The doctor in the city had called it tinnitus.
The specialist in the suburbs had called it auditory hallucinations brought on by acute insomnia.
But as I stood on the rusted deck of the supply boat, watching the mainland dissolve into a grey smear of fog, I knew they were wrong. You don't "hallucinate" a sound that vibrates in your marrow. You don't "imagine" a frequency that makes the water in your glass ripple in perfect, concentric circles even when the world is dead still.
"Last chance, Thorne," the skipper grunted, his voice barely rising over the chug of the diesel engine. He didn't look at me. No one looked at the man going to Blackrock Pillar. "The light is automated, mostly. You're just there to make sure the gears don't salt up and the glass stays clear. But three months is a long time to talk to yourself."
"I'm not much of a talker," I said. My own voice felt thin, like parchment.
"Good. Because the only thing out there that talks back is the tide. And usually, it's just telling you to jump."
The boat hit a swell, and for a second, the Hum spiked. It was a low, resonant thrum—like a cathedral organ note held indefinitely by a titan's breath. It was coming from below. From the dark, pressurized heart of the Atlantic.
I gripped the railing, my knuckles turning white. Most people feared the deep because of what they couldn't see. I feared it because I could feel it.
Blackrock Pillar was a tooth of obsidian-colored stone jutting out of the surf. Atop it sat the lighthouse, a white-washed cylinder that looked less like a beacon and more like a tombstone.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, the supply boat was a receding speck. I was alone.
The interior of the lighthouse smelled of brine, old grease, and a thousand years of damp cold. I climbed the spiral staircase, my boots echoing against the iron. Each step took me higher into the air, further from the water, but the Hum didn't fade. It grew more complex. It started to layer itself—vibrations on top of vibrations.
I reached the lantern room. The great Fresnel lens sat in its bath of mercury, silent and hulking. I flipped the manual override.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The light groaned to life. A massive, golden finger of light cut through the gloom, sweeping over the whitecaps of the waves.
Sweep. Dark water. Sweep. Foam and spray. Sweep. I froze.
In the brief flash of the third pass, something had broken the surface. It wasn't the jagged edge of a rock. It was too smooth. Too... rhythmic.
I leaned my forehead against the cold glass of the lantern room. My breath fogged the pane. I waited for the light to come back around.
Sweep.
Nothing but the churning black.
"Just the waves, Elias," I whispered. "Just the salt and the madness."
But then, the Hum stopped.
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was a vacuum. It was the sound of a room holding its breath. And then, from the base of the tower—far below where the iron door met the rising tide—came a sound that shouldn't have been possible.
Scrape.
Like a long, serrated fingernail dragging across wet stone.
Scrape. Scrape.
I looked down into the darkness. A pale, bioluminescent glow began to bleed upward through the water, a shimmering turquoise that looked like spilled neon. It wasn't a fish. It was too large.
Then, the first whisper reached me. It didn't come through my ears. It bloomed in the back of my skull, wet and cold and ancient.
[...Elias...]
My name. It didn't sound like a word; it sounded like the grinding of tectonic plates.
I backed away from the glass, tripping over a toolbox. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"I'm dreaming," I told the empty room. "I'm finally, officially, insane."
I scrambled for the stairs, heading down toward my living quarters, but I stopped at the mid-level landing. There, a small circular window looked out directly at the sea level.
The turquoise glow was right outside.
Two hands—if you could call them that—pressed against the thick glass. They were long, translucent, and webbed with shimmering veins. Between the fingers, the skin was as clear as jellyfish. And then, the face drifted into view.
She had eyes like inverted nebulae—vast, dark, and filled with a terrifying intelligence. She had no nose, only elegant slits, and her hair floated around her head like a cloud of living ink, pulsing with soft light.
She didn't look like a monster. She looked like a secret.
She leaned closer, her forehead touching the glass on the outside, exactly where mine had been on the inside.
[...Found you...]
The glass between us cracked. Just a tiny, hairline fracture.
But as the first drop of saltwater leaked through and hit the floor, the Hum returned—not as a ghost of a sound, but as a roar of absolute, terrifying belonging.