The lake did not sleep.
It never had.
It only remembered.
Moonlight lay upon Scarder Lake like a thin layer of frost, silver and fragile, unable to touch more than the skin of that dark expanse. Beneath the surface, the water was still—a depth so absolute it felt like silence made liquid.
Mist hung low over the water, veiling its edges, clinging to jagged stones and twisted roots along the shore. The air was cold, but not with the simple sharpness of winter.
It was the kind of cold that carried echoes.
Footsteps that no longer sounded.
Voices that had stopped whispering centuries ago.
And somewhere in that stillness, at the core where light never reached, she stirred.
Sairen.
Guardian of Scarder Lake.
Cursed Waters' Keeper.
Eternal Sentinel.
Names given by mortals.
She had worn them all like chains.
Tonight, another name lingered at the center of her being.
Not a title.
A sound.
Soft.
Plain.
"Sairen."
Spoken as if it were not an altar.
As if it were just—her.
A faint tremor passed through the deep.
Not enough to disturb the surface.
Enough to ripple along the boundary between her domain and the thin thread that now bound her beyond it.
The spirit link.
To him.
The anomaly.
The reborn.
Kel von Rosenfeld.
She sank upward, if such a motion could be named.
Her awareness rose through layers of water and memory until it approached the surface, where cold wind scraped along mist and the world above whispered its own quiet chaos.
She did not breach the lake.
She didn't have to.
Her body was water, mist, and shape—sometimes feminine, sometimes monstrous, sometimes nothing at all.
Tonight, she chose form.
A woman's silhouette coalesced from fog upon the empty shore. Bare feet touched wet stone without sound, water trailing like translucent fabric from ankles to mid-thigh.
Her hair—long and dark as the bottomless center of the lake—flowed around her, strands merging with mist until they were indistinguishable.
Her eyes opened.
They glowed faintly, not with light—but with knowing.
She lifted her head.
And saw a ceiling of rough stone.
A narrow window.
Faint moonlight.
Not here.
There.
Through him.
The spirit link thrummed.
Thin, yet sturdy.
It carried not just mana.
It carried sensation.
He lay on a bed far from her shoreline, the coarse fabric beneath his back, the weight of his coat draped over him, the subtle ache in his muscles pulsing like distant tides.
She could not see his dreams—he was not fully asleep—but through the bond she felt his body surrendering to exhaustion even as his mind refused to loosen its grip.
Moments ago, he had spoken.
Not aloud.
Not entirely.
To her.
"The truth I told you is only known to me… and now, to you."
Her fingers, pale and delicate, flexed slightly at her side.
Truth.
In all the ages she had watched mortals come and go from her water, few had ever brought that to her.
They brought desperation. Fear. Blood. Offerings dipped from trembling hands.
Truth was rarely among them.
"I trust you," he had said. "I think of you as my equal. My companion."
Equal.
Companion.
The words felt unnatural against the old grooves carved into her existence.
Guardian.
Keeper.
Witness.
Weapon.
She closed her eyes.
And let memory surface.
Ages of Requests
She had watched kingdoms rise and crack.
Mountains shifted.
Forests swallowed ruins that had once been called holy.
Scarder Lake still remained.
Even when men forgot its original name.
At first, they had come in small numbers.
Hunters losing their way in the mist.
Women with sick children, kneeling on the cold shore.
Warriors bearing marks on their souls from blades they never wished to draw.
Sairen had seen every kind of plea.
"Heal me."
"Curse my enemies."
"Let me die quickly."
"Erase what I've done."
Some offered tokens—rings, knives, blood.
Some offered themselves.
One after another.
Year after year.
Century after century.
They never stayed.
They never wanted to.
They wanted something from the lake.
They never wanted to exist with it.
Sairen did not blame them.
The lake was not kind.
Its waters devoured curses, yes.
But they also consumed those unworthy.
Its depths granted blessings.
At a cost.
She had watched them all.
Observed without moving.
Judged without joy.
Granted or denied according to law older than any empire.
And when they left—or were dragged under and ceased—
she remained.
Bound.
Not by chains that clinked.
By purpose.
By existence.
"Guard this place," the first voice had told her, long before she understood time. "Be its mind. Its law. Its memory."
So she had been.
A being tethered to a body of cold water and old scars.
Watching lives flicker and vanish while she endured.
Alone.
Now—
the link thrummed again.
Her attention shifted back to the boy lying in a distant room, his body small against the weight he carried—weight that had nothing to do with flesh, everything to do with knowing.
Anomalies, he called himself.
Player.
Variable.
Words that meant little to a lake.
But she understood enough.
He did not see this world as fixed.
He saw it as a tapestry with loose threads.
Threads he could grasp.
Twist.
Reweave.
That should have made her wary.
Threatened.
Offended.
The guardian of a place like Scarder Lake did not usually entertain beings who shattered pattern. Anomaly meant risk. Risk meant imbalance.
Imbalance meant catastrophe.
And yet—
when he'd looked upon her with those dark, steady eyes…
he had not flinched.
He had not knelt either.
He had simply stood there, small and breakable, spine straight as steel beneath tattered cloth.
And said:
"Become my partner. Not my servant."
She lifted one hand now, fingers curling in the mist-heavy air above the water.
She remembered the feel of his aura brushing against her domain.
Soft.
Controlled.
Like someone used to walking on the edge of blades.
He had offered her contract… and then anchored it with a promise.
"If I force you to act against your will, our contract will end. You will be free."
No one had ever offered her freedom like that.
Not gods.
Not kings.
Not the mortals who begged to be carried away.
And tonight—
he had given something else.
Something more dangerous.
His truth.
Not whole.
Not yet.
But more than anyone else had ever received.
The Anomaly She Chose
Sairen looked down at her own reflection in the lake.
It was faint.
Shimmering.
She saw a woman's face—young, ageless, half-veiled in mist.
Eyes that had watched centuries slip through her fingers like sand.
She saw—
for a moment—
another reflection layered beneath hers.
A boy's shadow.
Black hair.
A status window she could not see.
Words she did not understand.
Yet.
He had told her: he was not of this world.
Reborn.
Memories recovered at twelve.
Knowledge of things not yet done.
She had felt it before he spoke it.
She had sensed the way his thoughts moved—
not linear.
Branching.
Comparing what was to what could have been.
"I know things about this world I should not," he had said.
She had pressed.
Not to break him.
To understand.
There, in the quiet of that narrow room, he had chosen not to lie.
Not fully.
Not enough to be comfortable.
Enough to be real.
"You and I are the only ones who know," he'd told her. "Aside from us two, this truth belongs to no one."
Her fingers brushed the surface of her lake.
Ripples bloomed outward.
Small.
Precise.
Aside from us two…
It had been a long, long time since Sairen had been part of a "two."
Longer still since anyone had ever placed her in that kind of equation.
Not "you and your lake."
Not "you and your duty."
You and me.
Just two.
Equal, he'd called her.
Companion.
Partner.
He had chosen words she still did not feel fully worthy of.
Yet he'd given them without flinching.
Without expectation.
That, more than anything, unsettled her.
Mortals always wanted something.
He wanted things too.
Power.
Influence.
Lives saved.
Routes changed.
But he did not press his claim on her like a conquering king.
He made room for her at his side like someone used to walking alone—
and still choosing to open space.
Fear, Reflected
Sairen had watched countless mortals drown in her water.
Fear, she knew.
Intimately.
They feared the unknown.
They feared her.
They feared dying.
They feared living.
Tonight, she had felt a different fear.
Her own.
When his thoughts had unfolded and she glimpsed, just at the edges, the shape of what he might be—
She had feared being left behind.
Here, bound to water and duty, while he strode forward carrying futures and broken lines and worlds rethreaded.
Beings like him—
things that defied pattern—
rose fast.
Burned hot.
Changed everything.
And then?
They vanished.
Or ascended.
Or collapsed.
Leaving guardians like her in the ruins, to watch the next cycle.
"Would he outgrow me?" she had wondered.
"Will there come a day when Scarder Lake's guardian is too… small for his path?"
That thought had settled in her depths like a stone.
Heavy.
Bitter.
Then he had spoken again.
"No."
One word.
Dropped like a weight into stillness.
"I won't outgrow you, Sairen. I'll grow with you."
The ripple of that sentence had not stopped yet.
She could still feel it moving through her waters.
Touching every old wound.
Every lonely year.
Every time she watched someone leave and wondered, quietly, if they'd ever thought of her as anything more than a threshold to cross.
Observing the Boy Who Calls Spring
In the dark, she extended her awareness along the bond again.
Back to him.
Kel lay half-curled now, coat pulled lazily over himself as if blankets were optional. One arm was tucked under his head; the other draped across his midsection.
His breathing had deepened.
The sharp edges of alertness had dulled.
His face, unguarded, looked younger.
Less like an anomaly breaking stories.
More like a boy who'd walked too far carrying too much.
She could sense the faint pulses of strain in his aura channels—
like hairline cracks in glass.
He ignored them.
As he always did.
"If you forget your body is flesh as well as will," she had told him, "I will interfere."
He'd answered, with that dry humor of his:
"I'd rather you break my arrogance than my trust."
She almost smiled then.
If a lake could smile.
This strange creature.
This child who spoke to her as if she were not something to be worshipped or appeased—but to be included.
He unsettled her.
Intrigued her.
Pulled her curiosity like tides.
He had offered her sight of the world beyond her shores.
He had now given her a secret he did not share with anyone else.
What was she, if not a guardian of such things?
She watched him a moment longer, noting every subtle sign of his state—the small twitch of fingers, the faint tension that never fully left his shoulders, even in half-sleep.
You're too used to dying in your mind, she thought quietly.
Careful.
You're not reloadable here.
She whispered the thought along the bond, not as a message—
As a vow to herself.
A New Kind of Duty
Guardianship had always meant protecting a place.
A law.
A balance.
She had never guarded a person.
Not like this.
Not one who walked willingly into every wound in the world with the intent to stitch it closed, consequences be damned.
He would draw attention.
Constellations.
Kings.
Monsters.
Fate.
He said he was not fate—
But she had watched the web around him warp as if it recognized something familiar.
He bent routes.
She steadied him.
Perhaps that was her new duty.
Not to a land.
Not to an abstract concept.
To a boy who refused to let the world follow its assigned script.
"I will not break you for what you have not said," she had told him. "I will not flee from what you are."
She repeated it now, to herself.
To the lake.
To the night.
No one bound Scarder Lake's guardian but Scarder Lake.
And now—
a very small, very stubborn boy.
She looked down again at her reflection.
The mist curled around her form like a cloak.
Her eyes, reflecting both moon and memory, had changed.
Slightly.
Enough.
"Very well," she whispered—not aloud, but into the currents of her being.
"I stand witness to this anomaly."
The lake around her hummed faintly, old energies recognizing new alignment.
"I walk with him as far as this link will carry."
Her gaze lingered on the faint, distant image of him across the bond.
"Kel von Rosenfeld," she said slowly, tasting every syllable as if binding it to water.
"Entity of another world. Reborn child. Thread-breaker. Route-stealer. My contractor—"
Her lips almost, almost curled.
"—and my equal."
The word no longer felt foreign.
Just heavy.
Just right.
She turned her face upward, toward the closed sky.
For the first time in an age, Sairen felt something move inside her that was not duty, not cold judgment, not ancient resignation.
Anticipation.
The lake did not sleep.
But tonight—
for the first time since it formed—
it felt as if it were waiting.
Not for the next desperate plea.
Not for the next curse to devour.
For footsteps.
For choices.
For a boy who dared to think he could drag an entire story off its rails—
and who had, in his own blunt, crooked way, reached out a hand and said:
"If I'm rewriting this, I'm not leaving you behind."
She sank back into the water, her form dissolving into ripples and mist, the spirit link still glowing faintly in the depths of her awareness.
Above—
the moonlight trembled on Scarder Lake's surface.
Below—
the guardian watched.
And for the first time,
she did not feel alone in the watching.