Page 10

RYDER

S omething’s wrong.

Not just a twitch-in-the-gut, off-season algae bloom kind of wrong.

Deep wrong.

Old wrong.

The lake is colder than it should be for late summer. The wind’s blowing west when the clouds say east. And this morning, I pulled three silver scales off the dock that weren’t mine and they hummed .

No one else noticed. Not yet.

But I do.

I’ve lived in this skin too long not to know when the deep is whispering.

And it’s not whispering anymore.

It’s warning.

“Julie,” I say, stepping into her office mid-lunch, clipboard in hand but forgotten. “We need to talk.”

She looks up from her soup like I just handed her a dead fish. “Oh no. That tone. That’s your ‘camp’s doomed’ tone.”

“I’m serious.”

She gestures at the seat across from her. “That’s even worse.”

I sit, hard. “The lake’s changing.”

“Because of the rift?” she asks, already reaching for her notes.

“Yes. But it’s more than that. It’s behaving intentionally. ”

She arches a brow. “Water doesn’t have intent.”

“It does when it’s ancient,” I say, voice low.

That gets her attention.

“Ryder,” she says slowly, “how ancient are we talking?”

“Pre-human settlement. Maybe older.”

Julie sits back like someone pulled the floor out from under her chair.

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

I pull a soaked page from my bag one of the old ward maps Torack sent up. She leans over, eyes narrowing.

“This symbol,” I tap it, “only activates when sentient aquatic magic starts probing borders. It’s glowing.”

Julie swears again. “You’re sure?”

“I felt it in the water.”

A beat.

She looks at me, careful. “And how bad is it?”

I pause.

My instincts scream the answer. Bad enough I should be pulling every camper from the water and ringing the old bells.

But I also know panic spreads faster than magic.

So I lie. Softly.

“It’s manageable. For now.”

She studies me. “That’s not the whole truth.”

“It’s the truth I need you to act on without evacuating the entire camp.”

Julie closes her eyes, sighs like it hurts.

Then nods. “What do you need?”

“Permission to deploy the anchor stones. The big ones. And to reroute all swim drills to the north curve.”

“Done.”

“And Callie needs to know.”

Julie raises an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“She’s in it. Whether she likes it or not.”

“Or whether you like it or not,” she mutters.

I ignore that.

Mostly.

Later, I walk the shoreline, checking tide marks. There’s a slick, dark ridge I haven’t seen in three years, left by surge-magic as it retracts. The reeds twitch like they’re breathing.

And I swear, when I kneel at the edge, I hear something humming in the silt.

The same hum from my dream.

It knows I’m watching.

Worse?

It’s watching back.

She finds me near the boathouse, crouched in the grass by the tide ridge, running my fingers through a smear of dark silt that stinks like old copper.

“Hey,” she says, voice softer than usual. “You look like you’re trying to solve the lake with angry touching.”

I don’t look up. “It’s bleeding.”

“What?”

I hold up my hand. Black water drips from my palm. “It’s coming from deeper than before. And it’s old.”

She steps closer, crouches beside me. Her eyes scan the shoreline, the ripple pattern. She’s learning. Fast.

Then she says it.

The obvious thing.

“The lake’s this bad… why don’t we shut it down?”

I meet her gaze.

And I hate the answer.

“If we shut the lake,” I say, “we shut the camp.”

She frowns. “So?”

“So every parent pulls their kid. Every sponsor yanks funding. The board panics, and this place turns into an abandoned cautionary tale.”

Callie stares at me.

“So it’s PR,” she says slowly. “That’s what’s keeping us in the water.”

“It’s more than that.” My voice tightens. “This camp is the only place some of these kids feel safe. If we lose it, really lose it, we don’t get it back.”

She doesn’t say anything at first.

“That’s a hell of a line to balance.”

I nod. “I’ve been walking it for three summers.”

She touches my arm. Just lightly. “Then I guess I better learn to walk it with you.”

And the weight on my shoulders shifts.

Not lighter.

But less lonely.

That night at dinner, I try to focus.

I do.

The kids are loud, the stew’s bland, and Julie keeps sneaking glances at me like I’m going to announce doomsday between bites of cornbread.

But my eyes keep drifting.

To her.

Callie’s on the far end of the table, perched on the bench backward, laughing with the junior counselors as she re-enacts something dramatic with a juice box and a fork.

The kids near her are in hysterics. She’s radiant, wild and full of light like a bonfire that doesn’t burn but pulls you in anyway.

And I hate how often I’m pulled in.

She catches my gaze mid-laugh. Doesn’t stop smiling. Just lifts an eyebrow, like what are you looking at, lifeguard?

I look away.

Pretend to read the safety roster again. But the names blur. The numbers don’t land.

Because all I can think about is her voice echoing in my head.

Then I guess I better learn to walk it with you.

And that shouldn’t matter more than tide shifts or anchor placement.

But gods help me, it does.

The lake is changing.

But so am I.

And I don’t know which scares me more.