The water was cold. Dark. Thick with silt that swirled around Kaelen's hips like smoke from a dying fire. The central pillar rose from the riverbed before him, black and ancient, its surface covered in barnacles and the skeletons of creatures that had died clinging to the stone, their small, hollow bodies still gripping the rock, their shells cracked and bleached by centuries of current.
The divers moved ahead of him. Three of them, clad in dark wetsuits that clung to their bodies like second skin, their lanterns casting small pools of yellow light that dissolved into the murk after a few feet. Their movements were slow, deliberate, the movements of men who had spent their lives beneath the surface.
Kaelen followed.
