The lighthouse stood where the map said nothing should be.
Riku saw it at dusk—first as a thin blade of light cutting the fog, then as a full tower of stone rising from a reef that never appeared on charts. The beam did not rotate. It did not pulse.
It watched.
Ren slowed the boat without being asked. The sea around the reef lay unnaturally flat, as if afraid to ripple. No birds cried. No wind touched the surface. The light swept across Riku's face and lingered, warm and unsettling—like a hand testing a pulse.
"That light's been burning for a century," Ren said quietly. "No keeper. No fuel shipments. No repairs."
Riku felt the familiar pull in his chest—subtle, attentive. The sea wasn't warning him.
It was deferring.
They moored at a stone jetty slick with salt and age. The lighthouse door stood ajar. Inside, the air smelled of oil and old prayers. Each step echoed too clearly, as if the tower were hollow in the wrong places.
On the wall near the entrance, names had been carved—neat at first, then frantic, then barely legible. Some were circled. Some were crossed out. One space had been scrubbed smooth, as if someone had tried to erase the stone itself.
Riku touched it and felt a brief vertigo—an absence where a memory should be.
"People come here to be found," Ren said, climbing the spiral stairs. "Or to stop being seen."
The stairs wound upward, the light growing brighter, warmer. With every step, Riku heard whispers—not voices, exactly, but the sense of being remembered incorrectly. He saw flashes: a woman waiting for a ship that never returned; a boy staring into the beam until his reflection peeled away; a keeper lighting a lamp and realizing he could no longer recall who he was keeping it for.
At the lantern room, the light source revealed itself.
It was not a flame.
A man stood at the heart of the mechanism, hands resting on a ring of glass lenses. His eyes were open, unblinking, filled with steady resolve. The light flowed from his chest—soft, endless.
He smiled as they entered.
"You're late," he said, voice gentle. "But the sea waited."
Riku swallowed. "You're the keeper."
"I was," the man replied. "Now I'm the promise."
Ren bowed his head. "We didn't know you were still—"
"—awake?" The keeper chuckled. "I never sleep. If I did, the shore would forget itself."
Riku stepped closer, the warmth prickling his skin. "What does the light do?"
"It remembers," the keeper said. "Ships lose their way when the world erases context. This light gives it back—names, bearings, reasons to return."
Riku felt it then—the cost. The keeper's heartbeat was slow, measured. Each pulse fed the beam. Each memory he held burned a little brighter.
"You're paying for it," Riku said softly.
The keeper met his gaze. "So others don't have to."
Outside, the fog thickened. Shapes moved within it—featureless, patient. Drawn to the light. Waiting for it to fail.
Ren's voice tightened. "They're coming."
"Yes," the keeper said. "They always do when a light grows tired."
Riku looked at the lenses, at the endless beam that had kept the coast from unraveling. He felt the sea listening, attentive and uncertain.
"Teach me," Riku said.
The keeper's smile widened—not relieved, but proud. "Good. Then the lighthouse won't sleep tonight."
The beam brightened.
And somewhere beyond the fog, something that had learned to hunt darkness began to fear the light again.