“The Glass City Beneath the Lake”

A story of loss, reflection, and the ghosts we build from memory.

1. The Discovery

When the drought finally came, the lake shrank back from its shores like a dying animal, exposing the bones of what had been hidden beneath for nearly a century.

At first, the townspeople thought it was a mirage — the outline of rooftops glinting under the mud, a bell tower’s silhouette bending through the haze.

Then the archaeologists came, and the divers, and the journalists.

And all agreed on one thing: the city beneath the water was real.

Elias Finch watched the discovery from the porch of his cabin, cigarette trembling between his fingers.

He had lived beside the lake for twenty years, long enough to know that ghosts don’t stay buried forever.

Especially not the ones you help create.

2. The Letter

Three days later, an envelope arrived in Elias’s mailbox.

No return address. Just his name, written in elegant cursive he hadn’t seen in decades.

“They’ve found us,”

it said.

“Come home. —A.”

He burned the letter after reading it, but the smell of its smoke lingered like guilt.

That night, he dreamed of her again —

Anna Rivers, the architect who’d designed the city that drowned.

She’d believed in beauty without consequence.

He’d believed in control.

Together, they’d built something magnificent and monstrous — a utopian city on the lake’s edge, a place of glass and light and mirrored water.

And then it had collapsed.

No one ever proved whose fault it was.

But Elias knew.

3. The Descent

When he reached the shore the next morning, divers were already lowering cables into the water.

He flashed an old engineer’s badge — rusted but still legible — and was waved through.

The descent was quiet except for the sound of his breathing.

The deeper he went, the dimmer the world became, until the surface above him was just a trembling memory of light.

And then, through the silt, he saw it:

Glasshaven.

The city they had built.

Its towers leaned at strange angles, windows crusted with algae. Schools of fish darted through the skeleton of its once-grand library. The clock tower still stood, frozen at 2:17 — the moment everything went wrong.

He drifted through the streets like a phantom returning home.

4. The Voice in the Glass

In what used to be City Hall, he found the central atrium intact.

Its dome of mirrored panels reflected the murky light in fractured shards.

And there, in the reflection, someone moved.

“Anna?” he whispered through his comms.

No response — just the slow pulse of static.

Then, faintly, a voice:

“You came back.”

His heart stopped.

“It’s been so long, Elias,” the voice continued. “I waited for the water to forget us.”

He spun around.

No one.

But in the reflection — there she was.

Anna, as she had been on that last night: hair tied up, grease on her cheek, eyes burning with certainty.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“The city remembers what we did.”

Elias pressed his hand against the glass. “You’re not real.”

“Neither is guilt,” she murmured. “But it lasts longer.”

The reflection smiled sadly — and then cracked, splintering the dome.

The water rushed in.

5. The Truth Resurfaces

They found Elias two hours later, unconscious on the dive platform, his oxygen nearly empty.

The divers said he kept mumbling one word over and over:

“Blueprint.”

When he woke in the hospital tent, he tore the IV from his arm and demanded his old files — the original plans of Glasshaven.

They still existed in the archives: blueprints etched on fading plastic sheets.

He laid them out across the table, tracing the lines with shaking fingers.

There — hidden in the foundation markings — was a symbol he hadn’t noticed before:

Anna’s signature, and beneath it, an equation.

A deliberate flaw.

The city had never collapsed by accident.

She’d sabotaged it.

6. The Confession

Elias returned to the lake that night, the water still as glass under the moonlight.

He spoke aloud, though no one was there to hear.

“You destroyed it on purpose.”

The wind stirred. A ripple crossed the surface.

“I saved them,” a voice whispered from nowhere and everywhere. “The dam was failing. You wanted to hide it. I couldn’t.”

He shook his head. “You doomed them, Anna.”

“No, Elias. I doomed us.”

A reflection formed on the water — her face again, calm, almost peaceful.

“You kept building after I was gone. You told them it was safe.”

The truth hit him like cold water: he had.

To protect his reputation, he’d forged the safety reports.

He’d let the city open, knowing it wasn’t stable.

He had killed them as surely as if he’d cut the dam himself.

The reflection smiled faintly.

“Now you remember.”

7. The Flood Reversed

The next morning, the rain returned — sudden and violent.

Within hours, the lake began to rise again, swallowing the newly uncovered ruins.

Elias stood at the shore, soaked to the bone, watching as the city disappeared once more beneath the surface.

He could have run.

He didn’t.

Instead, he walked into the water.

With each step, the world grew quieter.

When it reached his chest, he stopped struggling.

Through the rippling surface, he saw the city below glowing faintly, like embers under glass.

And at the heart of it — a figure waiting for him.

Anna.

She held out her hand.

For the first time in years, he stopped feeling afraid.

8. Epilogue

When the rain finally ceased, the lake was full again.

Divers searching for Elias never found a body — only his dive mask, resting on a submerged street sign that read:

WELCOME TO GLASSHAVEN

City of Reflection.

A month later, the water turned strangely clear.

Visitors swore that, on calm days, they could see the faint outline of the city glimmering below — and two figures standing hand in hand beside the clock tower, forever frozen at 2:17.