text: In 2017, I was part of a secret maritime task force called The Leviathan Killers. We belonged to the US Navy and had close to sixty members, who were mostly handpicked from DEVGRU, Delta Force, and various NATO UDT teams. We were the best of the best in maritime combat, and we specialized and trained to kill deep-sea threats in heavy gear. We would usually operate between one to eight thousand feet, even more, so we used specialized and classified suits designed by the best combat engineers. We were all extremely proficient at swimming, weapons use, and every underwater combat technique was battered into our heads as second-hand nature. Given the rise of hostile activity in the deep oceans in the late 2010s, we frequently went on more operations. We would handle explosive disposal, naval sabotage, rescue, and intel, but we mainly found and destroyed extremely hostile deep-sea organisms with precision. The weapons we used were various modified underwater rifles and explosives, which were of an extremely high caliber due to the recoil of the guns being significantly lowered in the deep ocean. I joined while I was in DEVGRU, and I was offered a spot on The Leviathan Killers. I was a member for six years when I went on one of our most eventful operations. \*\*\* We were going to the Mariana Trench. It was deeper than any other operation we had ever been on, so we had to use experimental suits to survive the temperatures and insane pressure. Death would be mercy at those depths. Deep in the Mariana Trench, a distress signal from a US research submersible had gone out a day before we had deployed there. The researchers in that submersible were dead, but what caught our interest was the fact that the submersible's readings still showed that living organisms were surrounding the submersible, and were taken as hostile. The Leviathan Killers were deployed to investigate. We arrived on a large warship and dove directly into the trench in our suits, and as I put on the suit, I talked with the marine biologist and expert of the trench. "Doc," I said. "Any chance of leviathans down there?" "Possibly," the marine biologist said. "Hard to tell, the food sources down there are sparse if there are any." "Then what the fuck destroyed the submersible?" "We don't know." "How deep can these suits go?" "Fifteen thousand feet, at the absolute maximum." "Why that deep?" "The ocean is much deeper than we think." "I can't imagine the fucking things that live that deep." "There are horrors within the abyss." With the weight carrying us deeply, we descended fast into the abyss. I looked around to see the light disappearing, and I held onto my rifle as we descended. Two dozen other members descended along with me, and within a few hours, we had reached the destination, the bottom of the deepest place in the world, at the exact coordinates of the submersible's location. It was pitch black, and the darkness was pierced as we turned on our extremely bright helmet lights, and searched the wreckage. The research submersible was fucking destroyed, and it was clear that it wasn't just the pressure that had done to it. I walked over to the wreckage while the others watched for any signs of movement, and I noticed something inside the wreckage. I reached down, my light illuminating a wriggling, pale tendril inside. I showed it to my team, and we were instantly on guard. It was cut off recently. In the distance, my teammate spotted a red light blinking in the far distance, only visible due to the sheer blackness of the trench. It was far, but steadily approaching, and we couldn't hit it this far. When it got within six hundred meters, we began taking shots at it. As soon as the first bullet hit the red light, all our suit's lights, our floodlights, and any source of light instantly cut out. Now let me describe a feeling I hadn't felt in a long time. Fear. I had gone on raids on terrorist groups in the Middle East, assassinated the deadliest extremists and insurgency leaders, killed monsters both human and not, been shot, been stabbed, been gassed, been tortured, and had tortured countless people, and as a result, my sense of fear and adrenaline had significantly numbed. I had killed literal leviathans before. But at that moment, when all our lights went out at the deepest hell we could descend to, and as the red light approached, I felt every sense of fear and primal instinct come back to me. That feeling was primal, as if I recognized that red light from the worst nightmares of my ancestors, and standing at the bottom of the ocean holding a rifle, I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to seek refuge. We were blind, and anything we shot at, we would definitely miss. It was absolutely pitch black, darker than anything else I had experienced, even at depths close to these. It was the void, and there was only one thing penetrating it was something that I couldn't see, didn't want to see. It approached, and no matter how closely it got, it seemed to never grow or shrink. I had no idea where my teammates were, my lights, communications, and electronics weren't working, and the red light was rapidly approaching. I was stepping back blindly, into the void, slowly, as the light approached. It was only twenty feet away when it suddenly cut out, and everything turned black. All thoughts of my mission, my teammates, my family, and my country, all that I had fought so hard for instantly disappeared as I turned the other direction and ran. The water resistance made my footsteps feel like an eternity, and I would never escape this thing, but I sure as hell tried. I suddenly felt a commotion as water rushed around me, objects brushed past me, and suddenly my headlight, and only my headlight, turned on and I screamed. I was mostly used to extreme gore, but this was something else. Something else fucking entirely. My teammates, all who were married and had kids, the people who I had fought alongside and would die for, were now ripped to fucking shreds. Every single one of them, and their suits, was torn apart, and their organs were ripped out, their skin pale and crushed by the pressure, their faces were ripped off and floating in the water. The deepwater was flooded with crimson, and I saw the decapitated head of one of my teammates float in front of me with an expression of horror I can not describe. I dropped my rifle and ran. I ran slowly but I ran, my dying light illuminating the bare seafloor, as I constantly felt something brush against me. I was running, closing my eyes, slowly making I was across the seafloor, my steps dragged out as I kept screaming, and screaming until my lungs were hoarse. I coughed up blood. The suits were supposed to give us air for up to ten hours, and I ran and ran and ran across the seafloor, screaming and constantly turning back, only to see nothing. But there was something, hiding within the pitch black of the ocean, and the primal sense of utter dread was rising every second, besides the fact that I could neither see, feel, or hear anything near me anymore. But I could sense that there was something, something horrible, worse than anything I could imagine within that blackness. I must have run a mile or two the hours I ran, and I suddenly stopped. Only a few meters away from me, illuminated by my headlight, was an enormous, endless, black trench within the Mariana Trench. It was extremely deep, even from my limited visibility I could tell it was a true abyss. Something swam past me, something fucking huge, and I turned to see that fucking red light approaching me at breakneck speed. *Any chance of leviathans down there?* With no other options, I jumped into the abyss, the trench within the trench. *Possibly, hard to tell, the food sources down there are sparse if there are any.* I sunk deeper and my lungs burned as I screamed and screamed, and my headlight touched nothing illuminating nothing, as I descended into the void. *Then what the fuck destroyed the submersible?* I kept sinking, and the horror was so bad I wanted to kill myself, and I tried ripping my suit off to expose and kill myself to the deep. *We don't know.* I looked beneath me, to see nothing but utter black envelop me, and it kept ongoing, and I wondered how deep the ocean truly was. I had devoted so much of my life to it, and yet now it was going to kill me. *How deep can these suits go?* I sunk and continued to for hours. Time became irrelevant, and I was stuck in my mind, and I constantly punched my helmet, and the fear was driving me mad. *Fifteen thousand feet, at the absolute maximum.* I couldn't form thoughts, the utter dread was screaming at me that something huge and something unknown was watching me, following me as I sunk to my death. I closed my eyes and screamed, blood and pieces of my lung splattering the inside of my helmet. *Why that deep?* Hours and hours passed, my oxygen slowly ran out, and I finally hit the floor of the trench. I opened my eyes, the taste of copper in my mouth, my throat burning as I slowly walked forward, madness and fear pounding into my mind. I was at the bottom, the true end to the deepest point, the deepest hell on earth. *The ocean is much deeper than we think.* I walked aimlessly, waiting for my oxygen to run out so I could be granted the sweet bliss of death. In the distance, I saw the fucking red light, that fucking red light blink into sight, and it approached quickly as I screamed once more. *I can't imagine the fucking things that live that deep.* I wanted death. Death, and nothing else. I ran towards the light as it approached, screaming and closing my eyes, and waiting for the beautiful feeling of my flesh ripping as I died and left this wretched abyss. I ran and ran until I slowly stopped and I opened my eyes. The red light was in front of me, and my headlight was illuminating it. I looked up and floating in front of me, at the deepest hell on earth, I saw an organism, so horrifying, perfect, beautiful, dreadful, unholy, demonic, eldritch, and I fell to my knees and experienced a fate much worse than death.