Elias pulled the oars in, letting the rowboat drift. He shouldn't have been out there—not after the stories his grandfather told about the "mirror days," when the water got so still you couldn't tell the sky from the surface. "Just one cast," he whispered to the silence.
Below him, deep in the dark water, a light was growing. It wasn't the blurry glow of a lantern or a fish; it was sharp, geometric, and impossibly bright. As it rose, the water began to hum. The ripples didn't move outward; they moved inward, toward the center of the lake, as if the water were being pulled down a drain that didn't exist. That Night on the Lake
He rowed back to shore in a fever, but he never told a soul. Some secrets are meant to stay under the surface, and some nights are meant to change you in ways the daylight can never explain. Elias pulled the oars in, letting the rowboat drift