Salah had faced many things in life—stormy seas, sleepless nights, the pain of watching his wife grow sicker by the day—but nothing had prepared him for this. A glowing baby from a mysterious egg, wrapped in netting, lying peacefully in the corner of his home.
The child never cried. He didn't seem hungry or cold. He simply stared around with curious golden eyes that shimmered faintly, as if he could see more than the walls around him. The baby's skin was almost translucent in places—like a thin veil over bioluminescent veins—and from his arms and back trailed faint, jellyfish-like tendrils. They hovered in the air like drifting threads of silk.
Salah sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, watching the baby breathe. The longer he looked, the calmer he felt. It was like sitting beside a quiet ocean at night.
He didn't understand this child.
But he didn't fear him either.
The next morning, Tex arrived, flustered and red-faced. "You brought something cursed back with you, didn't you?" he demanded, stomping into Salah's home without waiting for permission. "I couldn't sleep. The sea's been whispering weird things all night."
Salah hesitated.
Then, wordlessly, he stepped aside and pointed.
Tex froze in place as soon as he saw the baby.
"What in the...?"
The child tilted his head at Tex and blinked slowly. One of the glowing tendrils drifted toward Tex's hand—barely brushing his skin.
A spark.
Tex yelped and stumbled back, clutching his wrist. "He shocked me!"
"It didn't hurt you," Salah said quickly. "He's just… reacting. Like a sea creature would."
Tex stared. "That thing ain't normal. You should have tossed it back in the ocean."
"I think he saved my wife."
Tex looked at Salah like he was losing his mind.
"I'm serious. Come back tonight. You'll see."
That evening, Salah did what he'd been afraid to do the day before.
He carried the baby to the bedroom where his wife lay.
She looked thinner than ever—her cheeks hollow, eyes dim. But when Salah stepped in with the glowing child in his arms, she opened her eyes wider than they'd been in days.
"What… is that?" she whispered.
"I found him. In the sea," Salah said softly. "He was inside an egg. Alive."
His wife raised a trembling hand. "Let me see him."
Salah placed the baby gently beside her. For a moment, the child didn't move. Then, slowly, a jellyfish-like tendril stretched toward her wrist. Salah almost pulled him back—but she didn't flinch. The tendril wrapped loosely around her wrist like a soft ribbon.
And then, she sighed—a deep, full breath Salah hadn't heard in weeks.
The baby glowed slightly brighter. Her skin, though still pale, seemed warmer. Her breathing steadied.
She smiled.
"I don't know what he is," she said, voice soft and clear, "but he's not here to harm us."
Later that night, with the baby resting in her arms, Salah sat on the floor, eyes wide with wonder.
"We can't keep calling him 'the baby,'" his wife said gently.
"I... there was something written on the shell," Salah said after a moment. "Just before it crumbled away. A name."
"What was it?"
He looked at her. Then at the child.
"Euryale."
His wife traced the glowing tendril around her wrist with a fingertip.
"It suits him."
From that moment, the child was no longer a mystery, nor a creature from the deep.
He was Euryale—the glowing boy from the sea, reborn not as a warrior, but as a baby in the arms of two villagers who knew nothing of destiny…
…but who would one day raise a god.