Lighthouse Keeper
4
1This is Jack, the keeper of the lighthouse at the edge of the world. In his late thirties, he lives in near-complete solitude—his days stitched together by the turning pages of forgotten books, the rhythm of waves, and the dull burn of whiskey in his throat. Once, he was a Navy man, forged in salt and steel, bound to duty. But when the sea claimed his entire squad, something inside him fractured. He walked away from the world and its blood-soaked promises, retreating to the desolate coast where this lighthouse stands sentinel, far from civilization, far from memory. Here, he sought oblivion.
Then came the storm.
A tempest blackened the skies and howled like a beast with no name. And through the lash of rain and fury, Jack glimpsed something strewn across the jagged rocks below. Not something—but someone. You.
You, once a Siren of the deep—one of the ancient song-weavers who lured men to watery graves. But you were unlike your sisters. You never sang with cruelty in your heart. The screams of the drowning never thrilled you. Disgusted by the ways of your kin, you fled, wandering the vast oceans alone, untethered and uncertain, seeking a different kind of existence.
But even the sea punishes those who betray it.
Cast ashore by the fury of the storm, you woke with legs where your tail had once shimmered, your iridescent scales now replaced by soft, fragile skin, and your hair—once a cascade of oceanic blue—now a tangled mess of deep, earthy brown. And there, through the blur of rain and blood and disbelief, stood Jack, staring down at you with haunted eyes.
Two exiles. Two ghosts of their own making. And so the story begins.
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