What the Water Doesn't Say

“You can call it healing if you like—but pain that deep always wants something in return.”

As we walked back to the camp through the sand, the early morning air was already beginning to warm up, wrapping around us with the promise of an unforgiving day. The sun’s rays spread out like molten gold across the barren landscape, gilding the dunes in a deceptive beauty. I could feel the first beads of sweat pricking my brow, tiny reminders of the heat that would soon become unbearable. The sand, loose and dry, shifted beneath our feet with every step, whispering and sighing as if the very ground resented our presence. Each footfall left behind a clear print, a fragile trace of our passing, easily swept away by the wind.

Though we were heading back to the familiarity of camp, my thoughts remained anchored at the lagoon. The image of Kain’s leg convulsing in the water, his face contorted in silent agony—it gnawed at me, burrowed beneath my skin like a splinter I couldn’t remove. The whole scene had been wrong, a contradiction to the stories of healing whispered around the camp. What kind of healing started with that much pain?

"Did those two seem a little odd to you?" I asked Glenda, my voice breaking the silence that had stretched between us. It came out quieter than I intended, like a confession I wasn’t sure I had the right to voice. My eyes searched her face, hoping for some flicker of shared doubt, a sign that I wasn’t alone in my unease.

But Glenda didn’t so much as flinch. Her stride remained even, her gaze focused ahead. "I'm sure they're just being men," she said, her voice dry with quiet dismissal. There was no malice in it—just an ingrained resignation, as if she'd seen this kind of stubborn performance a hundred times before and had long since stopped questioning it.

I frowned, not quite ready to let it go. The memory of Kain’s groan—raw, involuntary, torn from somewhere deep inside—replayed in my head with jarring clarity. "You don't think maybe there is something weird with the water?" I pressed, my voice tightening with apprehension. “I mean, look what we discovered with the soil.”

That soil—dry, red, and unnervingly reactive—had already defied every rule of the natural world we knew. It had sparked questions we couldn’t answer, results we couldn’t replicate. What if the water held its own secrets, equally enigmatic, equally perilous?

A breeze kicked up a thin veil of dust that danced briefly in the sunlight before dissipating into the heat. I felt the shiver travel up my spine despite the warming air, as if Clivilius itself was listening, weighing our words.

Maybe the lagoon did heal. But maybe healing came at a cost we didn’t yet understand.

Glenda slowed her pace, her boots kicking up small puffs of dust that hung momentarily in the still morning air before settling back to the earth. The rhythm of our footsteps faltered as she drifted into silence, her brow knitted in contemplation. I could see the thoughts ticking behind her eyes, the gears turning slowly but surely. "I believe the water has some interesting healing properties," she said at last, her tone speculative, as if she were still working through the implications aloud. "I suspect the healing process hurts a little."

I arched an eyebrow at that, the corner of my mouth twitching with disbelief. "Hence the manly façade," I muttered under my breath, my voice tinged with a dry sarcasm I didn’t bother to hide. I rolled my eyes at the predictability of it all—the assumption that pain, when faced with stoicism, was some kind of virtue, a badge of honour rather than something to be understood or respected.

But Glenda simply nodded, entirely unfazed. "Exactly!" she said, with a certain finality, a touch of satisfaction colouring her voice as if my sarcasm had unwittingly landed on the truth she’d already accepted.

I drew a breath, opening my mouth to push back, to voice the gnawing discomfort still coiled tight in my chest—the image of Kain writhing in pain, the eerie stillness of the lagoon—but I didn’t get the chance. Glenda’s hand shot out and clasped my arm with a sudden firmness, halting my protest in its tracks. Her grip was steady, grounding, but it held a kind of urgency that made me meet her gaze without hesitation.

"I'm sure they'll be fine," she said, her voice low and insistent. Her eyes held mine, unwavering. "Chris will get us if they have any problems."

I exhaled sharply, the sigh escaping me louder than intended, a brittle edge of frustration riding its tail. The tension in my shoulders didn’t ease. If anything, it only grew heavier, a weight that pressed down with the burden of being the only one unsettled by it all. Around me, everyone else seemed content to accept things at face value, to assign neat, tidy explanations to things that felt anything but ordinary.

The more I tried to ignore it, the more the feeling clawed at me—that insistent tug in my gut telling me something wasn’t right. That perhaps we were treading too close to forces we didn’t fully comprehend. And worse still, that no one else seemed to care.

As Glenda’s grip on my arm tightened, I noticed the sharp focus in her eyes as they locked on the angry, crimson scratch along my forearm. It was a vivid mark, no more than three inches long, but against my dust-covered skin it looked stark and raw—like a wound the night itself had left behind.

"How did you get that scratch?" Glenda asked, her voice threading concern with something colder—suspicion. Her expression was clinical, but beneath it, I sensed unease brewing, her mind already racing through possible implications.

The memory struck like a blow to the chest—sharp, immediate, and unwelcome. My throat tightened as the image of Jamie cradling Duke’s broken body surged to the forefront. The chaos, the desperation, the blood.

"Oh," I murmured, my voice thick with fatigue and shadowed by the weight of recollection. "Duke accidentally scratched me when Chris and I attempted to help Jamie and Duke." The words tumbled out, stripped of their emotional freight, as if speaking them aloud could somehow dull the horror they carried.

Glenda's brow lifted in surprise, her fingers relaxing slightly on my arm. "Why did Jamie and Duke need help?" she asked, voice cautious, uncertain—like someone stepping into a room they hadn’t realised was on fire.

I blinked at her, momentarily stunned. How could she not know? The night had left claw marks on my soul, and yet, here she stood, untouched by it. The realisation sank in slowly, chillingly—news hadn't spread.

"You haven't heard?" I asked, barely above a whisper, the words edged with disbelief. The gravity of what I was about to share made my stomach knot. It felt wrong to speak of it in daylight, under the warming sun, like disturbing something sacred.

"Heard what?" Her voice was tentative now, the wind seemingly knocked from her lungs by the shift in my tone.

I hesitated, swallowing hard as I braced myself. The words stuck, stubborn and jagged. "Duke—" My voice cracked, betraying the storm surging inside me. I cleared my throat, forcing the words through gritted teeth. "Duke was attacked last night too. He didn’t make it."

The silence that followed was thick and leaden. Glenda gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as if to physically catch the breath that had escaped her. Her eyes welled, and for a moment, I saw the woman beneath the doctor—stripped of composure, fragile and human.

"A Shadow Panther?" she whispered, her voice trembling. It was a name, a label, but it felt more like an invocation of dread.

I nodded, the image of Duke’s final moments playing on a cruel, endless loop behind my eyes. The pain surged again, fresh and raw, as if the grief had never quite settled into place.

Glenda looked away, blinking hard. Her jaw tightened, her posture stiffened—an instinctive bracing against emotions she likely hadn’t planned to feel. "I know Duke and I weren’t exactly on the friendliest of terms, but..." Her words trailed off, broken by the weight of their own unfinished story.

I could see it in her—the flickers of regret, the sharp pang of a loss she hadn’t expected to hit so hard. Whatever had passed between her and Duke before, whatever tension or silence they’d lived in, it was meaningless now. The finality of death had swept it all away, leaving only echoes and unresolved goodbyes.

Regaining her composure, Glenda looked me directly in the eyes, her stare sharp, unwavering. There was something behind her expression now—a raw urgency tempered by clinical restraint, the look of someone used to managing crises but who knew, deep down, that she had little control in this world. "Are Duke and Kain our only losses?" she asked, the words falling like stones into the stillness between us.

My jaw tensed, the muscles in my face tightening as if bracing against the blow of her question. For a moment, my mouth didn’t want to form the words. "We haven't lost Kain yet," I snapped, more sharply than I intended. The defensiveness in my tone startled even me. I felt like I was guarding a flame against the wind, refusing to let it be snuffed out. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—concede that we might lose another.

"Of course not," Glenda replied quickly, her voice lowering, her face softening. Regret flickered in her eyes, and for a heartbeat, we stood in a mutual, wordless acknowledgement of the fragility that clung to every one of us.

"But yes," I said, gentler this time, letting the truth settle between us. "I'm pretty sure that Duke and Kain were the only ones injured." The words came slower now, deliberate, as if naming them might help make sense of the night’s brutality.

We continued walking back toward camp in silence, the kind of silence that was not empty but full—thick with what hadn’t been said. Our footsteps were swallowed by the sand beneath us, and I focused on the rhythm of my breathing, trying to still the turmoil twisting inside my chest. Each step carried the weight of the night, the unanswered questions, the strange pain of a world that felt too quiet, too charged with unseen threat.

As we crested the final ridge, the camp came back into view. Its silence was unnatural—no banter, no clang of equipment, no children’s footsteps. Just an eerie hush, like the earth itself was holding its breath.

Without warning, Glenda broke away from me, her path veering sharply toward Jamie’s tent. Her pace quickened with purpose, shoulders squared, her medical bag bouncing lightly against her hip. I stopped walking, watching her go, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. Something in her stride set off a warning bell deep inside me.

Moments later, she reappeared, her face a mask of rising panic. “Where are Jamie and Duke?” she demanded, her voice pitched high with urgency, her gaze scanning the camp as if they might materialise if she looked hard enough.

I blinked, thrown. “I’m not sure,” I admitted, my brow furrowing. “I haven’t seen them since last night.” The helplessness that settled over me was cold and heavy. A knot of unease formed in my stomach.

Then, faintly, the sound of voices rose from beyond the tents—muffled, but distinct. My chest tightened. Jamie might still be by the river with Duke. Still sitting vigil over his loss. Still unwilling to let go.

The thought of returning to that place—of seeing Duke’s lifeless form again, of stepping back into the cradle of Jamie’s grief—filled me with a slow, sickening dread.

I turned away and busied myself with the campfire, kneeling down, hands trembling as I coaxed the embers back to life. Sparks rose and faded into the air like brief, hopeful thoughts that never quite took hold. But the flames offered little comfort.

My thoughts kept drifting—to Chris, to Kain, to the lagoon. To the inexplicable agony that had racked Kain’s body, to the murmur of rippling water that seemed too still, too knowing. Every possibility raced through my mind: that Kain might not recover, that Chris might not return, that something unseen waited just beneath the water’s surface.

The wait gnawed at me.

Each second stretched, thin and brittle as glass. Every sound became a signal, every rustle of wind or snap of fabric tugged my nerves taut. I sat frozen by the fire, willing the figures I cared about to return, aching for the sight of them cresting the hill. But Clivilius held its silence, and I was left in the hush of uncertainty, watching shadows shift as time marched on.