CHAPTER 47: GLOWING POND

"How often will you come back?" Lisa asked me.

I looked at her. "I’ll try once a month. Otherwise my big sister will kill me."

The casual way I said it made her smile despite her worries, but I could feel something flickering in my chest—uncertainty, perhaps even doubt. The truth was, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Rosaluna had truly accepted my decision to leave. My sister had been surprisingly agreeable when I’d announced my plans, almost suspiciously so. Rosaluna, who couldn’t bear to be separated from me for more than a day without finding some excuse to seek me out, had simply nodded and wished me well. It was so unlike her that it left me wondering what she was really thinking.

But that was a worry for another day.

"What about me?" Lisa’s voice was quieter now, almost vulnerable. "Won’t you come for me?"

Without hesitation, I reached out my hand toward her, palm up in invitation.

Before Lisa could respond, she tensed slightly, her gaze darting toward the treeline. "He’s here..." She murmured, speaking of Riley.

"Who cares," I replied, standing up.

When I reached her, I grasped her arm gently but firmly, pulling her up and toward me in one smooth motion.

"Ha..." Her surprised exhale was soft against my chest as she found herself pressed against me, her hands instinctively rising to rest on my chest for support. I could feel her palms against me, warm and slightly trembling. "W...what are you doing?" Her cheeks flushed that delicate pink I’d grown to love, and she cast quick, nervous glances around.

"He’s seen us doing much more intimate things," I said with what I knew was my most roguish smile. "Why are you acting timid now?"

"T...that’s not the issue," Lisa protested. "While he’s with us, we shouldn’t—mmph!"

I cut off her protests with a kiss, claiming her lips with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he wanted. The kiss was firm, demanding, yet tender—exactly what I wanted to give her, what I hoped she needed from me.

Kissing had become second nature between us, as natural as breathing. We shared at least one kiss each time we saw each other. Yet she always felt that flutter of embarrassment, that delicious nervousness that came from believing our relationship was still a secret that needed protecting. I found her reactions cute and saw no reason to disillusion her—most of the village had probably figured out what was happening between us, but if she wanted to maintain the pretense of secrecy, I was happy to play along.

Lisa melted into the kiss despite her protests, her resistance lasting only a heartbeat before she surrendered to me completely. When we finally parted, she was breathing heavily, her cheeks flushed and her lips slightly swollen.

"Come with me," I said again, my voice lower now, more intimate. My hands had moved to her back, tracing slow circles that made her shiver under my touch.

"H...Harold..." She whispered.

"Riley and Zoey are old enough to take care of themselves," I continued. "They’re more mature than you think. And I’ll ask my mother to keep an eye on them as well."

Isabella had already a soft spot for the siblings after all. They often ate with us as well in the last years.

But Lisa shook her head, the gesture small but definitive. There was something in her expression that spoke of deeper conflicts, barriers that went beyond simple concern for her young charges.

I let my hands move lower, finding the curves of her body through the supple leather pants. My touch was possessive, claiming, and I felt a surge of satisfaction when she couldn’t suppress the small sound that escaped her throat as I groped her ass cheeks.

"Hmm!" She shivered at my contact, and I could feel her body responding even as her mind struggled against the temptation I represented.

"You aren’t a woman meant to live her whole life in a village, Lisa," I said. "Be it with your archery skills or your magical potential—you’re more amazing than you think."

I meant every word. I’d seen her magical abilities growing stronger lately, responding to emotions she couldn’t quite name, and she was wasting talents that could take her places she’d never dreamed of. But I could see the conflict in her eyes—dreams and reality were different things, and reality came with responsibilities, complications, and fears she couldn’t voice.

Lisa gripped my shirt, her knuckles white against the dark fabric, and lowered her head. "I...I’m sorry...but I can’t..."

"Why?"

The silence stretched between us. I could see the war playing out behind her eyes, the struggle between what she wanted and what she believed she could have. I’d sensed for years that she was hiding something from me, something that went deeper than her usual concerns about propriety or responsibility. It wasn’t a matter of trust—I knew she trusted me with her life. But there was something she didn’t want to confront, didn’t want to give voice to.

Looks like I will have to play it harsher with her.

If she wouldn’t tell me willingly, I’d have to force her hand.

I released her suddenly, stepping back so abruptly that she swayed slightly, having grown accustomed to my support.

"I get it," I said, letting my voice take on a cooler tone that I knew would cut deep.

"Harold..." She started, reaching out as if to bridge the sudden distance between us.

"You have doubts," I continued, each word carefully chosen to wound. "You don’t think I’m the man for you, isn’t that right?"

"W...what?" The genuine shock and hurt in her eyes were there.

"It’s fine," I pressed on. "Otherwise you wouldn’t always reject my offers without giving me real reasons. I don’t believe it’s because of nostalgia or whatever excuse you want to use. If you don’t want me, Lisa, I’d like to hear it honestly from you now."

The manipulation felt wrong in this new life I was trying to build, this second chance at being better. But love made monsters of good men sometimes, and I needed to know what was holding her back so I could help her overcome it.

"Y...you’re wrong, Harold," Lisa said, shaking her head desperately. "I do love you."

"I will leave ahead," I said finally, shouldering my games bucket and turning away from her.

"H...Harold!" Lisa called after me, her voice breaking slightly. "Please, wait—"

But I was already walking away leaving her standing alone in our campment. As I disappeared between the trees, I allowed myself one glance back, just enough to see her standing there with tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

Now I was very curious.

I will just wait until she speak.

Anyway, I went back to the village.

But on my way back, I felt something strange.

I looked around.

The familiar path through Greenwood Forest felt... different. The same ancient oaks towered overhead, their branches weaving a canopy that filtered the dying sunlight into scattered amber beams, but there was an energy in the air that hadn’t been there on my way out. Something that made the hair on my arms stand on end and set my nerves on edge.

I stopped walking and closed my eyes, focusing on the sensation.

"There," I murmured, opening my eyes and turning to my left.

Something was calling to me from that direction. Not with words or sounds, but with a pull that seemed to emanate from my very bones. It was the strangest sensation I’d ever experienced—like being drawn by invisible threads toward something I couldn’t name or understand.

I’d walked this path hundreds of times over the years, knew every tree and rock formation like the back of my hand. But as I pushed through the underbrush toward that inexplicable pull, everything seemed subtly wrong. The shadows fell at angles that didn’t match the sun’s position. Colors seemed more vivid, as if someone had painted the world with pigments that didn’t exist in nature. Even the air tasted different—cleaner, somehow, with an almost metallic undertone that made my tongue tingle.

I walked for what felt like hours but could only have been ten minutes, the pull growing stronger with each step. The trees began to thin out, and I could hear the gentle sound of water ahead. But this was impossible—I knew every stream and creek in these woods, and there was no water source in this direction.

When I finally broke through the treeline, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Before me lay a pond I had never seen before, and it was unlike anything in the natural world. The entire surface glowed with an ethereal blue light that seemed to come from within the water itself. Hundreds of fireflies danced above the surface, their golden light weaving patterns that were too complex to be random. But even more incredible were the butterflies—dozens of them, their wings shimmering with iridescent colors that shifted and changed as they moved. They flew not just above the water, but through it, as if the boundary between air and liquid meant nothing to them.

The whole scene was breathtakingly beautiful, like something from a fairy tale or a fever dream.

I set down my hunting bucket carefully, never taking my eyes off the impossible sight before me. My rational mind was cataloging everything wrong with what I was seeing, but another part of me—a deeper, more primitive part—recognized this place as something sacred. Something that had been waiting for me.

"Come."

The voice seemed to arise from everywhere and nowhere at once. I spun around, my hand instinctively going to the knife at my belt, but I was alone in the clearing.

"Who’s there?" I called out.

Silence was my only answer. But as my eyes searched the treeline for any sign of movement, my gaze was inevitably drawn back to the glowing pond. The water was so clear I could see straight to the bottom, and it looked impossibly deep—far deeper than any natural pond had a right to be.

Against every instinct screaming at me to turn around and run, I found myself walking toward the water’s edge. My boots squelched in the soft mud at the shoreline as I stared down into those luminous depths. The pull I’d been feeling was stronger here, so intense it was almost physical.

Without really making a conscious decision, I sat down and began unlacing my boots. Then, I rolled up my pants legs and waded into the water, gasping slightly at how perfectly warm it was—not cold like a natural pond should be, but exactly the temperature of a bath drawn just for comfort.

Each step toward the center sent ripples of blue light radiating outward from my feet. The sensation was indescribable—not just wet, but somehow more than wet, as if the water was infused with pure energy that soaked through my skin and into my very bones.

When I reached what I judged to be the middle of the pond, I stopped and looked around in wonder. The fireflies were even closer now, some of them actually brushing against my face with wings that felt like warm silk. The butterflies continued their impossible dance through both air and water, and I watched in fascination as one landed on my outstretched hand, its wings leaving tiny sparkles of light on my skin.

But it was what I saw beneath the surface that made me draw in a sharp breath.

The bottom of the pond wasn’t just deep—it was vast, opening up into what looked like an underwater cavern that stretched far beyond what the small surface area should have been able to contain. And in the depths of that impossible space, something glowed with a different quality of light than the water around it.

Taking a deep breath, I plunged beneath the surface.

The water didn’t behave like water should. I could breathe in it as easily as air, and it didn’t blur my vision or muffle sounds. If anything, everything became clearer, more vivid. The fireflies swam around me like tiny golden fish, and the butterflies continued their ethereal dance as if the change from air to water meant nothing to them.

I swam deeper, following the pull that had brought me here. The cavern walls were covered in what looked like crystalline formations that pulsed with their own inner light.

But it was the structure at the bottom that made my blood run cold.

Two statues stood facing each other in the depths, carved from what looked like black marble veined with silver. They depicted women, but not any living women—these were figures of terror and anguish, their faces contorted in expressions of eternal horror. Their mouths gaped open in silent screams, their eyes wide with an agony that seemed to leap off the stone itself. From their outstretched hands hung heavy chains that met in the center of the space, converging on a perfect cube of the same black stone.

The box was covered in symbols that hurt to look at directly, inscriptions that seemed to shift and writhe when I tried to focus on them. Despite the beauty of everything else in this place, the structure radiated an aura of wrongness that made my skin crawl.

"Help me."

The voice came from directly in front of me now, and I realized with a chill that it was coming from the box itself.

"Release me."

Every rational part of my mind screamed at me to swim away, to get as far from this thing as possible. The statues, the chains, the imprisoned box—it was clearly some kind of binding, a prison meant to contain something that others had deemed too dangerous to exist freely in the world.

But I felt no fear. Instead, I was filled with an overwhelming compulsion to do exactly what the voice asked. It wasn’t magic—at least, not the kind of subtle enchantment that might slip past my defenses unnoticed. This was something far more fundamental, as if every cell in my body was aligned toward this single purpose.

I swam closer to the cube, running my hands over its surface. It was perfectly smooth except for the writhing symbols, and there was no obvious way to open it. The chains looked ancient and unbreakable, forged from some metal that gleamed with the same inner light as everything else in this place.

My lungs should have been burning by now, but I felt like I could stay down here forever. The strange properties of the water extended to my body’s needs, suspending the normal rules of biology just as they did physics.

I tried gripping the lid of the box and pulling, but it might as well have been carved from a single piece of stone. Frustrated, I pulled out my hunting knife and began striking at the chains, hoping to find a weak link or a way to sever them. The blade rang against the metal with a sound like broken bells, but didn’t leave so much as a scratch.

In my frustration, I struck harder, and the knife slipped in my grip. The sharp edge sliced across my finger, opening a thin line that immediately began to bleed. I cursed and pulled my hand back, watching the crimson drops diffuse into the glowing water.

But as my blood made contact with the surface of the box, everything changed.

The symbols flared to brilliant life, shifting from silver to gold to colors that existed beyond the visible spectrum. The water around me began to churn violently, forming a whirlpool that dragged everything toward the suddenly blazing cube. I felt myself being pulled downward and fought desperately against the current, kicking my legs and pulling with my arms toward the distant surface.

Behind me, I heard the sound of stone cracking, followed by an explosion that sent shockwaves through the water. The chains snapped with sounds like thunder, and I felt rather than saw the lid of the box go flying past me toward the surface.

I broke through into the air just as debris began raining down around the pond. The lid landed on the shore beside my abandoned boots with a crash that shook the ground. Gasping and spitting out water that tasted of starlight and ancient magic, I turned to see what I had released.

A figure was rising from the depths, ascending through the glowing water with graceful, unhurried movements. As it breached the surface, I saw it was definitely female.

When she fully emerged from the water, standing on the surface as if it were solid ground, I found myself smiling before I even realized I was doing it.

"Who the hell are you?"