The Tide That Swallowed Sunday

The water is rising. Not slowly, like the scientists predicted. Fast. Two meters last week. Three meters the week before. London is gone. Amsterdam is a memory. Shanghai exists only in photographs. The surviving population has fled to the mountains — cramped, hungry, and turning on each other. Marine biologist Dr. Nia Okonkwo refuses to flee. She stays on the coast, alone on a repurposed oil rig, studying the ocean that is devouring the world. What she discovers changes everything. The water is not rising because of melting ice caps. The water is rising because something is pushing it from below. Something massive. Something alive. Something that is waking up after ten thousand years of sleep. Nia sends one final transmission before the rig loses power: “Do not fight it. It is not a flood. It is a migration. And we are standing in its path.” The world does not listen. They build walls. They fire missiles. The tide swallows Sunday. And then it keeps coming.