Lyle woke groggily and lay with his eyes open, staring at his ceiling. Things were quiet for a few minutes, but he didn’t expect it to last.

The night before had been a disaster. Poor Morgan had been rushed to the hospital, though Lyle wasn’t sure how much they would be able to do for her. She wasn’t one of the Infinite, but she was still among the most powerful of all the Embers, so her own durability and healing should trump any modern medical technology.

He hoped she was okay. Tiamat had reassured him, but somehow it hadn’t been that reassuring given her cryptic manner of speech. Liv had been hysterical watching her indestructible friend go through such an experience, but Trent and Lyle had managed to get her home after the ambulance took Morgan. The paramedics didn’t seem worried given the presentation of her symptoms, but they were confused as to how this had occurred in such a strong Ember. That nonchalance had actually been more reassuring to Lyle than Tiamat’s words.

And now Lyle wasn’t sure what to do next. It was Friday, so his chances of getting into the tower again this week were low. Without a job and with his relationship a thing of the past, he didn’t have much to do. After causing Morgan’s seizure, he wasn’t likely to get work with Moonlight Sonata, either.

He started the morning slowly, browsing the news on the laptop while he ate his breakfast. To his shock, when he opened up a web browser, though, every headline and ever website banner was telling the same story—an Eclipsed Ember had appeared in London the night before. Lyle looked on in horror as bodies were tallied, and hysterical people fled the destruction in the images. He saw a video of an old stone building caving in because of the damage done to its foundations in a battle amongst Embers, but much of it was censored. After far too much death, Embers in the city had banded together and brought the man down, but the damage was already done for far too many of the unlucky people who had had the misfortune of being there.

Lyle slowly shook his head, hardly believing what he was seeing. The Eclipsed were the unlucky few Embers that were taken by some form of illness. Darkness found its way into infecting their Emberflames, their eyes blazed the same sickly green as the fallen Towers, and they became psychopathic, merciless killing machines. Before the Advent, when the Towers had risen and the Embers had appeared, no one had ever seen anything like it. That made it clear what their source was, and they started out mercifully rare, appearing only once every year or two. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to last. Seventeen years following the Advent, there had already been three cases of Eclipsed Embers, and it was only May.

A sharp intake of breath behind Lyle alerted him to his sister’s presence.

“No…” she said softly, looking over his shoulder.

He nodded sadly, and slowly closed the laptop. He looked down at his bowl of cereal, and wondered what could even be said. Helen eventually seemed to return to herself, and she poured herself some cereal as time continued to pass around them. The mood remained subdued, but Lyle felt relief when she asked what had happened the night before. He gave her a quick rundown of what had actually happened, hoping she’d have some insight. She wasn’t an Ember, or even that interested in Embers, but she was smart.

“Hmm,” Helen hummed contemplatively. “Maybe you’re different from the average Ember. After all, your Kindling was… weird, to say the least. Could be you’re incompatible with runes, or maybe your particular power just doesn’t play well with others. Didn’t you say it was kind of anti-magic?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lyle sighed. “I’ll probably just stay away from now on. No reason to put her in danger. Should be easy enough since I never met her before yesterday.”

“Stay away from just her? Not everyone?”

“I mean, she’s the only one who had a seizure.”

“Yeah, but you said you’d stay away from her, not avoid runes altogether.”

“That—that’s what I meant.”

“Nah, I think you like her. As much as I was rooting for Tanya, I’m happy as long as you’re not dwelling too much on Emily.”

Lyle pursed his lips. “Rooting for Tanya, huh?”

“Obviously. You know, she was disappointed you didn’t even say hi the other day.”

“Sorry. Other things on my mind.”

“Figures. Anyway, Minneapolis isn’t a huge town for Embers. If you’re actually going to work hard and get a lot stronger, it might not be as easy to avoid Morgan as you think. Besides—” Helen turned her phone screen towards Lyle. On it was a picture of Morgan posing provocatively. “—Why would you want to? Look at her!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lyle said with a chuckle. “You should have seen her in person.”

Once Helen left, Lyle found himself wondering what was next. He considered walking to Emily’s apartment and knocking on the door—trying to get his stuff and maybe have a conversation with her. Would it provide any kind of catharsis?

Maybe I’ll wait a bit longer, he thought with a sigh. I don’t know if I have the emotional energy to deal with that right now.

He glanced upwards toward the ceiling. Tiamat’s gift, the little wooden cube, was still in his dresser. Maybe he would dive into the next challenge. He would be well rested and sufficiently prepared this time—he even had a weapon. Two, if he brought both his father’s old blade and the new black one he’d received in yesterday’s package.

Was it worth the risk, though? Sure, he was gradually getting stronger as his body internalized the magic he now had access to, but Lyle had nearly died two days before in the entombed maze. If this one was harder, he would have to be very prepared in order to succeed.

He waffled back and forth as he tried to decide, doing busywork for a couple of hours and even taking some time to look for a new job. In the end, he closed the laptop without applying to anything. There was no way he could work an average job now without losing his mind. He had greater things to work towards. He had to take a risk, and enter the lagoon, as Tiamat had told him in her note. The fact that it would provide something to focus on was all the more reason to do so.

Besides, he didn’t think Tiamat would actually try to kill him, so as long as he was careful, he’d probably be safe. Is that a dangerous assumption? Lyle didn’t know.

He walked purposefully up the stairs to his room after preparing a pack of food and water. Lagoon implied water, but whether there was safe water for drinking was another question completely, and he couldn’t assume that he would be out quickly. That would be naive. Instead, he brought sustenance and supplies to complement his weapons. He wondered if it was overkill when he packed a rope he’d found in the basement, then shrugged to himself. Better safe than sorry.

The wooden cube greeted him when he entered his room, and he lifted it up to inspect it. He’d first entered the green pyramid, so he had five left. The blue crown, the yellow teardrop, the purple city skyline, and the red mountains. Only the teardrop could possibly have implied a lagoon, what with the water, so he pressed his finger to the yellow side and extended the barest thread of his magic.

The Tear reached out and captured him, holding him completely frozen, but he didn’t panic. This was familiar. He waited patiently, and moments later his rug was replaced with sand.

The beach he found himself standing on was eerie. The clouds above shaded the world in an utterly uniform gray, and he was ringed by haunting trees that appeared more than halfway dead. The water was the only way off the beach since the shrubbery was so dense, and when he tried to cut it away, it revealed an even more thorough wall of trees blocking his way, then grew back unnaturally fast.

The lake itself was disturbing, as well, though Lyle couldn’t quite put his finger on why it creeped him out so much. There was something unsettling about its bizarre stillness, its perfect roundness, and its shadowy depths. Swirling silt prevented his gaze from piercing more than a few inches into the water.

A wooden sign displayed the words Beware the Deep right next to the water. It was carved, but Lyle couldn’t help but think that the styling of the letters would have looked right at home painted in blood.

“Right,” he said to the sign. “As if just jumping right in would occur to anyone in their right mind.”

And yet the water was the only way to go. It was great that he’d brought provisions and weapons this time around, but he was hoping he wouldn’t have to immediately lose the food because he went swimming in a haunted lake. If this place was anything like the pyramid, there would be a way forwards, and he just had to hope it didn’t involve diving in completely blind.

He began to study his surroundings more closely, looking for hints. The jungle around him, the ground beneath his feet, the water before him, and even the sky above his head. It took nearly fifteen minutes before he realized that some of the irregularities in the drifting silt in the water weren’t irregularities at all—in fact, they were very regular.

Circular stones sat just below the surface, providing steps with only millimeters of water covering them. He could have sworn they hadn’t been there when he first studied the water, but they were now. He cautiously put a bit of weight on the first one, then stepped back. Nothing happened, and he had no other ways forward, so he eased himself fully onto the step. A dim light shining from some of the steps in front of him made him a bit leery, and he jumped back to the shore.

After a few seconds, the lit-up steps sank down into the darkness. When the stones nearest the shore began to glow, Lyle noticed that the light shone for about ten seconds before they retreated.

“So walk on the stepping stones, and don’t get caught flat-footed when they sink,” Lyle said to himself, studying the lake to try to discern some kind of pattern.

They rose once more, a few minutes later, and Lyle’s path was clear. He stepped onto them out into the lake, the black sword in his right hand so he would be prepared to defend himself.

The stones led him across the lake in a straight line aimed directly for the center, and he made progress for a few minutes unhindered, but it didn’t last. Lyle began to hear splashes on both sides of himself. He was more than slightly concerned that some undead creature would grab his ankles and simply pull him into the water to be torn apart, so he picked up his pace. A splash off to the side was his only warning before a dull streak nearly slamming into his chest before slapping the surface of the water and slipping away once more.

Lyle dodged the streaks, his survival instincts saving him at least three times before he figured out what was happening. They were jumping fish, their log bodies heavy and gleaming. They were mottled grey and brown, and discolored a slight green, and they had enormous, sharp teeth that extended outside of their mouths, preventing them from closing their jaws completely. The most dangerous natural weapons they had were their fins, though—they were long, extended, and sharper than razors. They sought to cut Lyle to ribbons.

He began to cut the fish out of the air with his blade before they could do the same to him, remaining still so as not to lose his balance. The fish were not so accommodating, though. Their assault never slowed. After a minute of cutting fish down with no end in sight, Lyle continued moving forward one step at a time. He didn’t want to give the fish the opportunity to get at him in the water if the step sank beneath him. That would certainly spell his doom.

He found a moment of respite in the form of a much larger stone platform—perhaps eight feet across—that rose out of the water a finger’s breadth. Paths of stones ran in four directions, and he took a deep breath as the fish ceased leaping at his face. Once again, he didn’t have long to relax. All around him, stones lit up and began to sink, and he jerked his head around to find a safe route, but all of them began to sink near simultaneously. His platform did not light up, though, and he prayed it would remain afloat. When it did, he let out a deep breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

With all the steps sunk, he now had no way forward, so he stayed put and waited patiently for them to rise again.