Strange plants cling to cracks in the rock: dark blue, deep purple, their broad leaves glistening in the damp heat.
“It’s like a spa,” I murmur, dazed. “A very, very hot spa.”
Sarven tilts his head. He doesn’t know the word, but he feels the awe behind it. His glow softens slightly, the edges of his light gentling in response to the space.
I take a cautious step forward. The ledge we’re on slopes down in a broad stone ramp toward the pool’s edge. The sound of water is everywhere: the steady pour where it spills from a split in the far wall, the soft lap and ripple across the pool, the distant rush as it disappears again into holes along the far edge.
It’s beautiful.
Pristine.
Perfect.
Except.
As we move closer, the illusion cracks.
The mist and distance had blurred it, but now, near the inflow, I can see it clearly. Thin red tendrils slide over the surface of the water where it pours in. Not thick mats like in the lower cave, but loose strands, floating like bloody hair.
The smell hits a second later.
That same sharp, metallic-mineral bite mixed with the sweet rot of the bloom. It cuts through the damp steam, making my nose itch and the back of my throat sting.
“This is it,” I say quietly. “The spring’s mouth, where it all starts.”
If it’s poisoned here, it’s poisoned everywhere.
Sarven doesn’t look at the pool first.
He turns in a slow circle, head tipped back, eyes tracking along the high, ribbed ceiling. His nostrils flare. His ears angle forward, then twitch back, straining past the sound of falling water.
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. His body goes still and tight, a low vibration starting in his chest that isn’t his usual soothing purr, but not quite a growl either. Something more like a warning note only other hunters can hear.
“Air,” he rumbles finally, the word scraping out. “Wrong… air.”
He keeps looking up, toward the source of the golden shaft.
“It’s just a vent,” I say, scanning the darkness where the light originates. “A crack to the outside. But the heat... it must be coming from deeper down.”
Sarven makes a low, unhappy noise. He doesn’t relax. He only shifts his weight slightly, hand dropping to rest on the hilt of his blade.
“Fast,” he says, gaze still flicking along the upper stone. “We work… fast.”
I swallow and nod. “Right. Fast.”
I gesture for my basket before kneeling at the water’s edge and setting it down on the stone. Sarven crouches beside me. He says something low in Drakavian, and my translator whispers in my ear a moment later: “Sacred water. Old heart.”
“Not so sacred anymore,” I say under my breath.
I dip a strip of clean cloth into the pool, watching how the water beads and clings. When I pull it out, the droplets fall like normal, but a faint reddish stain trails after them, soaking into the fibers.
My stomach tightens.
I rig a crude filter, layering cloth, firestone dust, sand, then cloth again inside my woven basket. Then, I use the gourd shell we emptied earlier to run a sample.
While it drips through, I pull out my bit of bone-charcoal and mark two circles on a flattish rock near the edge: one for unfiltered Sample A, one for Sample B after it’s been through my makeshift purifier.
