The Last Warning Light

The lighthouse's beam carved futile arcs through the miasma, each sweeping a Sisyphean labour against the encroaching void. Saltwater stung my eyes, already raw from straining against the impenetrable murk. Something visceral, primordial, stirred in my gut—a harbinger of imminent calamity.

"Cap'n Blackthorne!" I bellowed my voice a ragged thing torn by the gale. "Shoals to starboard! We must alter course!"

The man at the helm—more gargoyle than human in the storm's savage light—fixed me with a basilisk stare. "Stow that prattle, Simmons, or by God, I'll have your tongue!"

But he was blind to the truth etched in every league of this forsaken coast. I'd spent a lifetime decoding its cruel whispers, mapping the labyrinth of its malevolence. Beneath us lurked a graveyard of shattered keels and broken dreams, hungry for fresh tribute.

"Sir, I implore you—" The rest was lost as Blackthorne's calloused hand cracked across my face with Old Testament fury. I reeled, tasting copper and brine, my senses reeling like a deranged compass.

"One more syllable," he hissed, spittle flecking his beard, "and I'll feed you to the depths myself."

The crew—a motley assemblage of salt-cured veterans and green boys still soft with shore fat—averted their gazes, suddenly fascinated by the planks beneath their feet. In their silence lay complicity, fear of the lash trumping fear of the sea's capricious hunger.

I scrambled upright, fighting the ship's wild pitching. The fog pressed closer, an eldritch shroud muffling even Thor's fury. And then—a sound to freeze the marrow. The hungry snarl of breakers over submerged stone.

"Sweet Jesus, Captain! Hard to port or we're do—"

This time, his fist found my jaw with crushing precision. Constellations bloomed behind my eyes as I pirouetted gracelessly, the world tilting on its axis. My flailing arms found only empty air where the railing should have been, and then I was falling, plummeting towards Poseidon's cold embrace.

The shock stole my breath, my limbs leaden as the sea sought to claim me. By some divine caprice, my fingers found purchase on a wayward spar. I clung to it, a drowning man's rosary.

Through sheets of stinging spray, I watched in mute horror as the ship plowed on, heedless of its impending doom. My cries were stillborn, swallowed by the tempest's roar.

The sound, when it came, was elemental—the death knell of tortured timber and shattered dreams. The ship's prow reared skyward, impaled on Nature's pike. A chorus of terror erupted from the doomed vessel as men were flung like chaff before the wind.

I turned away, bile rising in my throat. The current tugged insistently, a siren song promising oblivion. But some spark of defiance, buried deep in my marrow, refused to yield. I kicked and clawed against the merciless pull, one arm locked around my makeshift savior.

Time became fluid, stretching and contracting like a fevered hallucination. Gradually, imperceptibly, the storm's fury abated. As if drawing back a funeral shroud, the mist began to lift, revealing the first tentative blush of dawn.

There, silhouetted against the nascent sky, stood my lighthouse—sentinel, judge, and salvation all in one. Its stoic profile grew larger with each desperate stroke until, at last, my feet found purchase on blessed, immovable stone.

I dragged myself onto the shore, a newborn colt on shaky legs. One final glance at the now-placid sea revealed no trace of Blackthorne or his ill-fated crew. The hungry waves had gorged themselves on hubris and folly.

Limping towards my tower, sanctuary and penance intertwined, I knew the reckoning that lay ahead. There would be inquiries, accusations, and perhaps even charges laid. But for now, there was only one imperative: to climb those winding stairs and set the lamp ablaze.

For out there, cloaked in fog and human arrogance, other ships might even now be charting a course for disaster. And this time—God willing—they might heed the last warning light.

_Ravi D