You don't truly know your strength until the world tries to break you.
Jaka stood at the stern, broad-shouldered, copper hair damp from the lake spray, scanning the water with calm and ease as they sailed out into the lake
At the bow, Kai tossed a net out into the lake pausing as he watched sink down below the surface. He crouched low, wiry frame braced, red hair whipping across his freckled face as he leaned forward, gaze flicking toward the ridge where the Solaryn Tree rose tall against the pale dusk.
Mist softened the restless waves, swallowing the warped docks and muffling gull cries. The world held its breath beneath the last fading stars.
Kai dropped to one knee, dipping a gloved hand into the lake to catch the taut twine, watching the wake that fractured the glassy surface.
While Jaka worked in a practiced silence, mending with precision, taller by a head, his rough hands moved steadily over the nets, checking for tears and weed snarls, forearms flexing beneath rolled sleeves as he pulled each length of line.
Kai's fingers picked at a knot, shoulders tight, eyes flicking up at each creak of boat or wing beat of a gull. Still, each tug was deliberate, a quiet insistence on order in a world that rarely offered it.
Kai pulled another length of net toward him, expecting the usual tangle of weeds or the cold slap of fish. But his glove had caught on something different, It was an old fishhook. Blackened by time, barbed and crooked.
He frowned, tugging his glove free.
It was small, delicate, gilded at the curve like some ceremonial charm. The barb was too fine for lake catch, the metal too smooth. It shimmered strangely in the net, the wet glint of it bending the dusk light in ways it shouldn't.
As Kai twisted it in his palm, the hook shifted, almost of its own accord.
Then the voice came.
Not Jaka's. Not his own. It was strangely familiar but felt lost with time.
"The Watchers are coming, Kai."
It whispered beneath his skin, behind his heartbeat, as if the words had always been there, waiting for the wound to let them in.
Kai jerked his head up, scanning the mist. Jaka hadn't spoken. His brother was still working on the net, quiet, steady.
Their grandfather's absence pressed heavier than the fog.
Gulls dipped low, pulling Kai's gaze upward, each shadow stirring hope or fear. Beyond the shifting fog, the Tree rose, silver limbs twisted like frozen lightning. Near its highest branches, three dark shapes hovered, too still to be birds.
"Do you see them?" Kai's voice broke the hush, a question lately he had asked too many times to count.
Jaka paused, water dripping from the line, "Not now."
"Look there! Three objects!" Kai exclaimed, sharp and certain.
"It's nothing." Jaka kept his tone calm, though a thread of tension undercut it. "There's nothing there."
A wave slapped the hull, rocking the skiff, the solar panels humming faintly as they caught the light, the sound loud in the quiet that followed.
Kai inhaled, the air tasting of salt and algae, focusing on the Tree, patient and unblinking.
"if the silence ever breathes…" Kai mumbled under his breath.
His grandfather's words from the night before returned like the hush before a wave breaks, carrying the scent of smoke and lake water, the memory of a calloused hand on Kai's shoulder. It burned, sharp the ache of being left behind.
Jaka responded "What did you say?
However, Kai ignored him, his fingers reached for the small braid at his neck, tugging it once, the way their grandfather had during storm nights
"Jaka." No answer. "Please. Just look," Kai pleaded.
Jaka stepped to the console, hand poised above the switch, dim light reflecting off the water and the pendant that rested against his chest. The skiff's low hum filled the air.
Kai felt it, a vibration threading beneath his skin, impossible to ignore.
"We're heading to North Bend," Jaka said, softer but unyielding. "We'll fish again tomorrow."
Kai didn't move. Didn't respond. Didn't look away.
Jaka pressed the switch, and the engine purred deeper as the skiff slid forward, cleaving the lake's calm as they turned toward the distant shallows.
Kai thought he glimpsed something beneath them, a dark silhouette pacing the skiff, dissolving the instant he tried to see it clearly.
Jaka closed his eyes feeling the air sharp with the coming rain. The skiff's low hum matched the pulse in his veins. When he opened his eyes again, Kai was still fixed on the Tree.
They moved steadily across Theryn Lake, the hull cleaving the water silently. Below, Kai caught flickers of silver as fish darted through shadows, weeds drifting like slow dancers, darker shapes shifting beyond reach.
For a breath, the world felt fragile, as if one startled exhale could shatter its uneasy calm.
Kai dragged his gaze from the horizon, studying the curve of Jaka's neck, damp hair plastered to sun-warmed skin coated in a thin glimmer of sweat. The hum of the skiff seemed to merge with the tension thrumming beneath Jaka's ribs, a steady resonance threading through the cold air.
Kai wanted to tell him it felt like their grandfather's voice, but the words caught, heavy with fear he couldn't name.
"Pull that trap," Jaka said, breaking the hush.
Kai shifted, gripping the buoy with practiced hands, muscles coiling as he hauled the last catch in one smooth pull, water arcing off the mesh in silver streams. Fish thrashed, scales flaring in the gray light, the air thick with brine and wet earth.
Jaka braced as the deck pitched beneath them, glancing toward Kai for an unspoken cue.
Kai scanned the thickening clouds, brow furrowed, giving a single nod for Jaka to secure the ropes, his posture calm even as the gusts keened across the lake.
"Do you remember what he said before he disappeared?" Kai asked, abrupt and raw.
Jaka's stare shuttered. "Not now."
"He saw something near the Tree. I heard him tell you."
"Enough, Kai." Jaka cracked, the sound slicing across the water.
The gulls scattered in a flurry of wings, their cries sharp as they lifted into the night. Kai's breath caught, cold scraping his throat as he inhaled.
Kai tugged at the net again. The same snarl of line. The same cold pull.
Only, there it was. That hook. Again.
The gilded curve caught the last of the fading light, bending it in a way that made the dusk look wrong, like ripples through glass.
He froze. His breath came shallow, tasting of copper and brine.
"Jaka," he called, voice trembling despite him.
No answer. Just the slap of waves and the creak of rope.
He pulled harder, the mesh resisting, the hook lodged deep. He stripped his gloves, impatient now. The moment his bare skin touched metal, it burned, not like heat, but like every nerve had been yanked awake.
The air shuddered. The mist thickened, rolling low across the water until the horizon disappeared. A pressure built inside his ears, low and steady, a hum that matched his heartbeat.
And then, the voice. A whisper that came from underneath the sound, seeping through the spaces between his thoughts.
"The Watchers are coming, Kai."
It didn't echo in the air. It echoed through him.
Kai stumbled back, the net slipping from his hands. The mist around him darkened, shapes coiling beneath the surface, slow, deliberate, alive.
"Jaka!" His shout cracked.
Jaka looked up finally, brow drawn tight, the lines of his face carved sharp by the strange light. "What did you do?"
The water shifted. A low groan rolled through the lake, deep and ancient, like something long asleep turning in its bed.
Kai's eyes were wide, wild. "They're coming for it!" he yelled over the rising wind. "The Watchers, he warned us!"
Jaka steadied himself on the console. "What are you talking about?"
"Grandfather!" Kai's words came fast, urgent. "He wrote it, If they come, go to the shallows at North Bend."
Lightning split the sky in silence, veins of white tearing through the clouds. The Solaryn Tree blazed silver across the ridge, its branches trembling with reflected storm light.
And then the lake rose.
It didn't break, it lifted. Sheets of water drawn upward, twisting into figures that weren't water at all. They were shadows given shape, drawn by the hook's faint glow.
"Kai, drop it!" Jaka lunged forward, but the skiff pitched hard to the side. The solar panels hummed violently, their charge crackling through the air.
Kai clutched the hook to his chest. "If I let go, they'll find us anyway!"
A roar drowned him out, not thunder but something deeper. The sound of the lake inhaling.
Dark hands burst from the water, black silhouettes clawing upward, dripping void. They seized Kai's arm, his shoulder, his throat.
He gasped once, eyes locking with Jaka's.
"Follow the current, come find me!" Kai pleaded as his arms flailed through the air.
Then he was gone. Pulled into the dark with violence that broke the surface like shattered glass.
Jaka's scream tore through the storm. He threw himself after his brother, but the next wave struck broadside. The world turned inside out, sky and lake trading places.
He hit the water. Cold knifed through him, lungs crushing under pressure.
He kicked upward blindly, breaking the surface just as the silence fell.
No rain. No wind.
The storm had vanished as quickly as it appeared.
He dragged himself toward the shallows, each movement heavy, disbelieving. The world felt drained. The only sound was his own heartbeat, uneven and small against the vast quiet.
When he finally stood, water dripping from his clothes, he saw it, half-buried in silt at his feet.
The fishhook.
It glowed faintly, light pulsing like a heartbeat. Every time it throbbed, the ripples in the lake responded, as though breathing with it.
The memory surged behind his eyes, sharp, uninvited, impossible to shake.
Kai's figure flickered in the haze, half-submerged, reaching from the void.
But the arms that had seized him weren't quite shadows after all. They were almost human.
Muscles ripped beneath slick, pale skin where coarse silver hair caught the light. The hands were too long, tendons standing out like cords, nails curving into translucent points that glimmered with glossy shine.
Across one forearm ran a lattice of symbols, interlocking knots and spirals etched deep into the flesh. The marks pulsed faintly, not with light but with color, a dark violet radiance that moved like smoke under the skin, bleeding outward as if alive.
For a brief moment Kais eyes rolled to the back of his head, his body convulsed with a mini seizure. When his gaze snapped forward again, the fear was gone. Something else looked out through his eyes, something knowing.
Kai hadn't fought them. His eyes had locked on Jaka's, steady, pleading, unafraid.
Then in a single, deliberate motion, he tore one arm free just long enough to fling something through the air.
An instant later, the lake swallowed him whole, the violet glow dissolving into the black.
The mist had pulled back across the water, leaving the Solaryn Tree a dark silhouette against the moonlit sky.
No sign of Kai.
No sign of the storm.
The hook pulsed once, slow, deliberate, spilling faint haze in the water.
Jaka bent slowly, his trembling hand hovering scooped down into that sand and lifted it out of the water. Whatever it was, it was too important to leave.
Beneath him, the lake shifted. Shadows stirred. Long fingers of darkness uncoiling through the sand as if trying to remember their shape. He froze. The current thickened around his legs, tugging like a living thing.
Something moved just beyond reach, forming and breaking apart again, too black for water, too fluid for flesh. The same violet shimmer coiled inside it, pulsing to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Then it surged.
The dark mass lunged toward him, splitting the lake open in a soundless rush. Reflex took over and Jaka stumbled backward, stumbling into the shallows until fell backward in the water.
The shadows recoiled. The violet light inside them flickered, edges dissolving like smoke in sunlight. They writhed once, as if struck, then retreated, drawn back toward the deeper dark where Kai had vanished.
The current stilled. The water went calm.
Jaka stared down, chest heaving. Whatever protected the shallows, it wasn't luck. The pull of the lake had stopped exactly where the old man said it would.
If you carry my blood, the current will ease for you.
He swallowed hard, the words clawing their way back through memory. The truth landed heavy. Whatever had taken Kai still wanted the hook.
Fragments of their skiff drifted past, the splintered hull, a torn rope, one of Kai's gloves, turning slow circles as they followed the pull northward.
Jaka's eyes traced them until the last scrap drifted down the shallows.
The lake went still.
And for the first time, Jaka realized the silence wasn't empty.
It was breathing.