The salt-kissed air bit at Elara’s cheeks as she climbed the lighthouse stairs, her boots echoing against the rusted metal. The storm had blown itself out hours ago, leaving the coast in a brittle stillness. She’d come to clear out her grandfather’s things, though she hadn’t expected the radio in the base of the tower—old, dented, its antenna twisted like a broken finger. It hummed faintly when she touched it, a sound that made her pulse quicken.
“You’re wasting time,” Kael muttered from the doorway, his shadow stretching across the floorboards. He’d followed her despite her protests, his dark eyes scanning the room for something—anything—other than the radio. “This place is a tomb.”
Elara ignored him, prying open the radio’s casing with a screwdriver. Inside, wires snaked like veins, and a single dial glowed faintly blue. She turned it, and the room filled with a static hiss that resolved into a voice—low, distorted, and speaking in a language she didn’t recognize. The air grew colder. Kael stepped closer, his breath visible in the chill.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, but Elara was already scribbling notes, tracing the pattern of the signal. It wasn’t random. It was a sequence, like a heartbeat. By dawn, she’d decoded part of it: a location, a time, and a warning. The words blurred on the page, but the message was clear—something was coming.
The town dismissed her. The mayor called it a prank. Her mother said she’d been too long in the damp air. But Elara couldn’t unhear the voice, couldn’t ignore the way the radio’s dial flickered when she touched it. She returned to the lighthouse each night, decoding more of the message until the final piece revealed itself: a storm, bigger than any in history, set to hit within days. The signal wasn’t a warning—it was a call for help.
Kael stopped coming. The radio’s static grew louder, threading through her dreams. She found a map in her grandfather’s journal, marked with coordinates she didn’t recognize. The lighthouse wasn’t just a beacon—it was a transmitter. The storm wasn’t natural. It was engineered. And someone, somewhere, had sent the signal to stop it.
The night before the storm, Elara stood at the tower’s peak, the radio clutched to her chest. The wind howled, tearing at her clothes. Below, the town slept, unaware. She turned the dial one last time, sending the message into the void. Then she waited.
The storm came at midnight. Waves crashed against the cliffs, and the sky split open with lightning. Elara ran through the rain, shouting for anyone to listen, but the wind swallowed her words. The lighthouse’s beam cut through the darkness, a single line of light against the chaos. She didn’t know if anyone saw it—but she knew the signal had been sent.
In the morning, the town was silent. The storm had spared them, leaving only wreckage in its wake. Elara stood at the lighthouse’s base, the radio now quiet. The message had been heard. The storm had been stopped. But the voice remained, a whisper in her mind, waiting for the next call.
