The Drowning and the Red-Haired Stranger
Darkness pressed against her chest, thick and suffocating.
Isla’s eyes snapped open—but there was no air, only water. Her scream never formed, only escaped in a rush of desperate bubbles that streamed from her mouth and nose, spiraling upward like tiny silver ghosts.
She thrashed instinctively, arms flailing, legs kicking against an invisible weight that dragged her deeper. The cold was shocking—an icy grip that bit into her skin and wrapped around her bones. Her ears rang with pressure. Her lungs clenched.
Panic erupted.
She was underwater—deep, impossibly deep. Above her, filtered sunlight struggled through the thick blue, fractured and faint. It looked far away. Unreal. Like trying to reach through glass.
She twisted, searching for direction. For up. For air. But everything looked the same: murky blue stretching out in every direction, endless and uncaring.
Her body began to slow, heavy with dread and exhaustion. Her limbs moved sluggishly. Her vision narrowed.
This is how it ends, she thought.
Then— the hum returned.
Not heard. Felt.
It resonated through her bones, deep and steady, as if it had always been there, waiting beneath her heartbeat.
"Do you want to live?"
It wasn’t male or female. It curled inside her mind like a whisper from a time long forgotten. Gentle. Ancient. Unyielding.
Her first instinct was confusion.
Then came the images: Her mother’s face, eyes filled with pride and tears. Her father’s hand, warm and steady as he helped load her suitcase. Her childhood room. Vanilla candles. Her graduation cap tossed in the air.
The hum deepened, stretching into something like a pulse, vibrating through the water.
"Do you want to live?"
She nodded.
For a second, nothing changed. No relief. No movement.
Then—a ripple.
The water shuddered around her, vibrating in time with the hum, as if responding to her answer. The weightless silence stretched, charged, expectant.
Then the green light flashed.
A force surged through the depths, twisting around her limbs like unseen currents. Before she could comprehend it, hands—strong, sure—wrapped around her waist in one firm pull.
She was moving. Rising.
Light flashed above. The pressure lifted, the suffocating cold giving way to something else—air, movement, escape.
She broke the surface with a desperate gasp, choking on breath as her lungs burned, pulling in the sharp sting of cold air like a lifeline.
She coughed, shuddering, water streaming from her lips as her chest heaved against the shock of survival. The world spun, fractured in the blinding glow of the sky.
The arms around her didn’t waver.
They carried her effortlessly to shore, pressing her against something warm, solid, alive.
Isla clung to it, barely aware of the ground beneath her, of the shift in surroundings, of the way the air smelled different— earthier. Older.
For a long moment, she only breathed.
Slowly, the sensation in her limbs returned—the dull ache of exhaustion, the weight of drenched clothing clinging to her skin. The thudding of her own heartbeat, loud and uneven.
The wind stirred, curling around her damp skin, sharp against the warmth of solid ground.
She pressed her palms into the earth, fingers sinking into the damp soil beneath her. It was softer than she expected. Untouched. Wild.
A chill ran through her, separate from the cold.
Something wasn’t right.
She had nearly drowned. She should be gasping for breath, trembling from shock. But none of those things registered—not with him standing before her.
Droplets of water streamed down the sculpted lines of his chest, catching in the hollow of his collarbone before trailing further, down the ridges of his abdomen, following the firm cut of muscle until they disappeared beneath the dark folds of his kilt.
Red hair clung to his forehead, damp and unruly. His eyes— too sharp, too knowing—settled on her, unreadable in their depth.
She blinked. The world still felt tilted, uneven, as though something beneath the surface of reality had shifted.
The kilt. The fabric looked different—not mass-produced, not modern. Handwoven, perhaps. Older.
The air smelled richer, layered with earth and woodsmoke, unlike the crisp, urban scent of Edinburgh she had known just hours ago.
And his voice.
“You’re awake.”
It was deep, resonant, carrying an accent she couldn’t quite place—not modern Edinburgh, but something older. Richer.
She parted her lips, struggling for words, but none arrived.
Because the hum had returned again—low, threading beneath her skin, beneath the space between them, curling like smoke into the air.
Her pulse kicked against her ribs.
Something was deeply, irreversibly wrong.
And somehow, she knew— this moment was only the beginning.