Echoes Beneath the Midnight Lake

The lake at the edge of town had always been silent. No fishermen. No swimmers. Just a sheet of black water ringed with pine trees, whispering in the wind. People said it had no bottom — a mirror turned toward another world.

Sana never believed the rumors. She only went there to breathe. When the city’s noise and the endless scrolling on her phone pressed against her skull, she would walk the cracked path down to the water and sit on the pier. There she’d sketch birds, boats, and faces from memory. And sometimes, in the water’s stillness, she’d see someone else looking back.

The first time she saw him, she thought it was her own reflection — same posture, same tilt of the head. But his eyes glowed faintly blue, like lightning caught in glass. When she blinked, he was gone.

A week later, she returned. He was there again, clearer this time: a man about her age, hair drifting as if underwater, lips moving with words she couldn’t hear. Her heart raced. She reached toward the surface. His hand rose from beneath, fingers brushing the mirror of the lake but never breaking it.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The water quivered. A voice came faintly, like a radio buried under sand: “Eren…”

After that night, she returned again and again. Each time they met at the same spot, separated by the lake’s skin. Each time his voice grew stronger, his story clearer. He was not a ghost, he said, but someone caught “between breaths” — a diver from another time, or another world, he wasn’t sure. He’d fallen into the lake years ago, felt himself pulled downward into a tunnel of light, and surfaced somewhere not quite his own.

“Sometimes I can see your world,” he said. “Sometimes you can see mine. But the lake only opens at midnight.”

Sana started writing him letters, slipping them into glass bottles weighted with stones. She’d drop them at midnight, and by dawn they’d be gone. In return, objects surfaced on her side: a brass compass etched with symbols, a pressed flower from a forest she’d never seen, a strip of film showing her own face but standing beside him.

One evening he said, “The lake will open fully on the equinox. If you want, you could come through.”

She laughed nervously. “That’s crazy.”

But deep inside, she wanted to believe. The life she had felt flat, a looping hallway of work and screens and sleepless nights. This — the lake, the letters, the man with blue-lit eyes — felt more real than anything else.

The equinox arrived under a heavy sky. Clouds shrouded the moon. Sana wore a heavy coat, her sketchbook tucked under her arm. She reached the pier at 11:59. Eren stood just beneath the surface, eyes bright, hand outstretched.

When the clock struck midnight, the water glowed. Rings of light spun outward, forming a circle like a door. The air smelled of salt and thunder. Sana’s pulse hammered.

“Step in,” he said. “It’s only open for a few breaths.”

She slipped off her shoes and put a toe to the glowing water. It was warm, humming. She took another step, then another, until she was waist-deep. The world tilted. Stars blurred. Her lungs filled with wind, not water.

Then she was through.

She stumbled onto a shoreline made of black sand. Above her hung two moons and a sky veined with auroras. Pines taller than skyscrapers leaned toward her, their branches dripping silver dew. Eren stood there, real, dry, and smiling, his hand warm around hers.

“You made it,” he said. His voice no longer echoed.

“This place…” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

They walked along the shore, the water lapping at their ankles like liquid glass. Birds with translucent wings swooped overhead. In the distance, she saw mountains shaped like spirals, glowing at the peaks.

For hours — or maybe minutes — they explored. He showed her the ruins of a pier that looked just like hers but older, carved with runes. He told her about his world, how it flickered between times, how he’d searched for an anchor to pull himself free. She realized she might be that anchor.

But as dawn approached, the sky cracked. Lines of white appeared, zigzagging through the auroras like shattered glass. The ground trembled.

“You can’t stay,” he said. His face was pale. “This world isn’t stable for you.”

“I don’t want to go back,” she said.

“If you don’t, it will pull you apart. Your world needs you whole.”

She clutched his hand, tears burning. “Then come with me.”

He shook his head. “The lake chose me. It’s the only place I can exist. But now you’ll know — we’re not alone. And maybe one day I’ll find the way.”

The cracks widened. Water surged upward, a column of light spiraling toward the sky. He kissed her forehead. “Go.”

She felt herself lifted, spun, and hurled back through the glow.

Sana woke on the pier, dawn streaking the horizon. Her shoes lay beside her. Her sketchbook was wet but intact. In her hand she clutched a single blue-lit feather.

She opened the book. Inside, sketches she hadn’t drawn — moons, black sand, and a man with eyes like storms.

The lake lay silent, as if nothing had happened. But every ripple in the water carried an echo of his voice: “I’ll be here.”

She smiled through tears, knowing that somewhere beneath the midnight lake, Eren waited — and that one day, the door would open again.