

Tears rolled down scaled cheeks. Salt water mixing with salt tears. Human grief in an inhuman face.

Erik made the sign of the cross. An old habit. Lutheran doctrine forbade it but his body remembered childhood prayers.

"What are you?"

"Brother Aldric. Once Aldric Beaumont of the Abbey of Saint-Denis." The creature flexed webbed fingers. "Now something else."

The smell hit Erik then. Not fish-rot. Incense. Parchment. The scent of the Catholic chapel before the mobs burned it.

"Fourteen of us survived the transformation," Brother Aldric said. His voice steadied into academic precision. "Twenty-three attempted. The elixir granted aquatic form but exacted... cost."

Erik's hands shook on the net. "Alchemy. Heresy."

"Preservation. When your Lutherans burned our monasteries, we chose transformation over death." Brother Aldric's gills flared. "We preserve what you destroy."

The wind shifted. Erik tasted salt. Blood. Dawn light made the scales shimmer between human and monstrous.

"Why surface now?"

Brother Aldric tilted his head. Reading invisible text. A scholar's habit trapped in transformed anatomy.

"The tides speak to those who listen," he said. "Patterns in moon and water. Alchemical calculations perfected over ten years beneath the waves."

"Speaking in riddles is a demonic trait."

"Speaking plainly, then." Brother Aldric's fingers traced letters in the air. "Catastrophe approaches. Tidal surge. Within three weeks, coastal Denmark drowns."

Erik's grip loosened. The net sagged.

"And you possess knowledge to prevent this?"

"Empirically speaking, yes." Brother Aldric flexed webbed fingers rhythmically. "But we are heretics. Monsters. Why would a devout Lutheran believe creatures such as we?"

The question hung between them. Water dripped from the net. Each drop caught light before falling back to the harbor's steel-gray surface.

Erik thought of Kirsten. Her spine straightening when she pronounced judgment. Her voice citing Romans: Be not conformed to this world.

He thought of Father Melchior. Arriving next month for quarterly inquisition. Sniffing for crypto-Catholics like a hound for blood.

He thought of his father. Trying to stop the mob. Failing.

"The Threshold Caves," Erik heard himself say. "Low tide. You know them?"

"Where we first transformed. Where fresh water meets salt." Brother Aldric's too-human eyes held his. "You would cross that threshold?"

Erik's hand found his iron cross again. Simple Lutheran severity against his chest. No ornate Catholic gold. Just plain iron.

But it had been forged in his father's smithy. Before the riot. Before the certainty.

"Low tide," Erik repeated. He couldn't explain why. His lips moved in fishing metaphors before his mind caught up. "If God casts nets, perhaps we are caught for purpose rather than punishment."

Brother Aldric wept again. The tears glistened on scales. Human enough to break doctrine. Inhuman enough to damn.

"Proverbs 3:5," the creature whispered. "Lean not unto thine own understanding."

Erik began untangling the net. His father's voice echoed across twenty years. The same verse. The night everything burned.

The morning light turned the harbor water gray. No certainty. No absolutes. Just the space between saved and damned where truth might live.