The hairline crack in the porthole didn't just leak water. It leaked possibility.
I stared at the bead of brine as it trailed down the interior of the glass. It was thick, almost oily, and it shimmered with a faint, pulsing turquoise light. When it hit the floor, it didn't splash. It sizzled.
[...Open...]
The voice—the vibration—wasn't a request. It was a gravitational pull.
I reached for the emergency sealant kit on the wall, my hands shaking. The logical part of my brain, the part that had earned a PhD before the Hum drove me to the fringes of society, was screaming. Pressure differential. Structural integrity. Saltwater drowns lungs.
But Vespera didn't move. She remained pressed against the outside of the glass, her multi-pupiled eyes locked onto mine. She wasn't swimming; she was suspended, as if the crushing weight of the Atlantic was nothing more than a summer breeze to her.
"I can't," I croaked. My voice sounded alien in the small, damp room. "The tower... it'll flood. I'll die."
Vespera tilted her head. The motion was fluid, lacking the jerky mechanical constraints of human vertebrae. One of her long, translucent fingers traced the crack from the outside. As she moved, the bioluminescence in her veins flared, turning the dark water into a cathedral of neon light.
[...Air is a cage, Elias. Water is a promise...]
She didn't understand. To her, "death" was likely just a change in state, a transition from one frequency to another. To me, it was the end of the song.
I grabbed the sealant gun and squeezed. The thick, grey paste smeared over the crack, obscuring the view of her face. For a moment, the connection severed. The Hum in my skull turned jagged, like a radio caught between stations. Static ripped through my thoughts.
I leaned back against the opposite wall, gasping for air that suddenly felt too thin, too dry. My throat burned.
Thump.
The tower shuddered. It wasn't a wave. It was a strike.
Thump. Thump.
She was knocking. Not with a fist, but with the rhythmic pulse of the tide itself. The entire Blackrock Pillar vibrated in time with my heartbeat. Or perhaps my heartbeat was beginning to time itself to the pillar.
I crawled to the small washbasin in the corner of the room, splashing my face with fresh water to clear the fog in my mind. But as I looked into the basin, the reflection wasn't mine.
The water in the bowl turned a deep, bruised purple. A pale hand reached up from the shallow ceramic bottom—a hand that shouldn't have been able to fit in three inches of water. It broke the surface, droplets of water suspended in mid-air, defying gravity.
She didn't need the door. She was the water, and the water was everywhere.
The translucent fingers wrapped around my wrist. They were impossibly cold, yet they didn't bite. They felt like a homecoming.
"Vespera," I whispered, the name tasting like copper and kelp.
The hand pulled gently. Not toward the bottom of the basin, but through it. The porcelain seemed to liquefy, becoming a shimmering gateway. I saw a glimpse of the world beyond the glass—a forest of giant, glowing kelp, ruins of marble stained by eons of silt, and a throne made of whalebone and starlight.
[...Look at me...]
I looked. She was rising out of the washbasin now, her form compacting, folding in on itself to fit into the cramped room. Her skin shed water like diamonds. She stood before me, dripping and radiant, her "hair" undulating like a nest of bioluminescent eels.
She reached out and touched my chest, right over my heart. The Hum reached a crescendo, a perfect, blinding chord of absolute silence.
"You're real," I breathed, my fear finally collapsing into a desperate, terrifying awe.
She leaned in, her forehead pressing against mine. Her skin was soft, like wet silk, but beneath it, I could feel the power of the abyss—the strength to crush steel hulls like soda cans.
[...I have been waiting since the first drop fell from the sky, Elias Thorne. Do not fix the cracks. Let me in...]
Outside, the storm finally broke. The wind howled, but inside the lighthouse, the air was growing heavy and damp. The smell of the ocean was no longer outside the walls.
It was in my lungs. And for the first time in my life, I didn't want to cough.