The Unwanted Lantern

The salt wind tore at your coat as you shoved the lighthouse door open, the iron handle cold enough to burn even through your glove. The spiral stairs groaned above you, a sound like old bones shifting in a ribcage, and the light — God, the light — it was barely a pulse now, a sickly orange flicker that cast long, wavering shadows across the stone floor.

You'd only been here an hour. The letter from your great-aunt had arrived three days ago, the ink so faded it looked like a confession. The sea remembers its debts, it read. And you are what I leave behind.

The door slammed shut behind you, and the sound was swallowed by the roar of waves crashing against the reef below. The air inside was thick with salt and something else — something ancient and wrong, like the inside of a whale's throat. You took the stairs two at a time, your breath ragged, because the light was dying, and every instinct you had was screaming that when it went out, so would you.

You reached the top. The lamp room was empty. But the shadows at the far corner were too dark, too solid, and when they moved, they moved like water defying gravity.

"You're late," the Drowned Priest said, and his voice was the sound of the tide coming in.