The Lantern in the Lake

They said the lake was cursed, but Eron never believed them.

He believed in silence. In fog. In the way water could reflect the world and still keep secrets beneath its surface.

The villagers called the lake Stillmere, though it had not been still in centuries. They told stories of the drowned: of whispering spirits, of floating lights, of songs that lured the curious to their end. But Eron wasn’t curious. He was just alone.

Each night after supper, he’d wander the woods until the trees thinned and the mist opened up like a breath, revealing the dark, silver skin of the lake. He never stepped in. Just sat. Listened. Watched.

And then the moon vanished.

It was the first time in recorded memory that the moon failed to rise. No clouds hid it. No storm swallowed it. The sky was clear—but black. The stars, too, seemed weaker. Dimmer. As if they had lost their guide.

That’s when he saw it.

A lantern, glowing gold, floating in the dead center of the lake. No boat. No wind. Just a single flame flickering against the dark. It didn’t reflect. It hovered. Waiting.

Eron stepped into the shallows. Cold gripped his legs like something alive. He went deeper. The water pulled at his breath, but the light pulled harder.

By the time he reached the lantern, the world was gone. No trees. No shore. Just him. The flame. The dark.

The lantern didn’t burn him when he touched it.

Instead, it whispered.

“You are the last.”

Eron’s voice trembled. “The last of what?”

“The last who remembers the old names.”

Beneath the lake, the water rippled. Something shimmered below—eyes, dozens of them, wide and glowing. They blinked slowly, not with malice, but with age. Like they had been waiting.

“The moon has gone,” the lantern said. “But not lost. She waits to be remembered.”

“I don’t understand,” Eron said. “I’m no one.”

“You are quiet,” it answered. “And the quiet ones still hear.”

The lantern’s light grew brighter. The eyes beneath stirred, rising through the surface—not bodies, not beasts, but shapes made of mist and memory. They drifted around him, whispering in a language he didn’t know but somehow understood.

Each spirit told a story. Of the time before time. Of when the moon was not just a light, but a being—a guardian, a song, a sister of the sun.

“She dimmed to protect us,” said one voice. “She hid herself when we forgot her name.”

Another sang: “She waits in the hollow sky, and only one who remembers may call her home.”

Eron didn’t remember names. But he remembered feeling. The way the moon made him feel safe. The way her light wrapped the night like a blanket.

He closed his eyes and whispered: “Come back.”

The lake stopped. The flame in the lantern leapt higher.

The water beneath him glowed silver, brighter and brighter until he could see all the way to the bottom—where a great mirror of obsidian rested. In it, his reflection didn’t match him. It was older. Taller. Cloaked in moonlight. Holding a staff carved with stars.

He gasped. The spirits watched in silence.

The lantern rose from his hands and floated higher, humming like a song.

Then it said:

“She hears you.”

And the moon returned.

It did not rise from the east, but bloomed directly above the lake, full and enormous. The stars blinked back to brightness, and the water glowed so bright it looked like glass.

Eron fell to his knees in the shallows.

The lantern hovered beside him. “You have spoken,” it said. “Now, you must remember her forever.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

But the lantern was fading.

The spirits lowered back into the lake, their eyes closing like petals. The mirror at the bottom sank deeper, until only ripples remained.

The moon hung above. Whole. Watching.

When Eron returned to the village, no one believed him. They cheered the moon’s return, but called it coincidence. Luck. The priests held a festival, claiming the gods had answered their prayers.

Eron said nothing.

But each night, he walked to the lake. The lantern was gone. But the moon always waited for him. And sometimes, when the mist was just right, he heard the old voices again.

He never forgot.

He never stopped listening.

And so, the moon never left again.