He opened his senses, reaching into the water and connecting with it, listening the way his father had shown him.
The darkness was almost oppressive. The currents sluggish. The weight of centuries pressed in, like the loch itself was holding its breath.
His own strength began to stutter, panic trying to rise—but he shut it down.
Focus.
His father’s voice drifted through his mind—a memory.
"When you’re lost, Dolph, let the water speak. Listen to its breath, its rhythm. The creatures that live in it—they’ll guide you. Trust the water. It has always known the way."
Dolph stilled, hovering in the icy black.
He closed his eyes.
Slowed his breath.
Let his pulse fall into harmony with the loch’s quiet murmur.
He reached out—not with his magic, but with his soul.
He felt it.
A whisper. The subtle pressure of movement.
A pulse of life—curious, deliberate.
Something old brushed against his awareness. It was no fish, no serpent he had met before. It was vast, as quiet and gentle as moonlight on a sleeping lake.
It felt him.
Tasted the ripple of his magic. And lingered.
Not hostile. Not afraid. Just... curious.
A slow surge of water nudged against him—a greeting in the loch’s language.
Then—
Another nudge.
Not against Dolph, but something else.
Something else foreign to this lake.
He felt the shift in the current.
The creature had found something.
Zohar!
The presence pulsed once more, and Dolph felt the shift—the water rising, lifting something upward. A slow, guided current spiraled upward from the loch’s depths, carrying the precious cargo toward the surface.
A bubble.
A boy.
Zohar.
