T
The ocean was gone. It had dried up centuries ago, leaving a vast abyss of fog and silence. But the Lighthouse still stood on the edge of the continental shelf, its beam cutting through the grey mist.
Old Silas was the Keeper. He oiled the gears and polished the lens, just as his father had done, and his father before him.
"Why do you keep it lit?" a traveler asked him once. "There are no ships. There is no sea."
"There are things in the fog," Silas muttered. "Things that hate the light."
He was right. The abyss was not empty. It was filled with drifting, incorporeal shapes—The Hollows. They swam through the dense air like sharks, hungry for warmth, for life.
One night, the bulb blew. The filament snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. Darkness swallowed the tower.
Immediately, the scratching started. Thousands of claws against the stone. The Hollows were coming.
Silas scrambled up the spiral stairs, fumbling with the spare bulb. His hands shook. The scratching turned to pounding. The glass of the lantern room began to crack.
"Come on, come on!" he swore, screwing in the new bulb.
A pane of glass shattered. A tentacle of black smoke curled in, reaching for him. It was freezing cold. It touched his arm, and he felt the heat draining from his blood.
Silas grabbed the lever and pulled. The gears engaged. The lens rotated.
Flash.
The beam struck the smoke. The Hollow screeched—a sound of tearing metal—and evaporated. The light swept across the abyss, a sword of brilliance. Wherever it touched, the monsters recoiled, burning away into nothingness.
Silas slumped against the wall, breathing hard. The scratching stopped. The Lighthouse hummed, a defiant heartbeat in the dead world.
He looked out at the empty dark. He was tired. He was old. But the light was on. And as long as it was, the world was safe for one more night.