Chapter 5 The Whispering Lake

• The moon hovered low, a pale sentinel in the night sky. I didn’t need its light to find my way—my Domain lived inside my soul, an ever-present realm I entered with a single, steadying breath. No gate, no path, no need to stray from where I stood. I closed my eyes, willed myself inward, and reopened them to the lake’s edge.
• Here, rows of my hidden garden—tender herbs, fruit bushes heavy with late-season berries, young saplings—thrived in perfect soil. But this place, this sacred heart of my being, had its own magic: the earth hummed beneath my feet, responding to the rhythm of my heartbeat.
• I knelt by the water. Its surface, smooth as silken glass, bore no wind’s mark—but I felt its whispered pulse, a gentle murmur that only my spirit could hear. I placed a fingertip in the cool water and let the lake speak.
• In the hush of visions, the lake wove futures I would never wish upon the world. Cities crushed beneath towering ice, their spires shattering; flames fighting against endless white; a black horse’s hooves pounding frost fields, rider’s eyes brilliant embers in a frozen dusk; armies clashing under ash-gray skies. Then a face—sharp, hungry, dark hair swept back, eyes aflame with purpose. I had never seen him, yet I knew him: a man whose destiny was bound to mine.
• My heart hammered so fiercely I feared it might break free of my chest. Seven months remained before the world would freeze, seven months to gather, to prepare, to steel myself. I drew my hand back and pressed it to the slender silver ring on my finger—my grandmother’s last gift—etched with a warding sigil that warmed to my touch.
• “Thank you,” I whispered.
• Dawn found me seated at my grandmother’s stone doorstep, watching the greenhouse catch the first golden rays. Outside, the village stirred: thatched roofs exhaled smoke, children’s laughter echoed among the mango trees, and laundry hung in bright swaths across clotheslines. To them, my greenhouse was simply a marvel of modern farming: glass and bamboo shielding delicate plants from storms. But already I sensed their eyes—curious, worried, resentful.
• I opened the glass door as Aling Mira and young Rosa approached, baskets in hand and worry etched on their faces.
• “Lucy,” Mira began, “the nights have been colder these past weeks. My husband’s cough worsened, and I could find barely any mint this morning.”
• I offered a warm smile as I locked the door behind me. “The chill has slowed the garden’s growth. I moved the most vulnerable seedlings inside to protect them. I’ll deliver fresh herbs this afternoon—mint, thyme, feverfew.”
• Rosa’s voice trembled. “We’re running low, child—thyme, feverfew, mint for my husband’s cough. We need them now.”
• I stepped closer, placing a hand over hers. “I know. I’ll gather the needed herbs and send it to you later. And the greenhouse door is open to anyone who asks.”
• Felix emerged from the shadows, arms folded. “Open in theory. But these panes hide more than they reveal. Your grandmother’s garden once offered freely. Now I hear it’s locked away.”
• I drew a steadying breath. “Nothing is locked. Everything you need is here, if you ask. I promise you’ll never leave empty-handed.”
• Felix’s jaw clenched. “Words are easy. We need action.”
• “I understand,” I said softly. “I’ll bring your mint and feverfew today—and every day after, until the weather stabilizes.”
• Mira squeezed Felix’s arm. “We believe you,” she whispered. Rosa nodded. They left quietly, and I closed the door against their doubt. After that I prepare to attend classes in the city.
• A week later, I returned from the city. My grandmother’s house should have welcomed me with familiar warmth, but instead, a wall of smoke and ash rose before me. My breath caught.
• The greenhouse was nothing but charred beams and shattered glass. The sticks of bamboo smoldered ashenly; below them, scorched flowerbeds lay empty. No warmth, only rancid smoke. My throat burned.
• My heart pounded as I stumbled forward, toes crunching glass and embers. The house beyond—where my grandmother had laughed beside the hearth—was a skeleton: stone walls blackened, windows aglow with dying coals. The door hung ajar, hinges melted.
• As she looked around, she noted that some plants and fruits were gone; it looked like they had taken what they could first. She thought.
• Aling Rina appeared, breathless, hands clasped. Behind her, the other elders stood like mourners at a funeral pyre.
• I sank to my knees in the ash, choking back tears. “My home… my garden…” I could barely breathe. I closed my eyes; images of my grandmother tending the beds, the scent of jasmine drifting inside the house, and her soft humming—all gone.
• A cold hand gripped my shoulder. I looked up to see Mira and Felix.
• “I am so sorry, child,” Felix said, voice rough.
• “What happened here? ” she asked.
• “We… we found it engulfed in flames, child. It must have started hours ago,” Aling Rina said.
• “By the time we saw the smoke, it was already a raging inferno. We tried—Felix and I— to douse it with buckets, but the fire was too fierce,” she continued.
• Mang Felix added, “We hauled water from the well and threw everything we had. The thatch, the beams— everything just collapsed in on itself. There was nothing left to save.”
• “Nobody saw who did it? ” Lucy whispered.
• With a deep breath, Aling Rina said, “We arrived too late. No one was running away; no footprints were leading off. The wind carried the heat away before we could investigate properly.”
• Aling Mira said with tears in her eyes, “We’re so sorry, Lucy. We tried to break in through the back door, but the heat was unbearable. I thought… I thought we might at least get your grandmother’s journals, her tools…”
• “The smoke drove us back every time. By the time the last flame died, all we could do was watch the ash settle,” she continued.
• While shaking her head, Aling Rina said, “The only mercy is you were away. Had you been here, I don’t know if we could have saved you.”
• Lucy remained silent as she stared at what was left of the place she once called home. She knew deep inside who did this.
• Aling Rina cautiously asked, “What are you planning to do now? ”
• I struggled to my feet, ash falling from my hair. “I will survive,” I said, my voice low and fierce. “And they will learn that grace can’t be repaid with hatred.”
• I turned away, unwilling to witness their guilt any longer.
• At dawn, I stepped onto the cool brick of the front walk, the city’s quiet pressing in around me. I looked up at the house—small, weathered, tucked between two taller buildings like it was trying not to be noticed. I hadn’t been here since I was a child, just once with my grandmother. It was on that visit that I learned —this was where my mother had lived, long before I was born. Somehow, that made the place feel sacred, even if the walls were worn and the air stale from years of disuse.
• I used to stay at the university dorms whenever I had classes in the city. The house was too far, too inconvenient. But now, with the school year drawing to a close and no plans to return, it didn’t matter. There was no point in chasing degrees when I knew what was coming. The Freeze would make all of it meaningless.
• So now, this quiet, forgotten house would become my refuge. Not just from the cold to come, but from everything I’d lost.
• It was nearly dawn, and exhaustion clung to me like a second skin. I hadn’t slept since returning, so I chose to remain in the villa within my domain—just for a few hours—before facing the dust and disuse of the city house. I told myself I’d start cleaning after some proper rest.
• But the rest didn’t last long.
• A few hours into sleep, something pulled me awake—not noise, not a dream, but a feeling, deep and persistent. A quiet call urging me toward the lake. The dreams had grown rare. There was a time I could count on them—twice a week, steady and searing with purpose. But lately… nothing. Only silence, broken now and then by a whisper I couldn't quite explain.
• I’ve started to wonder if it was the lake itself guiding them. Not just a reflection or a medium, but the very heart of the gift my family carries. My grandmother used to dream too, though she never had a domain to house it. Maybe she had her own lake—hidden, intangible, locked beyond her reach. Maybe all of us did. A legacy of water and vision, each singing in its own strange voice to the women who could hear.
• I willed myself to its shore and skated a finger across the glassy surface. In my mind it sang—a soft, wordless melody that curled through my thoughts. Then the vision poured in: frost creeping over streets, desperate hands smashing doors, neighbors transformed into rioters who looted, raped, murdered—and, driven by starvation, turned on one another in the most horrifying of ways.
• My stomach clenched, and I stumbled back. My heart thundered—not from the cold, but from imagining the depths of human despair. Tears slipped down my cheeks as I struggled to breathe. In that moment, I understood the true cost of this coming calamity—and why I must be ready to stand against not only ice but also the fear it would unleash in every heart.
• After the vision gripped me, its chill lingered in my bones long after I left the lake. It wasn’t just the images of devastation—the shattered cities buried in ice, the rider’s burning gaze, or the chaos unraveling beneath a frozen sky. It was the other part, the part that twisted my gut tighter than cold ever could. The people.
• I couldn’t shake what I’d seen: the madness in their eyes, the hunger that stripped away compassion, the violence that poured out when hope dried up. It wasn’t just the cold we had to survive—but each other. The Freeze would bring out the worst in those desperate enough to survive at any cost.
• That night, after I returned to the quiet of my Domain’s villa, I didn’t sleep again.
• The next morning, when the city light pushed through the dirty windows of my mother’s old house, I set to work.
• First, I sketched a plan for the rooftop. It wasn’t large, but it would be enough. I cleared away broken tiles and old satellite dishes and began building garden beds from salvaged wood and rusted metal troughs I found discarded in alleyways. Lettuce. Spinach. Basil. Mint. I planted them in worn pots and tired soil, coaxing life from earth using the charms and sigils that I learn. It wasn’t the lush abundance of my old greenhouse, but it would do. It had to.
• Anything that might raise suspicion stayed out of sight. In a place like this—where the sun blazed nearly year-round and snow was something only seen in books—winter gear was more than strange; it was a warning sign. So I kept it hidden. Heavy coats, insulated boots, thermal gloves—all packed away in sealed trunks stored safely inside the villa within my Domain.
• Inside the Domain, the world remained suspended in a gentle spring. The air was always mild, the scent of blooming herbs and damp earth lingering like a memory that refused to fade. Though it echoed the rhythm of day and night outside, the weather never changed—no storms, no chill, only the soft rustle of leaves and the steady hum of life. It was perfect for what I needed.
• Each day, I set the solar panels beneath the Domain’s sun, letting them soak up its steady warmth. There was no risk of rain or cloud cover here, no threat of theft or tampering. Everything I couldn’t afford to lose in the real world, I anchored in this secret place.
• The fuel-powered generator stood beside the solar one, covered in a thick tarp and guarded by silence. I’d yet to gather enough fuel for it, but I would. One step at a time. Quietly. Carefully. No one could know what I was preparing for—not yet.
• But stockpiling and gardening weren’t enough. Not anymore. I had seen the fire in those eyes. I had felt the hunger of strangers willing to kill for a crust of bread. So, I turned my attention to the house itself.
• The windows came first.
• I scouted every secondhand shop and surplus yard I could find, searching for bulletproof glass. It cost more than I had, so I bartered—offering tinctures and rare herbs in exchange. Pain relief blends, salves for inflammation, even a sleep draught I hadn’t brewed since the village. Slowly, piece by piece, I gathered the materials.
• Steel doors followed, then new locks—heavy, reinforced, with backup bolts from the inside. I replaced the old wooden frames with metal braces. I even rigged a sliding gate for the stairwell that led to the rooftop garden, just in case anyone tried to climb their way up.
• It wasn’t perfect. But it was safer.
• By day, I kept to myself. I no longer practiced healing openly—not since word of such kindness once marked me as something to be taken. Now, I offered only what couldn’t be twisted or exploited: a bandage here, a drink of clean water there. A soft cloth to cool a fevered forehead. I helped a crying child find their way back to their mother. I knelt beside a woman who had collapsed on the sidewalk from sheer exhaustion and eased the tension from her limbs with gentle pressure, careful not to draw attention.
• Simple gestures. Nothing grand. Nothing that would draw too much notice. Just enough to remind myself I was still human.
• At night, I returned to the lake.
• I closed my eyes and let my mind drift inward, passing through that invisible door until my feet touched the stone shore once again. The air there always smelled of blooming things, even in darkness—of jasmine and wild honey and something older, deeper. I sat at the water’s edge, the vines around the villa rustling softly in the windless air.
• I didn’t always seek a vision. Sometimes I just listened. Waited.
• But when the visions came, they came like fire through ice.
• I saw the city again—this one, and others like it—frozen in silence, as if caught mid-breath. Cars entombed in frost. Windows rimed with snow. People huddled in corners, skin blue and stiff. Fires lit in desperation, flaring like dying stars against a sky that refused to warm.
• I saw the rider again. That terrible figure on a black horse, flames in his eyes, scanning the land as if searching for something—or someone. His cloak was ash and smoke. His presence made the lake tremble.
• And I saw armies. Marching beneath thunderclouds that wept ice. Metal clashing in the dark. Screams swallowed by wind. I saw the face again—the one that haunted every vision. A face I didn’t yet know, but felt etched into my future, waiting like an unopened letter.
• I opened my eyes slowly, heart thudding.
• My hand found the ring on my finger—the silver band etched with the sigil of protection my grandmother gave me before she died. I pressed my palm against it and whispered the lake’s word again.
• “Survive.”
• It had never felt so heavy.
• Back in the waking world, I stood on the rooftop under the gray light of dawn, looking out over the restless city. The wind carried the smell of smoke and exhaust. A siren cried in the distance. Below me, people bustled by, unaware of what was coming. Or maybe they were aware, just unwilling to face it.
• But I would.
• Because the lake had shown me what would become of the unprepared. And I refused to become one of them.