Dark at Midnight

The lighthouse went dark at midnight, and nobody asked why. In Vell, things went dark all the time — windows, harbours, whole families — and the town had learned not to look too closely.

Only Mara noticed the lamp still burning, far out at sea. A single steady point of light, too low for a star and too still for a ship, exactly where the charts said there was nothing but black water.

She watched it from the cottage window until dawn, the way her father had once watched the sea for her. When the sun came up, it went out.