The Wrecklight
Every night at Harrow's Point, the lighthouse beam sweeps the churning sea, and every night, someone walks into the water and does not come back. The town calls it the Wrecklight. Clara Voss calls it the reason her sister Sable has stopped answering her phone. Clara returns to the gray coast for her aunt's wake, expecting to bury a woman she barely knew. Instead she inherits a salt-rotted jetty, a black sand shore, and a journal written in a hand that isn't her aunt's, one that lists names in two columns: the spared, and the taken. Father Brennan has been blessing the tide for weeks. Warden June Kessler has been falsifying reports to keep the families quiet. Tomás Echeverría knows precisely how high the tide will rise before the beam strikes the rocks again. Deacon Rhys stands at the cliff edge every dawn, watching for a figure only he can see. The Town Council has agreed: one offering per storm season, drawn from the families who settled Harrow's Point generations ago. Clara's bloodline is next. Sable is already gone. The light is patient, the sea is hungry, and the journal's final page is blank, waiting for Clara to write her own name, or the name of someone she loves. The beam will sweep again at dawn. The choice is hers.