There was a time when the world hummed with unseen voices—when every rustling leaf, every whispering stream held a spirit. But as humans carved their cities deeper into the earth, the voices grew faint, wounded by smoke and carelessness.
At the edge of a dying lake, a lonely girl named Lian found a fairy tangled in fishing wire, his translucent wings frayed like torn silk. His name was Rivulet, and he was the last water spirit of the lake. She freed him, not knowing that act would bind their fates.
For years, they met in secret—Lian with her muddy knees and stubborn heart, Rivulet with his flickering glow and sorrowful songs. He showed her the hidden wounds of the land: forests choked by poison, mountainsides gashed open for ore. She, in turn, brought him bread shaped like fish and stories of the human world. But no matter how close they sat, an invisible wall stood between them. Spirits and humans were never meant to touch.
Then the earth shook. A great machine, hungry for the last untouched spring, rumbled toward the lake. Rivulet’s light dimmed with every passing day.
Lian clenched her fists. “There has to be a way,” she insisted, though no one believed her. Not the villagers who called her “that odd girl,” not even Rivulet, who had already accepted fading as his fate.
But Lian remembered the old tales: Humans, too, were once keepers of balance. She would prove it—not with magic, but with her own two hands
