The wind was a cruel thing on Lake Thorne in January. It cut through coats and skin and marrow, carrying whispers that might have been just air — or something older, more watchful.

Kiera pulled her wool cap lower over her ears and stepped onto the ice. A thin snow crust dusted its surface, swirling in tiny ghost-like eddies around her boots. Each step gave a faint groan. The sound was enough to quicken her pulse, but she pressed on. She had to. There was something out there. Or someone. And this was her last chance to prove it.

Back on the shore, the world seemed safe. Her uncle’s cabin squatted beneath drooping pines, chimney puffing lazy smoke. But she couldn’t go back there, not yet. Not until she found it — the figure she’d seen three nights ago, moving across the lake under the full wolf moon. A man, or maybe not a man at all. Too tall, too slim, with arms that bent strangely. He had beckoned to her from afar, a slow curling finger, before dissolving into the dark.

She hadn’t told anyone. Her uncle would’ve said she was dreaming again, like when she was little and insisted the woods sang lullabies only she could hear. Maybe he was right. But even so, the pull was irresistible. If it was madness, then let it lead her all the way to the edge.

She trudged on. Her breath came in white huffs. Beneath her, bubbles were trapped in the ice like tiny pale jellyfish. Cracks spidered here and there, harmless for now, but they still made her stomach knot. She tried to ignore them, tried to keep her eyes on the horizon, where the far shore seemed to melt into a smudge of slate and pearl.

She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. Only that the dream — if it was a dream — had repeated for three nights in a row. The same man, the same lake, the same beckoning hand. And a voice like cold water whispering her name: Kiera… come see…

She stopped to catch her breath. It was quieter out here than it had been on shore. The trees were distant now, just dark bristles against the sky. The lake seemed to swallow sound. Even the wind died down, replaced by a vast, listening silence. Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears.

Then — a shift.

It was small. Just the faintest dark smudge against the ice, a good twenty paces ahead. She squinted. No… it was more than a smudge. It moved.

Kiera’s mouth went dry. She took a tentative step forward. Then another.

The shape resolved into a figure. Thin, draped in something long and dark that fluttered like rags around its legs. Its head was cowled, tilted ever so slightly as if curious. It raised an arm and crooked a long finger.

Just like in the dreams.

Her first instinct was to run — back to the warm cabin, to the familiar smell of pine pitch and wood smoke. But her feet betrayed her. They carried her forward, drawn by something deeper than curiosity. A need she couldn’t name.

The ice seemed to change as she walked. The snow thinned out, revealing black glass shot through with milky veins. She saw shapes beneath it — half-glimpsed structures that looked like doorways, broken walls, maybe even streets. Her stomach twisted. That couldn’t be. There was nothing under Lake Thorne but mud and sunken logs.

Come see, the wind hissed again.

When she looked up, the figure had moved closer. Its hood had slipped back, revealing a face that wasn’t a face at all — a smooth surface like polished bone, with hollows where eyes should be. Yet something inside those hollows glittered, sharp and hungry.

She stopped. “Who are you?” she tried to say, but her voice cracked on the ice. It came out as a faint squeak.

The figure raised its head. From the depths of those pits, a light flared. It was pale, tinged with blue, like foxfire or deep sea glow. And it was looking at her, seeing through every layer of skin and muscle to the quivering spark of her.

Then it turned and began to glide away, moving without the awkward crunch of boots. Almost floating.

Kiera hesitated. Every sane instinct screamed at her to turn back. But that inner tug — the one that had led her out here — yanked harder. She followed.

The figure led her deeper across the lake, away from any point she could recognize. The ice changed again, becoming clearer still. Now she could see them plainly: ruins beneath the frozen water. Stone arches, pillars encrusted with something black and fibrous, like drowned ivy. A road that curved into darkness.

A city. Or what was left of one.

She stumbled to a halt. Her breath fogged the surface, and for a moment it seemed like figures moved below, shadowy people going about their business in the depths, oblivious to her presence. Then the fog cleared, and there was only emptiness.

Ahead, the hooded being waited. When she didn’t immediately follow, it gestured again. A slow, deliberate wave of its hand.

Come see.

She stepped forward — and the ice gave a low moan. Her heart lurched. A fracture raced away from her boot, a bright line in the black glass.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Please, wait.”

The figure cocked its head. It almost looked amused. Then it glided backward, deeper over the thinnest ice. And without thinking, Kiera ran after it.

The ice shattered. She plunged through in a chaos of splinters and freezing shock. The cold was total, a claw that seized every inch of her and squeezed. Her scream was lost in a rush of bubbles.

Down she sank, past jagged ice teeth. And there — below — the city waited.

The ruins weren’t illusions after all. Her eyes adjusted, found pale towers leaning against each other, streets choked with drifting silt. Statues stared up at her with blank marble faces. And moving among them were shapes. Tall, thin, cowled in darkness. Like the figure above, but many. They turned their heads as she drifted by. Some raised long-fingered hands in greeting. Or was it hunger?

Her lungs burned. She kicked, fighting toward the surface, but the water seemed to thicken, clutch at her limbs. The city stretched on below, vast and impossible. She realized dimly that it was alive. The streets pulsed, the windows blinked, and something enormous slithered around a far tower, scales glittering like coins.

The figure appeared before her again, gliding through the water as effortlessly as it had over the ice. It reached out, and she flinched. But its hand — if it was a hand — closed gently around hers. Warmth spread up her arm, startling and wrong in the icy water. Her lungs stopped aching. The crushing cold receded.

It pulled her down, deeper into the drowned streets. Past arches draped in flowing weed, past doorways that breathed slow bubbles. She should have been terrified, but the warmth was so soothing, her panic ebbed. They passed other beings who nodded solemnly. Their faces were featureless, but somehow she felt their regard, like dozens of eyes brushing her soul.

Finally, they reached a courtyard where a fountain stood. From its basin rose a tree — dead, leafless, its bark crusted with salt. At its roots lay offerings: small bundles wrapped in decaying cloth, bright stones, bones etched with delicate spirals.

The figure released her hand and gestured. This is what you came to see.

She didn’t understand. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. The water carried them away as mere curls of silver. So instead she reached for the tree. Her fingers brushed its bark.

A jolt like lightning ripped through her. Memories that weren’t hers poured in — children playing in streets above a lake that hadn’t yet formed, markets alive with song, priests tending fires that burned with blue flame. Then storms came. Walls of ice. Screams swallowed by rising water.

She snatched her hand back. Tears mixed with the water around her face. The figure only watched. In its hollow eyes, she saw her own reflection: pale, terrified, yet somehow chosen.

It pointed upward.

She understood. It was time to go.

She kicked weakly, rising through the dark, through drifting filaments that might have been hair or weeds. The surface drew closer, bright with winter daylight. At last she broke through, gasping, coughing. The lake was empty. No figure waited on the ice. No sign of the city below. Only cracks spreading out like a spiderweb from where she’d fallen.

She crawled back to solid ice, shivering, soaked to the bone. Her mind spun with visions of drowned streets and gentle watchers. Part of her wondered if she’d hallucinated everything. But her hand still tingled where it had touched the tree. A faint pattern curled across her palm — lines like frost, or perhaps ancient writing.

Slowly, painfully, she rose. She turned toward the far shore. It seemed impossibly distant now, but she began to walk, every step a small victory against the cold.

Behind her, the lake lay silent, concealing its secrets once more. But she knew it watched her, just as the figure had. And though she was terrified, a tiny ember inside her burned with something close to wonder.