The Mercy in the Water

“The scariest thing about miracles is how much they ask of you before they offer anything back.”

As the first rays of sunshine began to streak through the side window of our tent, their faint light cast fragile beams across the crumpled fabric, I stirred from the depths of a sleep that had brought neither peace nor true rest. My dreams had been fractured, riddled with phantom cries and flashes of red, shadows that slithered just beyond my grasp. It had not been sleep so much as a limbo—adrift in a fog of exhaustion, haunted by the night’s grim toll.

My eyes, gummy and sore, resisted the intrusion of morning. I rubbed at them with the heel of my hand, gritty from the tears I hadn't realised I’d shed in the night. The dawn’s glow, which once might have promised renewal or calm, now felt unwelcome—a muted, spectral light that only served to expose the alienness of this place. There was no real comfort in it. Just the harsh truth that the world outside had changed irrevocably, and so had I.

Beside me, Chris stirred. His sleeping bag rustled against mine as he shifted, the sound sharp in the tense quiet. He blinked a few times, then slowly turned his head to face me. The weariness was plain in his features—dark smudges beneath his eyes, skin pallid under the meagre light—but still, somehow, a faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Good morning," he whispered, voice coarse and cracked, like a man trying to make room for hope in a house full of ghosts.

I wanted to return that smile, to reach out, to acknowledge that maybe we were still allowed these simple exchanges. But I couldn’t. Not yet.

"Is it?" I snapped, the words tumbling out sharper than I intended, edged with the frayed wires of unresolved fear and anger. The night clung to me like smoke—sour, suffocating. I couldn't pretend. Not while Jamie sat broken by the river. Not while the blood of his dog still stained my hands in memory.

Chris flinched almost imperceptibly. I saw the shift in his expression, the slight narrowing of his eyes as the smile faltered and fell away. He hadn’t expected the bite. Maybe he thought the dawn would soften me. Maybe he hoped we could begin again, brush the dust of the night from our shoulders. But I was still buried in it. I was still crawling through the wreckage.

With a sigh, he turned over, his back curving towards me in quiet retreat. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even cold. It was weary—an instinctive defence, a silent boundary drawn in the space between us.

And for now, I didn’t cross it.

Just then, Glenda's voice hissed from the tent's entrance. "Psst. Chris. Are you awake yet?" Her words were sharp and low, but the tremor in her tone betrayed a deeper urgency—something was wrong. The brittle thread of desperation laced through her whisper sent a subtle shiver down my spine, tightening the knot of anxiety already coiled in my stomach.

A pause followed. Silence. Dense, uncomfortable. The kind that settles like dust in the lungs. I glared at Chris’s back, the steady rise and fall of his breathing suddenly infuriating. Was he really going to pretend he hadn’t heard her? My patience frayed with each passing heartbeat. There was no room for avoidance anymore—not here, not now.

“Chris! Get up!” I hissed sharply, my elbow digging into his ribs with enough force to cut through the fog he was clearly clinging to. My voice, though quiet, was laced with urgency, each syllable a jab at his reluctance to engage with the world outside our flimsy nylon shell.

He groaned, a drawn-out protest that made me want to shake him. His face creased with sleep as he cracked one eye open, unfocused and bleary. "What?" he mumbled, the single syllable thick with exhaustion, like it had been dredged from the bottom of a deep, muddy well.

I rolled my eyes—more forcefully than necessary—my expression a mix of incredulity and strained control. I was tired too, every part of me aching, but we didn’t have the luxury of delay. Not today. Not with Glenda’s voice still lingering at the edge of the tent like a warning bell. With a sharp nod of my chin, I gestured toward her silhouette, outlined faintly against the fabric. Her form was rigid, tense—a statue carved in urgency, waiting just beyond the threshold for us to acknowledge the crisis that was surely looming.

Something was happening.

And it wouldn’t wait.

Before Chris could voice any further questions or protests, Glenda's voice sliced through the morning air once again, sharper now. "Chris, I need your urgent help," she insisted, her tone a command cloaked in desperation—one that brooked no argument, no hesitation.

“Get up, would you,” I scolded him, exasperation bubbling to the surface. My patience, frayed by fatigue and the lingering residue of yesterday's trauma, had all but vanished. I unzipped my sleeping bag with brisk, irritated movements and clambered out, the cold air slapping against my skin like a wake-up call I didn’t want but couldn’t ignore.

“Oh,” Chris exclaimed in surprise, suddenly galvanised into action by the tension in our voices. He fumbled and wrestled his way free from the sleeping bag, every motion awkward and uncoordinated, as though his body hadn’t quite caught up with the emergency unfolding around us.

He pawed at the flap of the tent and unzipped it with a zip that sounded too loud in the uneasy stillness of dawn. Poking his head out, still half-dressed and blinking into the pale morning light, he was met with Glenda’s clipped, urgent instruction. “I need you to help me get Kain to the lagoon. We need to hurry,” she said, each word laced with a gravity that made my heart lurch.

“Not this again,” I muttered under my breath, anxiety threading through my doubt. The lagoon—Clivilius’s enigmatic pool of rumoured healing—it seemed more myth than medicine. A fragile hope disguised as belief. But then her words clicked into place. Kain. Not Duke.

My stomach turned cold. Another casualty?

“Put some blinkin’ pants on!” I snapped at Chris, startled by the sharpness in my own voice as he tried to juggle urgency and modesty with little success. He yanked them on, his movements no more graceful, but finally productive.

“I’ll meet you at the medical tent,” Glenda called as she spun on her heel, her silhouette vanishing from the tent’s threshold like smoke in the wind.

I looked down and realised Chris was somehow fully dressed while I was still half-buried in the mess of clothes we’d left piled in the corner. My fingers scrambled through them, searching blindly in the murky light for something clean. My heart was hammering now, driven by a rising tide of dread I didn’t yet understand.

“Go. I'll meet you there,” I told him firmly, the decision made in an instant. He hesitated just long enough for our eyes to meet, then disappeared through the tent flap without another word.

Left alone, a wave of frustration crested over me. With a low, almost whispered, “Shit,” I pulled the first t-shirt I could find over my head, barely registering its smell or shape. I just needed to move—to catch up. Because something was happening again.

And I was already one step behind.

Making my way swiftly to the medical tent, my boots crunching softly on the compacted dirt beneath me, I ducked through the flap just in time to catch sight of Chris and Glenda hovering over Kain. He lay motionless on a narrow mattress, his pale, sweat-slicked skin catching the morning light in a way that made him seem even more fragile. The air inside was thick with worry, the kind that clung to your skin like humidity. One glance was enough to tell me that this was far more serious than I’d dared imagine.

“I’ll get Karen,” Glenda said to Chris, her back to me as she adjusted the thin sheet covering Kain. Her voice was hushed, urgent.

“No need,” I interjected from the entrance, my voice steadier than I felt, underpinned by a resolve I had to summon on the spot. “I figured you might need some more help.” I strode forward without waiting for a reply, my gaze scanning Kain’s unmoving form before locking onto Glenda’s. “What do you need?”

“We need to carry Kain to the lagoon,” Glenda replied, her eyes finally meeting mine. I saw something flicker there—dread, maybe. Fatigue. Hope, too, though just the faintest glimmer. Her voice softened, barely more than a breath. “He currently has no use of his legs.”

The words struck like a slap, draining the colour from my thoughts. I blinked, frozen for a moment as the full implications sank in. Paralysis. Injury. Another blow we hadn’t been prepared for.

My breath hitched, but I quickly regained control and nodded, stepping in beside Chris without hesitation.

“I’ll take the bulk of his weight,” Chris said, glancing at me with a mixture of grim determination and unspoken worry. It was in the subtle tension of his jaw, the taut set of his shoulders. “Can you support his waist and legs?”

“Of course,” I said firmly, already reaching to position my arms beneath Kain’s knees. My hand brushed Chris’s shoulder in passing—an unspoken exchange of strength. There was no room for hesitation, not now.

As we coordinated our grip and began to lift, Kain’s body yielded with an unsettling limpness. The effort it took was far more than I’d anticipated; he was lean, yes, but solid, his muscular build a deceptive burden. A groan of exertion escaped me as I adjusted my stance. Chris, teeth gritted, shouldered the heavier load. Together, we heaved him up, a human weight that seemed to carry the full gravity of our circumstance.

Kain didn’t stir. His stillness was eerie, and every step we took felt like a precarious gamble with time, with fate, with whatever gods might be watching from above this brutal, unforgiving world.

Once we emerged into the clear daylight, the harsh brightness felt almost overwhelming after the suffocating gloom of the night. The sun offered no comfort, only clarity—cruel, unfiltered clarity that illuminated the gravity of what we were doing. We found a steady, if awkward, rhythm as we carried Kain between us, each footstep calculated and deliberate, our pace a compromise between urgency and caution.

But my focus kept shifting to Kain’s leg.

Glenda had wrapped the wound in strips of fabric, the material twisted tightly in a medic’s attempt to stem the bleeding. Yet even her skilled hands couldn’t fully halt the slow, insidious seep of blood. It soaked through the layers, blooming dark against pale cloth in a way that made my stomach churn. The sight of it—constant, persistent—was a grim metronome, ticking out the seriousness of his condition with each new crimson blot.

Every few steps, I caught myself adjusting my grip or stealing glances at his ashen face. My arms ached, my lower back throbbed, and the strain of carrying his weight was beginning to register in every fibre of my being. Still, I pushed forward, clenching my jaw against the discomfort, knowing this wasn’t the time to falter.

I finally mustered the breath to speak, my voice tight between gasps. “What happened?”

Glenda, walking just ahead, didn’t look back. Her reply was low, almost as if she feared saying it aloud would summon the thing again. She described how they’d chased after Lois into the oppressive dark, only to be ambushed by a creature—a hulking, panther-like shadow that had moved with predatory grace and terrifying speed.

Her words chilled me more than the night ever could. I could picture it too easily: a flash of black muscle in the torchlight, claws catching the earth, yellow eyes gleaming from the underbrush. An ambush. A predator. Something that didn’t just exist here—it thrived.

I didn’t ask about Duke. I assumed Glenda already knew, and perhaps she assumed the same of me. There was no room for mourning in that moment, only motion. Only survival.

Still, the notion clawed at the edges of my thoughts—that both Duke and Kain might have fallen victim to the same creature. That whatever had torn through our camp wasn’t finished yet. The horror of that reality weighed on me like lead, but curiously, it wasn’t the only thought that emerged.

If there were predators here, there had to be prey. And if there was a food chain, a natural order... then maybe we weren’t alone.

That glimmer of possibility—more life beyond our borders, perhaps even more people—slid into my consciousness like a fragile shard of hope. Fragile, yes. But it was enough to keep my legs moving. Enough to believe, even if just for a moment, that we hadn’t yet seen everything Clivilius had to offer.

As we crested the final hill, the weight of Kain's body bore down on my shoulders like a punishing yoke, every muscle in my back and arms trembling with the effort of carrying him this far. The ground beneath my feet was uneven and treacherous, each step a minor battle against the jagged earth and shifting dust. My breath came in short, ragged gasps, the arid air scraping the inside of my throat like sandpaper. The sun loomed overhead, unrelenting and merciless, its heat pressing against my skin with the suffocating weight of a smothering hand.

Sweat poured from my brow, stinging my eyes and sliding in rivulets down my neck, mingling with the fine dust that coated every inch of exposed skin. My shirt clung damply to my body, and my boots felt like they had been filled with lead. The gritted teeth, the burning lungs, the aching limbs—it was all background noise now. There was only one thing that mattered: getting Kain to that water.

And then we saw it.

Despite the physical torment, I felt my breath catch in my throat—a gasp not of exertion this time, but of wonder. The lagoon spread out before us like a secret whispered into the wilderness. Its waters, pristine and impossibly still, gleamed with an almost unnatural clarity. Light refracted off the surface in glints of silver and pale turquoise, like liquid glass catching fire beneath the sun.

Set against the surrounding landscape—this parched expanse of scorched, lifeless terrain in muted shades of brown, rust, and ochre—it looked eerily untouched. Not a whisper of movement surrounded it. No breeze, no chirp, no rustle. Just silence. There were no trees, no grass, no insects, no birds. Nothing.

It was beautiful in a way that unsettled me—like a painting hung on the wall of an abandoned house. Perfect, and perfectly alone.

And yet, there it was: hope, shimmering and silent.

And just maybe… salvation.

As Chris and I carefully lowered Kain onto the bank, the soft sand shifted treacherously beneath our boots, slipping and crunching with each cautious step. The weight of his body left deep impressions in the earth, momentary marks of our desperate journey. My arms ached with fatigue, but the sight of Kain—his face waxen, lips tinged blue, and eyes fluttering beneath heavy lids—stole the breath from my lungs more effectively than exhaustion ever could.

I turned my eyes to Glenda, watching her closely, a swell of curiosity tightening into a knot of scepticism in my chest. She approached the lagoon as though stepping into a sacred space, every motion deliberate, almost ritualistic. Her silhouette moved with quiet solemnity against the uncanny stillness of the water. When she knelt and dipped her fingers into the lagoon, I caught a shiver run through her body. It wasn’t the cold—there was something else, something deeper. A connection. Reverence. Or fear.

The water rippled around her hand, sending out perfect concentric rings that glided across the surface. They shimmered for a moment in the sun, then faded just as quickly, like whispers swallowed by silence. There was no wind, no birdsong, no buzz of insects—only the faint, rhythmic lapping of the lagoon against the shore. The sound was so gentle it almost felt imagined.

With a resolute look hardening her features, Glenda turned and motioned for us to bring Kain closer to the water’s edge. Her voice didn’t break the silence—it was her eyes that spoke, firm with belief, unwavering. I stood frozen for a beat, staring down at the mirror-like lagoon, unease blooming in the pit of my stomach. For all its surreal beauty, the lagoon unsettled me. It was too perfect, too still. Like something that watched.

But then I looked at Kain again.

His breath came in shallow, rattling gasps. His skin was ashen, stretched taut over his cheekbones, and his injured leg had bled through the bindings entirely, crimson soaking the cloth like a spreading wound in time itself.

There was no time for doubt. Whatever the lagoon was—sacred spring, trap, or miracle—it was the only hope we had.

I met Glenda’s gaze, gave the faintest of nods, then bent once more with Chris. Together, we began to move Kain towards the water, the sand swallowing our footsteps as we stepped closer to whatever fate waited at the lagoon’s edge.

As Glenda guided Kain’s legs towards the water, I held my breath, every muscle in my body coiled tight with apprehension. My heart pounded against my ribs with a relentless rhythm, like a drum heralding some unseen battle. The moment his foot made contact with the water’s surface, a gut-wrenching groan tore from Kain’s throat—a sound so raw and pained it seemed to slice through the very air.

The sound echoed across the lagoon, bouncing off the stillness like a scream in a cathedral. His body convulsed violently, every muscle snapping taut as if he'd been jolted by an invisible current. Chris and I reacted on instinct, yanking him back from the water with wide eyes and hearts hammering in horror. The serenity of the lagoon was instantly shattered, its tranquil illusion stripped away in one awful instant. How could something so pristine, so deceptively gentle, provoke such agony?

Kain's foot bore no visible injury beyond its limpness—no open wound, no gash to react with such pain. And yet, the water had triggered something elemental, something that made every hair on my body rise in alarm.

“He’s fine,” Glenda said, voice clipped, her grip on Kain’s leg tight, unwavering. Her eyes burned with a fervour that sent a chill crawling up my spine. It wasn’t just medical confidence—it was something deeper, more unshakable. A belief.

But I wasn’t convinced. Every instinct in me screamed to pull him back, to get him as far away from the water as possible. My fingers twitched with the urge to intervene, to physically block Glenda if I had to. I stared at her, silently pleading for logic, for caution—but she stared back, unyielding, like a woman driven not just by knowledge but by conviction.

The silence between us was heavy and crackling, a standoff forged in desperation and doubt. And then, slowly, Chris gave a subtle nod—an unspoken vote of trust. I hesitated a moment longer, then yielded.

Together, we eased Kain’s leg back into the water.

The clear liquid crept up his shin, glinting in the sunlight like molten glass. It lapped over his skin with an unnatural stillness, almost too perfectly calm—as if the water itself were conscious of being watched. Kain clenched his jaw and bit his lower lip, the effort of containing the pain written all over his face. His eyes fluttered, blinking rapidly, his breath ragged as he fought to stay still.

I knelt beside him, helpless, my mind a storm of questions. What was this lagoon, truly? What force slumbered beneath its glassy surface? Was it healing him—or harming him in some other way we didn’t yet understand? The thought took root like a weed in my thoughts: was this place a gift… or a test?

Or something far older, far stranger, that defied every rule we had ever known?

Kain’s voice, low and strained, broke through my churning thoughts, “I want to be alone for a while.”

I turned to him sharply, my brows knitting in disbelief. “Don’t be such an idiot. You can’t be alone right now,” I told him, the words spilling out before I could soften them. The sharpness in my tone surprised even me, but the fear twisting in my gut left no room for diplomacy. The idea of leaving him—vulnerable, unable to walk, defenceless against whatever still lurked out there—was unimaginable.

The memory of Duke’s lifeless form, the blood in the water, and the echo of that primal scream still clung to me like a second skin. My throat tightened.

Kain shifted his gaze to Glenda, his eyes wide with unspoken appeal, as if willing her to contradict me, to grant him some semblance of control in a situation where he had so little. But even she shook her head slowly, her mouth pressed into a thin, reluctant line.

“Karen’s right,” she said softly, though the weight of her words was anything but light. “It’s not safe for you to be alone out here.”

Her agreement struck me harder than expected, like a hammer to the chest. A fresh wave of fear surged through me—Glenda was not one to exaggerate. If she believed Kain wasn’t safe, even in broad daylight, then the threat was far worse than I’d let myself believe.

I glanced over my shoulder at the barren, silent horizon, feeling the oppressive weight of isolation settle in my chest. No birds. No rustle of leaves. No hum of insects. Just wind and dust and the ever-lurking possibility of something watching, waiting.

Could I even outrun it if it came for me?

“Then take me back…” Kain began, his voice rising with desperation, the edges of his composure fraying. But Chris cut across him before the protest could gain momentum.

“I’ll stay here with him,” he said calmly, his voice a steady counterbalance to the tension fraying between us. His gaze didn’t waver as he looked at Kain. “I can clean his wound.”

There was a pause. Kain gave a nod, slow and reluctant, but it was enough. “I’ll be safe with Chris,” he insisted, clinging to the reassurance like a lifeline.

But frustration burned hot beneath my skin, its embers stoked by Kain’s refusal to see reason. Couldn’t he understand this wasn’t about courage or pride? It wasn’t about proving anything. We were beyond all that. This was about survival—raw and unvarnished. And right now, every stubborn act of independence felt like a gamble we couldn’t afford.

I folded my arms tightly across my chest, the weight of my unspoken thoughts settling heavily in my silence. Bravery was one thing. Recklessness was another. And I wasn’t sure which one Kain was reaching for.

Glenda rose to her feet with quiet authority, fixing Chris with a stern, unyielding gaze. "As long as you make sure his leg gets submerged for a reasonable amount of time," she instructed, her voice firm, carved from the same granite as her resolve. "Regardless of how much he groans about it.”

There was no room for negotiation in her tone, and Chris nodded solemnly, the seriousness of the moment reflected in the set of his jaw. I saw the flicker of uncertainty behind his eyes quickly overtaken by resolve—an unspoken vow to shoulder this burden without faltering. The task ahead was a heavy one, but I knew Chris well enough to trust that he wouldn’t shy away from it.

As Glenda turned away, releasing her careful grip on Kain’s leg, I felt a surge of dread rise in my chest. The instinct to speak it aloud overpowered my restraint. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked, my voice lower, but laced with apprehension. The words hovered in the air, uninvited but impossible to ignore.

Kain’s response came swiftly—too swiftly. “We’re sure,” he snapped, his tone sharper than it needed to be, defensive in a way that made my stomach twist. He was digging in his heels, clinging to this sliver of control as if it could shield him from everything else that had already been taken from him.

I looked to Glenda, hoping for a flicker of hesitation in her expression, a reason to turn back—but she crouched beside Kain instead, laying a hand on his shoulder with the care of a medic, but the gravity of a judge.

“You could lose your leg if you don’t let the water help you,” she said gently, though her words cut through the air like a scalpel—precise, necessary, undeniable.

Her fingers found mine and tugged, guiding me to my feet before I could object further. My legs resisted, reluctant to leave the scene behind, but habit and an optimistic hope to trust in Glenda propelled me forward. I cast one last look over my shoulder, heart tugging painfully in my chest.

Chris knelt beside Kain, adjusting his posture with quiet focus. The two of them looked small against the vast emptiness of the lagoon’s edge, two vulnerable figures left to the mercy of forces we barely understood. The stillness of the water, the quiet expanse of the surrounding barren landscape, and the lingering fear of what might emerge from the shadows—it all pressed heavily on my thoughts.

They were still visible when we crested the low rise that bordered the basin, but soon their forms were swallowed by the terrain. I fought the irrational urge to turn back, to demand we stay together, to guard one another through the growing uncertainty.

But I kept walking, each step away feeling like a betrayal I couldn’t avoid.