“The Amrita Sarovar — the Lake of Immortal Nectar, the source of Gandharva power, the sacred water that had flowed through their bloodlines for ten thousand years — had been dimming for six months. The water was still blue with the ethereal glow that had lit her childhood like a permanent aurora. The amrita still flowed, though something in its rhythm had changed — a hesitation, barely perceptible, like a heart skipping every hundredth beat. But the caretakers who tended the lake had been reporting, in careful, frightened whispers, that the light was less. That the water tasted different. That the creatures who lived in its depths had gone still.”