Edgar's journey north didn't take him far. After only five minutes of walking through a modest grove of trees, he came to the northern edge of the plateau. It dropped several hundred feet almost straight down to the sea, which churned and frothed furiously around the base of the cliffs.

A few yards away from this edge was a small spring bubbling out of a large mound of stones. It formed a small waterfall which trickled down the mound and collected in a small basin constructed out of stones and mortar, the bottom of which was inlaid with bright black and yellow tiles. The spring was definitely natural, but some unknown race had created this basin for an equally unknown reason.

Edgar didn't know if there were any indigenous people living in Kolyma, but this basin was certainly evidence of their presence. As he recalled, Graham never mentioned finding such a pool atop this plateau, so something must have happened – or eventually would happen, depending on how you looked at it – to the pool. Perhaps there was an earthquake, or perhaps it was destroyed by newcomers to the land.

No matter what this basin's past or future were, at least Edgar had found a source of water. He cupped his hands and collected some of the water as it cascaded from the spring and drank it gratefully. As he was collecting another handful, he noticed that the tiles on the bottom of the basin formed some sort of design – it looked almost like a mosaic, but the constant rippling of the pool's surface made it impossible for Edgar to make out what it depicted.

Now that he had found water, he had to find a way of carrying it back to the cave. He had nothing on him that could carry water, so he resorted to his usual method of problem solving when he was lacking something vital to solving one, which was scrupulously searching the area. His investigation turned up a large clay bowl with a simple, angular pattern circling it lying near the basin. It was quite heavy, and unlike the other objects Edgar had picked up over the course of his adventure, much too big for any of his pockets.

Edgar carefully carried the fragile vessel over to the basin and held it beneath the waterfall. As it slowly filled, he gazed at the gently falling water and thought about all that had happened over the past two days. Meeting Cassima, contacting Rosella through a crystal ball, riding through the Impossible Mountains on a flying ship, encountering a man who loved a human girl as well in spite of his doubt of being completely human himself, getting his magic stolen by a conniving physician, passing through a peculiar maze and finding a strangely frightening chess knight that he still didn't know what to do with, getting catapulted across a dark section of his homeland, barely outrunning an enraged mob, talking with himself, traveling through multiple places and times…it was the wildest two days Edgar had ever known. He had never read about anything half as insane as this quest in his books in Lolotte's castle.

Would this journey even be worth the effort? Would he and Cassima succeed? Would he ever see Rosella again – and would Cassima ever be reunited with Alexander? Would they even find Shadrack in time?

As Edgar was mulling over these questions, he glanced down at the basin and noticed that since the bowl was now impeding the flow of the waterfall, the turbulent surface of the pool had become much calmer, and he could almost make out what was on the bottom of the basin. He was so focused on this image that he didn't realize that the bowl had become filled to the brim, until the water in it started spilling out and distorting the pool's surface once again. Edgar dumped the water out of the bowl and held it beneath the waterfall again, this time holding the bowl at an angle so that the water would run out of it and drip down the outside of the basin rather than directly into it. He stared intently at the bottom of the basin, waiting for the ripples to die down.

When they finally did, he could see that the design was indeed a mosaic, made up of only two colors, black and yellow. The image was fairly simple, but remarkable just the same: it was an abstract depiction of a sleek, black animal resembling a cat with four legs ending in curved triangles that had to symbolize claws, as well as a small, elegantly formed head and a long, whip-like tail curling around it. Everything about the creature's design suggested power and agility, from the exaggerated paws to the large, alert eyes.

Beneath the catlike creature was a single word laid out in black tiles: Panthera.

Panthera? What an odd word. It sounded so much like "panther"…that had to be what the creature above the word was – a panther. Were there ever panthers in Kolyma? Did the people who created this basin see them as gods or supernatural beings? Edgar had never seen a panther himself, but if the real thing was anything like the likeness in this basin, he imagined that they were both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. For some reason, the image of a black panther and the peculiar word inscribed below it stirred some faint memories within Edgar, and he couldn't figure out why.

As Edgar was still staring at the mysterious mosaic, a loud, horrifying scream tore through the idyllic land surrounding him. He knew of only one person that scream could have come from, and he took off in the direction from which it had come, moving so hastily that he accidentally let the clay bowl topple from the side of the basin. It fell to the ground, where it shattered into a multitude of fragments.

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