The present returned with brutal clarity.
Kaelen stood at the cliff above the harbor. Salt wind lashed his face. Below, the ships lay motionless in water that had become unnaturally still, a calm so absolute it had turned fatal. The fishermen had pulled empty nets for three days. No fish. No kelp. Only dead, barren water.
He had known this would come. He had seen the signs in the mycelium's growth patterns, in the dimming of the glowing lichen on the cave walls. The rapid-growth network he had built to feed the inland villages was draining something from the sea. It was pulling life from the deep currents, a resource he had thought inexhaustible. He had miscalculated.
"The coastal villages will starve if this continues." Lysander appeared at his side like a shadow. His voice was soft, almost gentle, which made it worse. "Thirty-two families. More than two hundred souls."
"I know," Kaelen said.
