Chapter Two: Drawn in the Wind
Amira came back the next day.
The path to the lighthouse, jagged and stubborn, didn't scare her anymore. It pulled her now, like a thread sewn beneath her skin. The cliffs below roared with waves, but she barely noticed. Something about the sea's rhythm had become familiar—as if it was breathing in time with her.
Elias opened the door before she knocked.
"You shouldn't return," he said. His voice was soft, but there was a fracture in it. A hesitation.
"And yet, I did," she replied, stepping past him without waiting for permission.
Inside, the lighthouse felt even older in daylight. Dust drifted through the slatted beams. The scent of salt clung to every surface. It was a place untouched by time—part ruin, part sanctuary.
Amira's eyes fell once more to the stack of drawings on the table. Charcoal, pencil, and ink, all done with quiet precision. Some were of the lighthouse, the jagged rocks below, the ocean mid-storm. But others…
Others were of her.
Not just her face, but moments she didn't remember experiencing. Her silhouette looking out over the cliffs. Her hands cradling wind. Her eyes closed, hair lifted by invisible breath.
"You've been drawing me for weeks," she said.
"Longer," Elias murmured.
She looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"
Elias walked to the window and stared out at the sea. The light shifted on his face, casting half of it in golden glow and the other in shadow.
"I dream you before you arrive," he said. "Always have."
Amira's heartbeat stuttered.
She wanted to laugh, dismiss it as poetry or madness. But nothing about Elias felt false. His stillness wasn't emptiness—it was restraint. The kind of silence that knew too much.
"I hear things in the wind," she said finally. "Whispers. Names. Warnings. I don't always understand them, but they've never lied to me."
Elias turned, his gaze catching hers like a hook. "Then you've been chosen too."
The air in the room changed. Thickened.
"Chosen for what?"
He hesitated, then stepped toward the wall and unpinned a large drawing. He unrolled it slowly, spreading it across the floor at her feet.
It was a map—of Aremu and its surrounding coast—but different. Marked with symbols she didn't recognize. Circular etchings. Lines that bled into the ocean. Beneath the cliff, a single word had been written in faded ink.
"Threshold."
"This lighthouse," Elias said, "is more than it seems. It stands between this world and what lies just beneath it. The dead pass through here. The forgotten. The lost."
Amira knelt beside the map. The whispers were louder now—not with words, but presence. She could feel them pressing close, curious, watchful.
"And you?" she asked. "What are you?"
"I'm the keeper," he said simply. "Not of light. Of memory."
That night, Amira stood alone on the cliffs.
The violet dusk returned—rich and strange—and with it came the voices, clearer than ever.
"He was never meant to stay."
"The tide is turning."
"Don't let love blind you to the crossing."
The wind was colder now. It curled around her neck like a hand.
And in the distance, the lighthouse glowed faintly—its light not steady, but pulsing.
Like a heartbeat.
Like a warning.