The warning comes from the back of her mind, that place which knows before the rest of her truly sees. That warning is rooted in a horror Dyeawan cannot fully comprehend until she blinks, and the focal point of that warning is brought into focus.

There are more bodies beneath the limbless girl, and not just a few or even a few dozen. The bottom of the bay is one ceaseless mass grave. There are men, women, children, young and old. There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of them interred beneath the water here. All of them were either born with some disability, or, like Dyeawan, injured later in their lives. She sees open eyes overwrought with milky cataracts. She sees withered limbs and empty spaces where most possess sturdy flesh.

Dyeawan’s blood freezes even as the space between her temples is lit aflame. She can’t stop looking at their faces, one after another, all of them carved by death’s hand into masks of torment and longing and pain and terror. None of them died naturally, and none of them wanted to experience eternity here in a watery grave off the coast of a hidden island.

She turns from the sight of the bodies, feeling her lungs begin to burn and her cheeks straining painfully. Dyeawan swims for the tenuous light above. Her veins are ready to unravel from both the lack of air and the rush of repulsion and confusion emanating from her mind. She explodes through the surface of the bay. She clings to the nearest boulder, wrapping her arms around it like a small child seeking solace against the leg of a parent. She sputters and coughs up seawater, tearing away the cord binding the lenses to her face. She casts them away violently.

Dyeawan feels Edger’s hands closing around her forearms before she actually sees him attempting to lift her from the water.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieks, the outburst shocking even her.

Edger releases her. It is ten times more difficult to pull herself back up onto the rocks than it was to dive from their edge, but Dyeawan claws and scrapes until her legs are free of the tainted water. Edger remains silent, blending into the background as he watches her drag her body to the foot of her tender.

“I could not tell you,” Edger says, almost as though he’s reassuring himself. “I could not simply tell you. You had to see it. You had to see them. It was the only way. I am so very sorry, Dyeawan.”

“What have you done?” Dyeawan demands in between ragged breaths. “Why would you… who are… why did they…”

She climbs up onto the litter of her tender, lying upon it like a funeral cairn.