Awakening in the Abyss

I woke up from what felt like the deepest sleep of my life.

The first thing that hit me wasn’t the usual morning haze or the familiar creak of my old bed. It was pressure. Crushing, bone-deep pressure that made every inch of my body feel like it was being squeezed in a giant fist.

My eyes snapped open. Darkness. Not the comfortable dark of a bedroom at night, but absolute, suffocating black. The kind of black that seemed to have weight.

Where the hell am I?

I tried to move, but my limbs responded sluggishly, as if the very air—no, the water—was fighting me. Water. I was underwater. Completely submerged, yet somehow still breathing. The realization should have sent me into a panic, but my body felt strangely calm. Too calm.

A faint blue glow appeared in front of my eyes. Not a light in the distance, but something floating right in my field of vision. Letters. No, a window. A system window, like something straight out of the web novels I used to read before bed.

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Fantasy… Gallery? The words floated there, glowing softly, before the window minimized into a small icon at the corner of my vision. I instinctively knew I could open it again with a thought, like muscle memory from years of playing games.

But that last line. Nine kilometers. Nine. The pressure at this depth should have turned me into paste instantly. Yet here I was, floating, breathing, thinking.

I looked down at my body. Same clothes I’d fallen asleep in—old t-shirt and sweatpants. My skin looked normal, but I could feel something different. A dense, almost electric energy humming through the water around me. Mana, maybe? The kind of thing that only existed in stories.

This had to be a dream. A really, really vivid dream. Any second now I’d wake up in my tiny apartment, reach for my phone, and scroll through the usual forums to laugh about weird isekai stories.

But the cold was too real. The pressure was too real. And the faint, distant sounds echoing through the water—low, rumbling groans that didn’t sound like anything from Earth—were definitely too real.

I tried to swim upward, but the water resisted like molasses. Every movement took tremendous effort. My lungs didn’t burn, though. Whatever had brought me here had apparently solved the whole “breathing underwater” problem.

That’s when the second window appeared. This one was different—darker, with a red border that pulsed like a warning.

Monsters. Of course there were monsters. Because being dumped at the bottom of the ocean in a fantasy world wasn’t bad enough.

I opened the Gallery icon with a thought. The interface unfolded like a glowing forum page, complete with categories, trending posts, and comment sections. It looked exactly like the Korean web novel forums I used to browse late at night.

The posts were moving. Real time. People were actually posting from this world. Some of the usernames looked familiar from my old browsing habits. Others were completely new.

I scrolled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through the interface in my mind, still floating in the crushing dark. A private message notification blinked at me.

The message sent a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the freezing water. This wasn’t a dream. This was real. I was in a fantasy world with some kind of connected gallery system, and I’d been dropped into the worst possible starting location.

I focused on the status window again. A new prompt appeared, shimmering with options.

The distant rumbling was getting closer. Something large was moving through the water, and I could feel the pressure waves pushing against my skin.

No time to overthink. I made my choice.

Immediately, the system window flashed green, and new information flooded my mind. The Gallery interface expanded, showing dozens of new posts reacting to my selection in real time.

I started swimming—not toward the surface, which seemed impossibly far, but toward a faint glow I could now make out in the distance. Ruins, maybe? The silhouette of something ancient and massive loomed in the dark.

Whatever this world had in store for me, one thing was clear.

I wasn’t getting home anytime soon.

And the deep sea had no mercy for beginners.