Signal 20: The Drowned Ones

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The sea holds memories older than any chart. Sailors whisper about waters where compasses fail, where the horizon swallows itself, and where a song waits just beneath the surface. Some call it myth, a tale spun in portside bars to frighten the untested, but those who've heard the melody say it's not a story, it's a summons. Tonight, we follow the fate of Saldara Island, a town that rose on the ocean's generosity and fell beneath its debt. Greed carved its streets, pearls built its houses, and the sea reclaimed it all in a single night of storm and song. What remains is not ruin, but a choir beneath the waves, still calling to those who sail too close. Captain Morris checked his charts three times before accepting what he saw. The coordinates pointed to Saldara Island, but only black water stretched to the horizon. His compass spun wildly, then settled on a heading that made no sense. The ocean here felt different, too still, too quiet. Then the singing started. It drifted up from somewhere far below, a melody that seemed to pull at something deep in his chest. Morris leaned over the boat's edge and peered into the depths. The water was so clear he could see straight down, farther than should have been possible. Something moved in that darkness, something large. Saldara Island had been a paradise built on greed. For three generations the townspeople had grown fat and wealthy on what they pulled from the ocean floor. Pearl divers brought up treasures that made other coastal towns green with envy, gold coins from sunken ships, jeweled daggers, chests of silver that had rested on the seabed for centuries. The Saldara families lived in houses that gleamed with mother of pearl inlays. Their children wore necklaces worth more than most people earned in a lifetime. The harbor overflowed with boats designed for one purpose, taking more from the sea. Every morning the divers would descend. Every evening they returned with armfuls of riches. The ocean seemed endless in its generosity, and the people of Saldara convinced themselves they deserved every glittering prize they claimed. But the sea had been giving up more than treasure. Ancient things rested on the ocean floor. Things that had been deliberately placed there, weighted down, meant to stay buried. The divers brought those up too, selling them to collectors who asked no questions about their origins. In the town square stood a pillar of black stone, carved with symbols that predated any known language. The oldest families claimed their ancestors had found it on the seabed and dragged it to the surface as a curiosity. Most people walked past it without a second glance. The symbols told a story, though few bothered to learn their meaning. They spoke of balance, of taking only what was freely given, of respecting the boundaries between the world above and the world below. The warnings had been carved by people who understood what happened when the ocean grew tired of giving. As the years passed, the waters around Saldara began to change. The currents shifted in ways that made no sense to the fishermen. Strange lights flickered beneath the waves at night. The pearl beds, once thick with shells, started to thin. The divers had to go deeper to find their prizes. Some came up talking about voices they'd heard underwater, calling to them from the darkest trenches. Others reported seeing shapes moving in their peripheral vision, always just beyond the reach of their diving lights. The town's priest tried to warn them. He'd spent months studying the black pillar, working to translate the ancient symbols. What he discovered made him call for an immediate halt to all diving operations. The townspeople laughed at him. Their houses were full of treasure. Their bank accounts overflowed. Why would they stop now when the ocean still held so much more? The priest pointed to the pillar and read aloud what he'd translated. The symbols spoke of a debt that accumulated with every treasure taken, a balance that would eventually demand payment. A guardian that slept in the deepest places, waiting for the scales to tip too far. But greed had made the people of Saldara deaf to warnings. They saw only the riches still waiting below. The divers prepared their equipment for another expedition, planning to venture deeper than ever before. That night the ocean began to sing. It started as a low humming that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The sound vibrated through the hulls of the boats in the harbor. It resonated in the foundations of the houses. Children woke crying, unable to explain why the melody filled them with dread. The adults dismissed it as wind through the sea caves. They went to bed clutching their treasures, dreaming of the riches they'd claim tomorrow. They didn't notice how the tide had begun to rise, or how the stars reflected strangely in the water that crept steadily toward their doors. The storm came without warning, as if the ocean had been holding its breath and suddenly decided to exhale. One moment the night was calm, stars reflecting perfectly in the still harbor water. The next, clouds boiled up from the horizon like smoke from some massive fire. But these weren't ordinary storm clouds. They moved too fast, too deliberately. They spiraled inward toward Saldara Island as if drawn by invisible strings. The air grew thick and heavy, pressing down on the town like a wet blanket. Maria Santos was the first to notice the water rising. She'd been unable to sleep, disturbed by the strange humming that seemed to vibrate through her bedroom walls. When she looked out her window, the harbor had crept halfway up the dock posts. That wasn't possible. High tide had passed hours ago. She called to her husband, but her voice was swallowed by a sound that made her blood freeze. The ocean was singing louder now, a chorus of voices that seemed to rise from the deepest trenches. The melody was beautiful and terrible, like a lullaby sung by something that had forgotten how to be human. Across town, other residents began to stir. The Valdez family woke to find seawater seeping under their front door. Old Henrik, who'd lived through every storm the island had seen in sixty years, stood on his porch and watched the water climb his steps with impossible speed. The tide should have been going out. Instead, it rose like a living thing, reaching for the houses with fingers of foam and salt. Mayor Castillo tried to organize an evacuation, but the townspeople refused to leave. Their homes held fortunes in pearls and gold. Generations of treasure filled their walls and basements. They'd weathered storms before. They could weather this one. Besides, where could they go? The boats in the harbor were already half submerged, their masts disappearing beneath water that climbed higher with each passing minute. The ocean sang louder, and now the melody carried words. Ancient words in a language that predated human speech, but somehow everyone understood their meaning. The sea was calling in its depths. The balance would be restored. Henrik was the first to realize what was happening. He'd seen the old maps, the ones that showed Saldara Island sitting in water that was supposed to be hundreds of feet deep. The island had always been an anomaly, a mountain peak that shouldn't exist where it did. Now he understood. They weren't being flooded, they were sinking. The water reached the second stories of the houses along the harbor. Families climbed to their roofs, clutching their most precious possessions. Children cried as their parents stuffed bags with jewelry and gold coins, refusing to abandon the wealth that had defined their lives. The singing grew so loud it seemed to come from inside their heads. Some of the townspeople began to sway with the rhythm, their eyes glazed over as the melody worked its way into their bones. Maria Santos watched her neighbor, old Mrs. Reyes, walk calmly down from her roof and into the rising water. She didn't struggle as the waves closed over her head. She simply disappeared beneath the surface, still humming along with the ocean's song. Others followed. One by one, the people of Saldara stepped into the water that had swallowed their streets, their homes, their entire world. They walked deeper, drawn by voices that promised them they wouldn't drown. And they didn't drown, that would have been a mercy. Instead, they found themselves breathing water as easily as air. Their lungs adapted, their bodies changed. They could see perfectly in the crushing darkness as their island settled into its true place on the ocean floor. The last thing Mayor Castillo saw before the water closed over the town square was the black stone pillar. The ancient symbols glowed with a cold green light, and for a moment he could read them clearly. The warning his priest had tried to share, the debt that had finally come due, then the water claimed him too, and Saldara Island completed its journey to the bottom of the sea. The storm clouds dispersed as quickly as they'd formed, leaving only calm water where a thriving town had stood for generations. But the singing continued, drifting up from the depths where the townspeople discovered what they'd become. The transformation began slowly, like a fever that crept through their bones. Maria Santos felt it first in her fingertips, a tingling that spread up her arms as she breathed the salt water that had become her new atmosphere. Her hands stretched longer, the skin between her fingers webbing like the membranes of some deep sea creature. She tried to scream, but only bubbles escaped her lips. The sound that emerged was something else entirely, a low, haunting note that harmonized perfectly with the ocean's endless song. Around her the other townspeople were changing too. Henrik's legs fused together, his spine extending as his body took on the sinuous shape of something built for swimming in the deepest trenches. His eyes, once blue as summer sky, turned black as the abyss that surrounded them. But the worst part wasn't the physical transformation, it was the awareness that remained locked inside their changing forms. Maria could still think, still remember her children's faces, still feel the love she'd had for her husband. The ocean had taken their bodies, but it left their minds intact to witness what they'd become. Mrs. Reyes, who'd tended the most beautiful garden on the island, watched her arm stretch into serpentine coils that could wrap around a ship's mast. Her mouth widened, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth designed for gripping prey that tried to escape toward the surface. Yet behind those predators' eyes, the gentle woman who'd baked cookies for the neighborhood children remained trapped and screaming. The townspeople found they could move through their sunken streets with fluid grace, their new bodies perfectly adapted to the crushing pressure of the deep. They swam past their old homes, now dark and filled with the treasures they'd died trying to protect. Gold coins scattered across waterlogged floors, pearl necklaces tangled in the branches of drowned trees. Mayor Castillo's transformation was perhaps the cruelest. His body had become massive, easily three times its original size, with arms that could stretch the length of a city block. Tentacle-like appendages sprouted from his back, each one tipped with sensory organs that could detect the slightest vibration in the water above. He'd been the one to encourage the endless diving expeditions. He'd dismissed the priest's warnings and pushed the town deeper into greed. Now the ocean had made him its primary hunter, equipped with every tool needed to drag ships and their crews down to join the underwater city. The transformed townspeople discovered they could communicate through the water itself, their thoughts rippling between them like sonar. They shared their horror, their regret, their desperate desire to warn the world above about what waited in the depths. But the ocean had other plans for their voices. The sea had made them its guardians, tasked with protecting the treasures that now belonged to the deep. Every coin, every jewel, every precious artifact that Saldara had pulled from the ocean floor was now part of a vast underwater horde that stretched across the sunken town. And the ocean wanted more. The transformed residents felt the compulsion like a physical force pressing against their minds. They were to sing, they were to call, they were to lure other treasure hunters down to join their eternal collection. Maria tried to resist, but her voice joined the chorus despite her will. The melody that poured from her throat was beautiful and terrible, designed to appeal to the deepest desires of anyone who heard it. It spoke of riches beyond imagination, of treasures waiting just beneath the waves. The song carried promises that weren't entirely lies. There were treasures in the depths around Saldara, mountains of gold and jewels accumulated over centuries of greed. But the price of claiming those riches was transformation, imprisonment, becoming another voice in the ocean's choir. Henrik found he could see far beyond the boundaries of their sunken town. His new senses detected ships passing overhead, their crews unaware of the city that rested beneath them. He could hear their conversations, feel their heartbeats, sense their dreams of wealth and adventure. When the right ship passed over, one carrying treasure hunters or salvage crews, people whose greed matched what the townspeople had once possessed, the compulsion to sing became irresistible. The ocean had turned them into perfect predators, but predators with human souls that remembered what it felt like to love, to hope, to dream of something beyond endless hunger. They were trapped between what they'd been and what they'd become, forced to participate in the same cycle of greed that had destroyed them. Mrs. Reyes tried to warn a passing fishing boat by creating turbulence in the water, hoping to scare them away. But the ocean's will was stronger than her own. Instead of warnings, her actions only made the mysterious disturbance more intriguing to the crew above. They were no longer human, but they weren't quite monsters either. They were something worse, people who remembered being people, forced to become the very thing they would have once feared. The ocean had given them eternal life in exchange for eternal servitude, and there was no escape from the depths that had become their prison. The song continued, drifting upward through the dark water, waiting for the next ship to hear its call. The first ship to answer the call was the merchant vessel Prosperity, carrying a crew of twelve and a hold full of diving equipment. Captain Rodriguez had heard rumors of a rich wreck site in these waters, stories whispered in port bars about treasures that could make a man wealthy beyond his dreams. When the singing reached his ears, he knew the stories were true. The melody drifted across the calm evening water like perfume on a breeze. It spoke directly to the part of his soul that had driven him to sea in the first place, the hunger for something more than the ordinary world could offer. His crew gathered at the rail, their eyes fixed on the dark water below. You hear that, Captain, his first mate whispered, sounds like like voices. Rodriguez nodded, unable to look away from the depths. The song promised gold beyond counting, pearls the size of a man's fist, treasures from a dozen sunken civilizations waiting in the darkness below. All they had to do was dive down and claim what was rightfully theirs. The rational part of his mind tried to object. Ships didn't just disappear and leave their cargo behind. Treasure didn't sing to passing vessels, but the melody wrapped around his thoughts like silk, smothering doubt with desire. One by one, his crew began suiting up in their diving gear. They moved with the jerky efficiency of sleepwalkers, their eyes glazed and distant. The song had taken hold of them completely, turning their professional caution into reckless need. Rodriguez was the first to go over the side. The water welcomed him like an old friend, warm despite the depth. As he descended, the singing grew louder, more complex. He could make out individual voices now, each one promising him a different treasure. A woman's voice spoke of pearls that glowed with their own inner light. A man's deeper tones described gold coins stamped with the seals of forgotten empires. Children's voices giggled about jeweled daggers and silver chalices hidden in underwater caves. The pressure should have been crushing at this depth, but Rodriguez felt nothing but anticipation. His diving equipment seemed unnecessary. He found he could breathe the salt water as easily as air. His body moved through the liquid darkness with impossible grace. Then he saw the lights below. Saldara's sunken streets glowed with an eerie phosphorescence that outlined every building, every doorway, every window of the drowned town. The architecture was beautiful in its decay, coral and seaweed having claimed the structures without destroying their essential character. And moving between the buildings, Rodriguez saw the townspeople. They were magnificent in their transformed state, serpentine and graceful as they glided through their underwater domain. Their black eyes reflected the strange light, and their voices rose in harmonious welcome as they approached the descending divers. Maria Santos reached Rodriguez first, her elongated form coiling around him in what felt like an embrace. Her voice joined his thoughts directly, bypassing his ears entirely. She showed him visions of the treasures that waited in the town below. Rooms full of gold, chests overflowing with precious stones, artifacts from civilizations that had ruled the seas before recorded history began. All he had to do was come deeper, just a little deeper. Rodriguez's crew followed him down, each one guided by their own transformed host. Mrs. Reyes took the young engineer by the hand, her webbed fingers gentle despite their inhuman appearance. Henrik wrapped his massive form around the ship's navigator, carrying him toward the town square where the greatest treasures lay waiting. The divers felt no fear as they were drawn deeper into Saldara's streets. The transformed townspeople were so welcoming, so eager to share their underwater paradise. They spoke of the peace they'd found in the depths, the freedom from the surface world's troubles. But as the divers reached the town center, something began to change. The water grew thicker, more viscous. Their diving suits started to feel restrictive, unnecessary. The equipment that had allowed them to breathe began to seem like an impediment to the new life waiting below. Rodriguez tried to signal his crew to surface, but his hands moved sluggishly through the dense water. His thoughts felt clouded, distant. The singing was inside his head now, rewiring his brain to accept what was happening. One by one, his crew began to shed their diving gear. The oxygen tanks fell away, no longer needed. The masks came off, revealing faces that could somehow breathe the salt water without drowning. Their bodies started to stretch and change, adapting to their new environment. The transformation was faster for them than it had been for the original townspeople. The ocean had learned efficiency in the years since Saldara's fall. Rodriguez watched his engineer's arms elongate into flexible coils. His navigators' eyes turned black as coal, his first mate's legs fused together into a powerful tail, but their minds remained intact, just as the townspeople's had. They could think, remember, understand what was happening to them. They just couldn't stop it or escape it. Rodriguez felt his own body beginning to change as Maria Santos guided him toward a building that had once been the town's bank. The vaults were open now, their contents spilled across the ocean floor in glittering heaps, gold coins mixed with pearl necklaces, jeweled crowns rested beside silver chalices. The treasures were real. Everything the song had promised was here, waiting to be claimed, but the price of claiming them was becoming part of the collection itself. As Rodriguez's transformation completed, he found himself adding his voice to the eternal chorus. His thoughts joined the collective consciousness of Saldara's prisoners, bound together by their shared fate and their compulsion to lure others down to join them. The prosperity drifted empty on the surface above, its engines still running, its radio crackling with unanswered calls from the harbor master. Eventually, the fuel ran out and the ship went silent, another mystery for the Coast Guard to investigate. But far below, twelve new voices had joined the ocean's song. The Coast Guard sealed off the waters around Saldara's coordinates after the seventh ship vanished without explanation. They posted warnings about dangerous currents and underwater hazards, but the real reason remained classified in files that few would ever see. Old fishermen still work the edges of the restricted zone on calm nights. They know better than to venture too close, but sometimes they hear the singing drifting across the water. They recognize it for what it is. Not a promise of treasure, but a warning about the price of greed. The ocean keeps its prisoners in their sunken paradise, and they keep adding to their collection. Every voice that joins the chorus makes the song more beautiful, more irresistible to the next ship that passes overhead. Greed built their prison. Greed fills it still. The ocean is not cruel, it is patient. It waits for balance, and when that balance is broken, it reminds us in the only language it knows. The people of Saldara are still down there, changed, bound, and singing. Their voices rise through the water not as warning, not as invitation, but as both. If the melody reaches you one night when the sea is too calm and the stars shine too perfectly, remember this: treasure is never free, and some debts can only be paid in lives. If this story stayed with you, follow Signal 20, share it with someone who carries salt in their veins, and leave a review to help more listeners hear the voices that never stop singing.