The island refused to sleep.

It only slackened its breath, as a watchful creature might—never surrendering to rest, merely quieting its pulse so the sea could be heard thinking. Waves pressed and withdrew along the shore with the persistence of a vow, and Ezra, shut away from the world, knew that rhythm as she knew her own heart.

They sealed her inside the lighthouse before dusk.

There were no irons laid upon her wrists, no ropes to bind her. Only the door, closed with finality, and the knowledge that it would not open again.

One of the elders, mage Vorlag, spoke without lifting his eyes.
“You cannot unmake what you have done.”

Her grandmother’s voice followed—low, steady, sharpened by grief rather than age.
“How could you murder our last hope in this war?”

Ezra felt the words strike her like salt upon an open wound. Her eyes burned with a light she did not dare reveal. She wanted to ask—Was I not that hope?—but the question sank inward, where it would rot unanswered.

She lowered her gaze.

The lighthouse lamp still burned.
Yet its beam fell uselessly now, illuminating nothing—neither shore nor ship nor soul.

At dusk, the boys came unannounced.

They had not told the elders. They never would have. Faz and Auren had served her since childhood—silent as shadows in the temple corridors, quick to obey, slow to question. Even now, with the lighthouse declared her prison, they came as they always had, carrying food wrapped in cloth, their footsteps cautious upon the stone.

The sea still clung to their ankles.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ezra said, though her voice held no force.

“We brought you something to eat,” Auren replied, avoiding her eyes.

Faz stood closer, as he always did—his presence instinctive, protective, unexamined. “They won’t miss it,” he said. “Not tonight.”

Ezra studied their faces. They were younger than she remembered them being. Or perhaps she was older now—aged by one irrevocable act.

“Listen to me,” she said quietly. “I need my sack.”

They stiffened.

“The one I kept in the temple,” she continued. “Under the west altar. You know it.”

Auren frowned. “The elders—”

“They will not notice,” she said. “And if they do, it will be too late.”

Something in her tone silenced them. They nodded, the way they once had when she sent them on errands that felt important without being understood.

When they went to the temple, they accidently heard a conversation between the mage and the elders.

___________________

"The words, Mage Vorlag. Tell us the oracle exactly as she spoke them. We have heard them only as rumors from the guards."

Vorlag met their gaze. He took a slow breath, and the space seemed to grow colder as he spoke the prophecy that had condemned their tribe to darkness.

They returned, breathless and pale, she took the sack from Faz’s hands as though it were a living thing.

She cleared a space on the lighthouse floor. The stone was cold and already stained by older prayers—layers of magic pressed into it by those who had once kept the sea lit for passing ships. Ezra did not know this. No one had told her that the lighthouse remembered every spell ever spoken within its walls.

From the sack she drew what remained of herself.

Yellow hibiscus, dried to paper.
Sand gathered where the tide hesitated.
Bird of paradise, its petals torn and fierce, like something mid-flight.

She cut her palm without ceremony. Blood fell into the circle, darkening the sand.

Faz shifted uneasily. Auren stood very still.

Ezra knelt and began the incantation to turn the sea prophet back from the dead.

Her voice was low, steady—trained, practiced, stripped of fear.

She spoke the sea prophet’s name.

She closed her eyes.

She waited.

Then—against her better judgment—she opened one eye.

Nothing had changed.

The lighthouse lamp hummed. The sea breathed. Faz was still standing too close to the door.

Ezra exhaled through her nose.

“…Again,” she murmured.

She shut both eyes properly this time and began anew, slower, more deliberate. She pressed her bleeding palm harder into the stone, as though the lighthouse itself might be persuaded by insistence alone.

Beyond hope, beneath the tide—

In this turning glass of hours,

I beg for the sea prophet’s return.

I vow five years of memory

To the deep that remembers all.

The circle warmed—not enough to alarm, only enough to notice. The sand shifted slightly, like something settling into place.

Ezra did not look.

When the incantation ended, silence followed.

“It didn’t work,” Auren whispered.

Ezra said nothing.

She traced the circle with her finger, over and over, until the stone grew smooth beneath her touch.

The boys came once more. Then again. And then—

They did not come at all.

The bowl they had left lay cracked and dry.

Days passed. Then weeks. Hunger gnawed at her, but it was the silence that devoured her first. She called their names until her throat bled. No answer returned from sea or shore.

She replayed the ritual constantly—mouthing the words, tracing the circle with her finger until the stone grew smooth beneath her touch. She corrected herself aloud, arguing with memories of teachers long dead.

“No,” she would mutter, shaking her head. “Not there. The emphasis belongs on the tide.”

She began speaking to the lighthouse when the boys were gone. Not praying—correcting it, as one might scold an inattentive witness.

“You were supposed to answer,” she told the walls. “You were supposed to remember.”

The sea below remained quiet.

The lighthouse had been quiet all day—too quiet. Even the sea seemed to hesitate, its rhythm faltering as though unsure whether to continue. Ezra stood at the narrow window, her fingers pressed to the glass, when the first smell reached her.

Heat.

The sea withdrew, drawing its breath in, leaving the shore bare and listening. The horizon dimmed, and a strange stillness settled over the island, the kind that comes just before a confession.

Then the sky bruised.

Ezra saw the fire from the height of the tower—thin at first, a red seam opening through the village, then widening as if the land itself had split. Flame climbed the roofs with unnatural speed. The plants that once swallowed intruders burned like dry paper, collapsing too fast to resist.

“yemanja, yemanja, yemanja,” Ezra whispered.

She could feel them—still humming, still whole. Ancient, obedient, and useless.

She turned from the window and ran.

Outside, the fire spread with purpose.

It moved carefully—house to house, memory to memory—until voices thinned, then vanished. The sea did not return. Smoke coiled upward and was carried away without ceremony.

She tried again to reach outward, to draw on the island’s pulse, but there was nothing left to take. Whatever power the lighthouse held, it would not lend itself to mercy.

Her breath fogged the window. Below, people ran—then slowed—then vanished into the blur of ash and flame.

She pressed a hand to her mouth.

The wards still held. She felt them hum, steady and indifferent, sealing her safely inside her prison.

Then she saw her.

The Queen of Ash moved through the fire without haste, her shape wavering, half-made of smoke, half-made of intention. Wherever she passed, flame deepened in color, as though recognizing its source. Ezra’s pulse thundered in her ears.

The Queen stopped.

For one terrible moment, Ezra was certain she had been seen.

She fell back from the window, heart tearing at her ribs, and crouched in the narrow shadow beside the stair. She pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her bleeding palm against the stone, willing herself into stillness.

Do not look up, she thought. Do not breathe.

Footsteps did not come.

When Ezra dared to look again, the Queen had moved on, her attention drawn elsewhere. Two figures were dragged from the smoke below, their outlines familiar even at a distance.

Ezra’s vision fractured.

“No,” she whispered. “No—please.”

She struck the glass once, weakly. Her magic stirred and died inside her like a failed spark. The lighthouse would not answer. It had already chosen what it would protect.

The fire spread until there was nothing left to claim.

When dawn came, it found Ezra still at the window, ash clinging to the glass, her reflection faint and broken. The island lay silent below—emptied, scorched, unfinished. 

________________________________________________________________

Ezra was truly alone,

At first, solitude felt like rest. No voices to accuse her. No eyes to measure her worth. The lighthouse breathed, and she breathed with it. But days stretched, then split, then folded in on themselves. Hunger hollowed her body until pain dulled into something animal and distant.

She began to lose the order of things.

Morning and night traded places without warning. Sometimes she woke convinced the fire had not yet come. Sometimes she woke up tasting ash. She spoke aloud to shadows, answered herself, laughed at jokes she could not remember telling.

Her reflection in the glass thinned. Her ribs sharpened. Her hair tangled into something feral.

The sea remained.

It was the only constant—the slow, patient witness that neither forgave nor condemned.

When footsteps finally echoed up the stairs, Ezra thought she had imagined them.

A harsh, broken sound tore from her throat, startling even herself. She pressed her back to the wall, nails scraping stone.

“Not today,” she whispered. “Not today.”

But the door opened.

A woman stepped inside, wrapped in a cloak the color of moss and old bark. She carried a baby close to her chest, bundled in cloth the pale gray of ash. Her eyes were calm. Too calm.

Ezra laughed harder.

“Oh,” she gasped, clutching her stomach. “You can see me? Or am I finally seeing things properly?”

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” the woman said.

Ezra tilted her head. “Then you are either very patient… or very lost.”

The woman set a small bundle on the floor and opened it. The scent struck Ezra immediately—sweet, sharp, unbearable.

Her body moved before her pride could object.

Ezra fell to her knees and tore into the Maiʻa and the Hala fruits with her hands, juice running down her chin, chewing too fast, swallowing without care. She must have looked monstrous—she knew she did—but she could not stop. Hunger had long ago stripped her of shame.

Juice ran down her chin, and she laughed, a broken sound that echoed against stone, non-apologetic.

The woman watched without comment.

Only when Ezra slowed, breath ragged, did the woman speak again.

“Only those with a certain mastery can see this lighthouse,” she said. “That made finding you… difficult.”

Ezra wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and laughed softly. “It was never meant to be found. The Muhien built it so only we could see it—to guide our own home and turn others away. To the rest of the world, this island does not exist.”

The woman studied her. “Then why are you still imprisoned?”

Ezra’s eyes sharpened. “That,” she said flatly, “is none of your business.”

The woman did not press. She shifted the baby, unfastened her cloak, and calmly fed him from a small vessel of milk. Ezra watched, chewing slowly now, something tight and unfamiliar settling in her chest.

After a moment, Ezra spoke again. “Why do you want to leave?”

The woman smiled faintly. “None of your business, young girl.”

Ezra snorted. “Fair.”

Then the woman’s voice softened—just a fraction.

“This child,” she said, adjusting the cloth around the baby’s face, “was not wanted. His family was poor. They meant to throw him into the river.”

Ezra froze.

One lie.
One truth.
She could feel the difference, even now.

She looked at the baby—at the small, steady rise of his chest.

“…I can open a portal,” Ezra said at last. “But not like I used to.”

“That will be enough,” the woman replied.

Ezra pushed herself to her feet, swaying. “On one condition.”

The woman waited.

“You free me,” Ezra said. “And we leave together.”

For a long moment, only the sea answered.

Then the woman nodded.

“Agreed.”

They went down together.

The stair groaned beneath their steps, a sound Ezra had once counted to mark the passing of days. Now it felt like a farewell spoken in a language older than grief. The woman walked ahead, the child warm and breathing against her chest. Ezra followed barefoot, her hand trailing along the stone, memorizing its scars.

At the threshold, Ezra stopped.

The island lay below them—what remained of it.

Ash blanketed the ground in uneven drifts. Charred beams jutted like ribs from the earth. The sea had crept back to the shore, cautious and gray, lapping at ruins it refused to claim.

Ezra stepped forward.

She knelt and brushed her fingers through the ash. It stained her skin, clung beneath her nails. Bits of the past surfaced—half-burned wood, warped metal, a fragment of shell that might once have been an ornament, or might once have been nothing at all.

Her throat tightened.

“I’m sorry,” she said—to the land itself.

She rose and closed her eyes.

For a moment, she was sixteen again. The lighthouse still shone for sailors. The sea prophet’s name had not yet become a wound.

Then she opened her eyes and reached for the necklace.

The seashell was smooth from years of touch, warmed by her skin, humming faintly as though it had been waiting. Ezra held it over the water and whispered—not a spell, but a permission.

The sea responded.

The water darkened, then brightened, then turned impossibly violet—light folding inward, widening into a trembling aperture just above the tide. The air thickened. The waves stilled, as if afraid to interrupt.

Ezra turned once more toward the island.

She took it in without flinching—the ashes, the silence, the absence where her people had been.

Then she stepped into the water.

It did not resist her.

The woman followed, the child tucked safely against her shoulder. The violet light rippled outward, reflecting once against the lighthouse stone, then collapsing softly, like a breath finally released. 

Far from the drowned island, in lands where ash still fell like snow, riders gathered.

Their armor was darkened by soot, their banners marked with a crown scorched at the edges. They spoke little, but when they did, it was always the same name that passed between them.

The woman in the green cloak.

“She has stolen the heir,” one said.

“She cannot hide forever,” said another.

Orders were given and the paths were marked. The sea itself was named a suspect.

And somewhere beyond their reach, a violet wound in the water sealed shut, carrying with it a priestess who no longer belonged to this world.