The lake didn't look like a lake. Not really. Not at this hour. It looked like liquid glass, frozen in a moment of impossible stillness, reflecting a sky that had not yet decided whether it wanted to be gray, purple, or the faintest hint of morning gold. Mist crawled over the surface, low and serpentine, and Alec Rowan felt it watching him. It was alive, he knew that in a way that made his chest tighten.
Mara Hale's voice came from beside him, small, fragile, but trembling with fear. "I don't like this," she said. "Something about this place… it doesn't end with Elara. It can't."
Alec didn't answer. He couldn't. His eyes were locked on the shoreline where the scrap of blue fabric had dissolved into the lake. The chill it had left on his skin was still there, creeping under his veins like ice melting in fire. And the faint mark on his wrist—the blue fingerprint—throbbed as if it had a heartbeat of its own.
"I've seen it before," he said finally, his voice low and rough. "In the photographs. Every picture I ever took of Elara… there was always something behind her. Watching. Waiting. I thought I imagined it. Now… I know I didn't."
Mara shivered. She had a strange, piercing gaze, one that could feel the truth before it was spoken. "What is it?"
He didn't know how to answer. Because he was already terrified of the answer himself.
A sound made them both jump—a soft splash, deliberate and precise, far too deliberate to be random. The lake's surface rippled outward in perfect concentric circles, each one slower than the last, like the heartbeat of something enormous and patient.
Mara grabbed his arm. "It's not natural," she whispered, her teeth chattering.
Alec's gaze moved upward. That's when he saw her.
The silhouette.
Blue. Almost translucent. Standing impossibly on the water as though the lake itself had become a stage. The mist flowed around her like silk, wrapping her in shadow and cold. She tilted her head slightly, observing him. The first pale light of dawn crept over the horizon but failed to touch her fully. She was beyond light. Beyond warmth.
Alec's stomach sank. And then, he felt it: the pull. Cold and sharp and intimate, like fingers digging into his bones.
She raised her hand—slowly, deliberately—and pointed. Not with menace. With inevitability.
You are next.
Mara's hand gripped his arm like a vice. "Alec, we have to leave. Now."
He shook his head. His voice was barely a whisper, though it carried the weight of terror and obsession. "No. I have to know. I have to understand what killed her."
The figure's hand extended again, and a ribbon of shimmering blue trailed from her fingertips, stretching toward him like molten ice. He wanted to run. Wanted to scream. But his body froze, rooted to the spot as if the lake itself had planted him there.
Mara screamed. "Don't touch it!"
But Alec's gaze never wavered. And the instant their eyes locked, he felt the first thread of something cling to him—cold, alive, suffocating. And then… nothing.
Blinking, he saw only the calm lake, the thinning mist, the faint shimmer of early morning. The blue fingerprint on his wrist still pulsed softly, as if warning him that it was far from finished.
Mara stared at him, pale and trembling. "You felt it."
Alec swallowed hard. His throat was dry, his chest tight. "I did. And it's coming for me. I don't think it's alone."
For the first time, Mara saw Alec Rowan stripped bare—not the controlled, distant photographer she remembered, but a man consumed by grief and terror, facing something that defied every law of reason.
Their eyes met, and a silent understanding passed between them. They were in this together. Or they would die trying.
The wind shifted. Whispers tangled with the mist, carrying a single note of inevitability.
"Soon."
Behind them, in the curling fog, something waited, patient, watching, hungry.
And dawn… still refused to break.