Page 19

CALLIE

T en minutes.

That’s all it takes for everything to go sideways.

One moment, we’re doing morning warm-ups, half the campers groggy and dragging their feet across the sand like hungover sea turtles. The next chaos.

“Where’s Evan?” Emily yells, her face pale.

My heart hiccups.

I do a fast headcount.

I come up two short.

“Sam and Evan were right behind us,” someone says. “I saw them by the snack table, I swear”

I don’t wait.

I take off sprinting.

Ryder’s already moving, faster than me. His boots hit the dock like war drums.

My lungs burn, but I don’t stop until I’m at the water.

And that’s when I see them.

Just past the shoreline Evan and Sam.

Standing ankle-deep in the lake like they’ve wandered into someone else’s dream.

Their eyes are… wrong.

Wide.

Blank.

Like they’ve been hypnotized by a thousand years of drowning.

I shout their names, but they don’t flinch.

Ryder’s already in the water. He moves fast, cutting through the shallows like he’s part of it. He reaches them, puts a hand on each shoulder, and that’s when they blink.

Both boys shudder like they’ve just come up from underwater, even though they’ve barely moved.

“I… I was floating,” Evan mumbles.

“But I didn’t go in,” Sam adds. “It was calling. I just…”

He trails off.

I grab a towel, drop to my knees beside them as Ryder guides them out.

“You guys okay?” I ask, voice too sharp, too fast.

Evan blinks at me. “Are we back?”

I don’t know what that means.

And I don’t like it.

Later, Ryder and I sit on the cabin steps while the boys sleep off whatever spell they wandered through.

Julie called the doc on standby, some old sea medic who’s half mage, half conspiracy theorist. He’s checking for magical residue now.

But I don’t need him to tell me what I already know.

This was the lake.

And it wasn’t subtle.

“They were drawn,” I say.

Ryder nods. “The rift reached.”

My throat tightens. “And they heard it.”

“It’s escalating.”

He looks tired. More than tired haunted.

I bump my shoulder into his. “You okay?”

“No,” he says. “But I’ve got you.”

That shouldn’t make me melt.

But it does.

Because it means he’s letting me in.

Really in.

“I should’ve seen it,” I say quietly. “Should’ve been faster.”

“No,” he says firmly. “This wasn’t you.”

“But they were my campers.”

“They were ours,” he corrects. “And we got them back.”

I don’t say anything.

Because part of me wants to believe him.

But part of me still hears Evan’s voice, soft and lost.

Are we back?

What happens when one of them doesn’t come back?

What happens when we don’t?

Ryder shifts beside me, arms braced on his knees, staring out at nothing.

Then he says it.

Quiet. Heavy.

“The magic is growing sentient.”

I freeze.

“What do you mean, growing ?”

“It wasn’t like this before,” he mutters. “The rift’s always had pull. It feeds on emotion, memory… instinct. But now? It’s thinking. It’s targeting. ”

I turn toward him fully. “You’re saying it knew those boys would come to the water?”

“I think it called to them.”

The bottom of my stomach drops.

He continues, voice tight. “It’s not just reacting anymore. It’s choosing. Learning.”

I shake my head. “That’s not how wild magic works.”

“It is when it’s old enough. Deep enough.”

“But… how? Why now?”

Ryder looks at me, and for once, he doesn’t hold back.

“Because I’m here.”

“What?”

He swallows. “Because I came back. And the part of me that’s connected to it, it knows. It’s not just reaching for prey now. It’s reaching for me. ”

The silence between us pulses like a heartbeat.

“And maybe,” he adds quietly, “because it knows I’m not afraid of it anymore.”

I reach out, grab his hand.

He lets me.

“You’re not alone in this,” I say. “Not anymore.”

He looks at our joined hands like it’s the only thing tethering him to the shore.

“Let’s hope that’s enough,” he says.

And neither of us dares say the rest out loud.

What if it isn’t?

Later that night, when the camp finally goes quiet and even the lake seems to rest, I sneak out of my cabin.

I’m not heading to the dock this time.

Instead, I duck into the storage shed behind the old staff building, the one Julie keeps locked with a charm and a lie about “rusty nails and aggressive raccoons.”

I picked a similar charm while trying to escape detention in high school. It works.

Inside, the smell of dust and salt hits me hard.

I flick on the hanging bulb and move straight to the back shelf, fingers tracing old spines of leather-bound manuals and arcane first-aid guides.

I find what I’m looking for wedged between a rusted anchor and a jar of glowbeetle resin.

Tethered Tides: Wardcraft for Elemental Water Dwellings.

It’s ancient. Heavy. Probably illegal in at least three dimensions.

I crack it open and start flipping.

Most of it is gibberish. Runic phrasing, enchantment matrices, elemental focuses stuff way above my magic grade.

But some of it?

Some of it makes sense.

Not enough to do anything with. I’m not a witch. I can’t cast this stuff. But I can learn.

I can prepare.

Because the rift’s not just rising, it’s thinking.

And if I’m gonna stand beside Ryder through this, I need to know more than just how to float.

I make notes. Sketch sigils. Dog-ear pages.

I don’t tell him.

Not yet.

Because if this goes bad, really bad, I need something to fall back on.

Something even the lake won’t see coming.