Kasteil walked in with urgency, his heavy boots crunching through the thin, refreezing crust of snow that had begun to form around the edges of Castan Lake.
The lake was frozen solid, a vast, glassy sheet reflecting the harsh white floodlights the security team had set up along the shore. The ice looked almost black in places where the light didn't reach, cracked and uneven from the frantic work of the recovery team. Yellow caution tape fluttered in the wind, cordoning off a wide perimeter. Beyond it, a small crowd of locals and reporters had gathered, phones raised, murmurs rippling through them like wind over water.
