The rain began at exactly 2:17 a.m.
No thunder. No lightning. Just rain—soft, steady, deliberate—like fingertips tapping on the roof of the old lighthouse at the edge of Blackmere Bay.
Elara Vance had been asleep for precisely nine minutes when the knocking started.
Three slow raps.
Not at the door.
On the window.
Her eyes opened instantly. The lighthouse windows were thirty feet above the rocks. There was no balcony. No ledge. Nothing but open air and the restless sea below.
Three more knocks.
Elara sat up in bed, her breath shallow, her pulse loud in her ears. The beam of the lighthouse rotated with its usual rhythm, slicing through fog and darkness. She had maintained the place alone for six months now, ever since her uncle disappeared without explanation. Officially, the coast guard called it an accident.
Unofficially, the villagers whispered other things.
The knocking came again.
Slow.
Patient.
She forced herself to stand and cross the narrow room. The wooden floor was cold under her bare feet. She stopped inches from the glass.
Nothing.
Only her reflection stared back at her—pale, wide-eyed, framed by tangled dark hair.
And then the light rotated past.
For half a second, illuminated by the sweeping beam, something clung to the outside of the glass.
A shape.
Humanoid.
Too thin.
Its head tilted at an unnatural angle, as if studying her.
The beam moved on.
Darkness swallowed it.
Elara stumbled backward, her breath caught in her throat. "You're dreaming," she whispered.
But the knocking came again, louder this time.
The window trembled in its frame.
Heart hammering, she reached for the lantern on her desk and lit it with shaking hands. The warm glow pushed back the shadows, though it did nothing to steady her nerves.
"Go away," she called, hating how small her voice sounded.
Silence.
A long, heavy silence.
Then—
A smear appeared on the glass.
Not from outside.
From inside.
As if something invisible pressed against the window, dragging downward.
Elara gasped and spun around, pressing her back against the opposite wall.
That's when she noticed it.
The lighthouse door at the bottom of the spiral staircase creaked open.
Slowly.
She hadn't unlocked it that night.
Every instinct told her to run, but there was nowhere to go. The sea roared below, indifferent and endless.
The footsteps began ascending.
Measured.
Unhurried.
One step at a time.
Elara's mind raced. She remembered the old journal she'd found in her uncle's desk weeks ago. The final entry had been written in frantic ink:
It doesn't come from the sea.
It comes from the light.
She had laughed at the time. Nervous imagination, she'd thought.
Now, as the great lantern above her began to flicker, she felt the meaning settle into her bones like cold iron.
The beam faltered.
Dimmed.
Then turned inward.
Instead of shining out across the water, the light bent strangely, refracting into the glass chamber itself. The walls glowed with blinding brilliance.
The footsteps stopped just outside her room.
The handle began to turn.
Elara lunged for the control lever that powered the lamp. If the journal was right—if the thing was drawn to the light—
She yanked it down.
The lighthouse went dark.
Complete, suffocating darkness swallowed everything.
The handle stopped moving.
The footsteps ceased.
Even the rain seemed to hesitate.
For a long moment, there was nothing but Elara's ragged breathing.
Then, slowly, the rain resumed.
The sea crashed once more against the rocks.
And far below, at the base of the lighthouse, something moved away across the stones—retreating not toward the water…
…but toward the sleeping village beyond the cliffs.
Elara stood frozen in the dark, realization dawning with icy clarity.
The light hadn't been protecting the ships.
It had been protecting the town.
And she had just turned it off.