Chapter 1: The Lantern Finds an Outsider

The lantern came into my hands like a warm stone pulled from a river, wrong to hold and hard to put down. Around the worn stones, the others waited with their faces half-lit, half lost. I did not belong in their quiet. Someone had brought me once, said I should listen, that the Circle liked new ears. I kept my mouth shut until the lantern touched my palms and the flame tightened, as if it recognized a voice it wanted.

“I will not use my own name,” I said, because that is how it is done. The words felt borrowed. “I once heard from someone who needed to prove they were not lying.”

In my coat, the bundle of letters had softened at the edges. Damp paper, old candlewax, and the sea. The first envelope had no postmark, only a crescent scratched into the flap as if a thumbnail had worried it. When I unfolded the page, the ink looked dry and tired, but the smell was fresh enough to make my throat sting.

The letter began without greeting, as if the writer had no time for it.

I read aloud, and the Circle leaned in. The lantern’s glass was cold where my thumb rested, and in the silence between sentences I could hear what I always heard here: distant whispers that never formed words, scraping metal far away, then sudden silence like a door closing.

The writer described an island that did not sit cleanly on any map. Not far from shore, not near it either. A lighthouse with paint that peeled in long curls like fingernails. A keeper’s job taken by a newcomer, an outsider, because nobody else wanted to be alone with a tower that seemed to listen.

The writer did not call themselves brave. They wrote like someone building a case. They listed small facts the way a person might stack stones, hoping the stack would not be knocked down.

A listener across the stones shifted and touched behind their ear, not scratching, more like checking. I kept reading anyway.

The letter promised details, dates, proof, anything that might convince a skeptical office on the mainland. It sounded like someone trying to be believed by people who already had their answer.

“Listen like you might have to prove your innocence later,” the writer had underlined twice.

The lantern flame flickered though no wind moved through the clearing. Someone in the Circle whispered, “Read,” not impatient, but afraid that if I stopped, something else would start.

So I began with the first page that had been on top of the bundle, even though a later page would insist it was not the first at all.

Chapter 2: The Knock That Chose the Door

The letter was dated “first night,” though the numbers that should have followed were scratched out, then written again in different ink. The writer described arriving by a boat that smelled of rope and fish oil, the kind of smell that clings to your hair. The ferryman did not speak much. Fog sat low on the water, and the island rose out of it like a thought you could not finish.

The lighthouse stood alone, its light unlit in daylight, its windows gray with salt. Inside, the air was cooler than it should have been. The writer mentioned an endless drip, water falling somewhere deep in the tower with the patience of a clock.

“I told myself it was pipes,” the letter said. “I told myself everything has pipes.”

The newcomer unpacked in the keeper’s room: a narrow bed, a desk bolted to the wall, a wardrobe that smelled of damp fabric. On the desk sat a logbook and a stack of blank paper, as if the tower expected confession.

Night came fast, but not in a normal way. The fog thickened against the windows, then cleared, then thickened again, like the glass was breathing. The writer kept noticing it, the way a person notices a stranger staring.

At what they believed was midnight, though the clock in the hall had no hands, there came a single knock on the front door.

Not pounding. Not frantic. One careful knock, like a child asking permission.

The writer described freezing with one boot still unlaced. They listened for the sea, for footsteps on the porch, for laughter, anything. Only the drip, and the hush that follows a sound when you expect another.

They called out, “Hello?” and hated how small their voice sounded in the stairwell.

A second knock came, same strength, same place. The writer wrote, “It felt like the tower had knocked from the inside.”

They took the lantern that hung by the door, lit it, and opened up.

Fog pressed close, thick as cloth. The porch boards were wet, but no footprints marked them. The island path vanished two steps from the threshold. The writer held the lantern up and saw their own face reflected faintly in the glass, pale and uncertain, eyes too wide.

They shut the door quickly, then opened it again, because their mind demanded proof. Again, nothing.

Back inside, the windows fogged over fast, then cleared so suddenly it made the writer flinch, as if the lighthouse had blinked at them. They wrote, “The glass closes too fast. It is like eyelids snapping.”

They tried to laugh at that line, the letter said, but the laugh would not come. They went upstairs, checked every room, even the attic door, which was locked with a simple hook.

The drip continued. Steady. Endless.

Before the writer went to bed, they wrote one last sentence, ink pressed hard enough to dent the paper.

“If someone knocks again, I will not answer.”

Chapter 3: The Map With the Missing Corner

The next letter in my bundle was dated three days earlier than “first night,” and that was the first time the Circle’s listeners shifted in a way that told me they noticed it too. I read on, because the paper demanded it.

This letter began with the writer insisting they were not losing track of time, that the island was. They had started to keep a careful record, but the record did not behave. They wrote down the drip, the fog, the hours they slept, then woke to find the page changed. A neat correction in the margin. A line crossed out with a careful hand.

“I found something in the desk,” the writer said. “A map, folded small, like it wanted to hide.”

They described opening a drawer that stuck, then gave way with a sigh of old wood. Inside lay an island map drawn by hand, ink faded to brown. The coastline looked familiar until you stared too long, then it seemed to change, coves shifting like a mouth trying different shapes. One corner of the map had been torn away, leaving a jagged absence.

Under the map, scratched into the desk itself, was a crescent mark. Not decorative. Not accidental. The writer traced it with a fingertip and felt the groove catch their skin.

They wrote that the map made them feel less alone. Proof that someone had been here and cared enough to chart it. Proof, too, that the island had edges, that it could be understood.

But when they walked with the map in hand, following a path to the supply shed, the path did not match. The map showed a straight line. The actual trail curved, then curved again, and the writer found themselves back at the lighthouse door without remembering turning.

They tried again. Same result.

“It is like the island folds when I am not looking,” they wrote. “Like a paper model that refuses to stay flat.”

The writer began carrying the map everywhere, tucking it into their coat like a charm. They wrote notes in the margins, little corrections, little arguments with the paper. They even tried to tear off a fresh corner to replace the missing one, but their hands would not do it. They sat with the map in their lap, fingers tight, as if waiting for permission.

At dusk, they saw the windows fog and clear in quick pulses. The lighthouse light, unlit, still seemed to watch the sea. The writer described standing outside and looking up, trying to decide whether the tower felt lonely or hungry.

Then came another sound, not a knock this time. A scrape, like metal dragged slowly along stone, somewhere inside the walls. It lasted three seconds, then stopped. The writer went inside and pressed their ear to the plaster. Only the drip answered.

They wrote a line that made my throat tighten as I spoke it into the Circle.

“If I cannot trust the paths, I will trust the paper. If the paper changes, I will know it is not me.”

At the bottom of the page, as if added later, was a sentence in smaller handwriting.

“And if you are reading this, you already know the paper changes.”

The lantern flame flared once, then settled. Around the stones, nobody spoke. Nobody dismissed it as nonsense. That is also how it is done.

Chapter 4: Footsteps in the Empty Attic

The envelope for the next letter was torn as if opened in a hurry. The page inside was creased and smudged, and the writing leaned downhill like it had been done on someone’s knee.

It was labeled “same night,” though it did not say which night, and the writer sounded exhausted, determined not to sound afraid.

“I checked the attic,” the letter began. “It was empty. I will write that again. It was empty.”

The writer described lying in bed with the lantern turned low, listening to the drip that never stopped. At some point, the drip seemed to match another rhythm. Soft steps, above the ceiling, moving from one end of the attic to the other.

Not heavy adult steps. Not the scurry of rats. A steady childlike pace, careful, as if counting boards.

The writer sat up. The steps stopped.

They waited. The silence lasted long enough to make their ears ring. Then the steps began again, directly above the bed.

“It is the worst kind of sound,” the writer wrote, “the kind that stops when you listen.”

They grabbed the lantern, climbed the narrow stairs, and unhooked the attic door. The air up there was colder, and it smelled of damp earth and old insulation. The lantern light cut a small circle into the darkness, showing beams, a trunk, a coil of rope, and dust that looked wet.

No child. No animal.

But the dust held a mark.

A small handprint, pressed into the thin film as if someone had leaned down and steadied themselves. The fingers were too short to be the writer’s. The palm was rounder, softer. The writer held up their own hand beside it, shaking. Not a match.

They searched the attic anyway, moving crates, lifting the trunk lid, finding only old rain gear and a cracked compass. Each time they shifted something, the drip below seemed to grow louder, as if the tower disliked being disturbed.

The writer called out, “Who’s there?” and hated themselves for asking, because asking is a kind of invitation. The letter did not use that word, but the fear of it sat between the lines. The writer wrote that they held their breath after speaking, listening for an answer the way you listen after you step on a floorboard that creaks.

No answer came, but the lantern glass caught a reflection, not of the attic, but of the writer’s face, stretched slightly, as if the glass was thicker than it should be. For a moment, the writer thought they saw another face behind their own, smaller, watching through the lantern like a window.

They slammed the attic door and hooked it, then wrote, “I will not go up again.”

At the bottom of the page, the ink changed color, darker, fresher.

“You will,” a line read, in handwriting that was almost the same.

The writer added beneath it, furious, “I did not write that.”

When I read those words, someone in the Circle made a small sound, like breath caught on teeth. The lantern’s flame shrank, then steadied, as if listening.

Chapter 5: All the Animals Face the Light

This letter was dated “weeks earlier,” which made no sense, because the writer had only just arrived, if “first night” meant anything. The broken chronology did not feel like a trick. It felt like a symptom the writer was trying to document.

The writer described waking to a strange quiet outside, a quiet so complete it made the drip inside sound like hammering. They stepped out onto the porch with the lantern and saw seabirds standing on the rocks below the lighthouse.

Not perched. Not resting. Standing, necks stretched, beaks pointed up toward the tower.

A stray cat sat in the grass near the path, tail wrapped tight, eyes fixed on the lighthouse door. Even the insects, moths and beetles, clung to the wall facing one point, unmoving, as if they were listening to a lesson.

“It is like the island is attending something,” the writer said.

They followed the line of all those gazes into the lighthouse, up the stairs, past the storage room they had avoided because it smelled of old candlewax and rot beneath floorboards. The drip grew louder with each step, not faster, just louder, as if the sound was closer to the surface there.

In the storage room stood a tall object covered with a sheet. The sheet was damp at the bottom, as if it had been dipping into a puddle. The writer had not noticed any puddle before. They crouched and touched the floorboards. The wood was wet, but the wetness felt old, like it had been waiting there.

They stood a long time, listening. The drip was not in the walls. It was behind the covered shape.

“I told myself it was a mirror,” the writer wrote, “because what else is tall and covered and kept in a room like a secret?”

They did not pull the sheet off. Not yet. Instead, they walked back out to the porch and looked at the animals again, hoping they would break their strange attention. They did not. A gull blinked, slow and deliberate, but kept staring.

The writer went to the supply shed, map in hand, trying to do something normal. The path shifted again, and the writer found themselves at the back of the lighthouse instead, where the stone foundation was slick with moisture. Water dripped there too, from nowhere visible, falling into the same dark patch over and over.

That was when the writer’s fear changed. It stopped being sharp and became heavy. They wrote like someone clenching their jaw.

“If I am to be accused of neglect,” they wrote, “I will need evidence. If I am to be called mad, I will need proof.”

They began listing details in a careful way: the time the fog blinked on the windows, the number of birds, the position of the cat, the sound of the drip. The list was meant for the mainland office, for an inspector, for anyone who would later claim the writer had invented it.

That night, the animals faced the lighthouse again. The writer watched from the window and saw them all turn their heads in unison, as if someone inside the tower had moved.

The writer ended the letter with a simple plan.

“Tomorrow I will uncover what they are watching.”

Chapter 6: The Child in the Glass

The next page began mid-sentence, as if the writer had started writing, stopped, then started again in a hurry.

“I did it,” the letter said. “I uncovered it. I wish I had not.”

The writer described standing in the storage room with the lantern in one hand and the other hand on the damp sheet. The fabric clung like wet clothing. They pulled it back, and dust rose in a slow spiral that did not drift far, as if the air was heavier there.

A mirror, tall enough to show a full body, framed in dark wood. The wood had that same crescent mark scratched into its lower corner, not carved neatly, but gouged like a warning.

At first, the reflection showed only the writer, lantern light trembling on their face, the storage room behind them. The writer’s shoulders were hunched, their mouth set. They looked like someone trying to be brave in a room that did not deserve bravery.

Then, for a moment, there was a child in the glass.

Not in the room. Only in the reflection, standing just behind the writer’s shoulder. Small, hair dark and wet, eyes bright like the lantern flame. The child’s mouth was closed, but the expression was not shy. It was patient, as if waiting for a turn to speak.

The writer spun around, lantern swinging. The storage room was empty. They turned back to the mirror.

The child was still there, but now the child’s position had shifted, closer to the glass, closer to the writer’s reflected face.

“It was like it took a step without moving,” the writer wrote.

The writer tried to rationalize. Fog outside, fatigue, salt glare, stress. They listed each reason like nails driven into a board. But their body betrayed them.

“My hand moved,” the letter said. “Not like a twitch. Like a decision I did not make.”

The writer’s fingers reached toward the mirror. The glass looked colder than glass should look, almost damp. The lantern flame bent toward it slightly, as if drawn.

The writer pressed their palm to the surface and felt a chill that went past skin into bone. For a heartbeat, the reflection did not match. The writer’s hand in the mirror pressed back harder, as if trying to push through.

The child in the reflection lifted a small hand and placed it exactly where the writer’s palm lay, perfectly aligned, like tracing paper.

The writer yanked their hand away and stumbled back. The drip behind the mirror grew louder, and the writer realized the sound was not water on stone. It was water on glass.

They covered the mirror again, sheet shaking in their grip, and fled the room. Outside, the animals had returned to whatever animals do, but the writer could not forget how they had all faced the same point, like witnesses.

The letter ended with the writer’s grim determination showing through the fear.

“I will not be driven from this job by a trick of light. I will keep the mirror covered. I will keep writing. If I lose my grip, the letters will hold it for me.”

In the Circle, the lantern’s glow seemed paler. I licked my lips and tasted salt, though no sea touched the clearing.

Chapter 7: Letters That Arrive Before They Are Written

By the time I reached this part of the bundle, my fingers had smudged the edges with sweat. The listeners around the stones sat very still. The lantern flame did not flicker now. It held steady like an eye that refuses to blink.

This letter was dated with a day that had not appeared yet in the writer’s earlier pages. The writer knew it too.

“I received my own warning,” the letter began. “It was in the drawer with the map. It was sealed. It was addressed to me. It was in my handwriting.”

The writer described finding an envelope that looked newly placed, not dusty like the others. Inside was a single sheet, folded tight. On it, the writer had written: Do not uncover the mirror. Do not answer knocks.

But the writer swore they had not written it.

“If I wrote it, when?” they asked. “If I wrote it, why did I ignore it?”

They began leaving notes for themselves around the lighthouse. On the door: Keep it locked. On the lantern: Do not set it down near glass. On the desk: Write every hour.

Each note came back altered.

A note that said Keep it locked returned as Keep it unlocked, do not trap it. The change was small, just a few added strokes, but the meaning flipped like a coin. The writer tried to keep the altered notes as evidence. They tucked them into the logbook. Later, the logbook pages were torn out. Not ripped wildly, but removed cleanly, like someone who wanted the book to look tidy.

The writer tried to hide the map under the mattress. In the morning, it lay neatly on the desk, open to the torn corner, as if someone had been studying it.

“I am losing time,” the writer said. “I will find chores done, the wick trimmed, the steps swept, and I do not remember doing it.”

They checked their hands for ink. Sometimes their fingertips were stained, blue-black, as if they had written in the night. They would find fresh pages in the logbook filled with neat lines describing weather that had not happened yet.

Fog at noon. A knock at dusk. Footsteps in the attic at a time the writer had been outside.

The writer tried to prove their innocence to themselves by making a mark on their own wrist, a small scratch, a reminder. They woke with the scratch cleaned and bandaged.

“I am being cared for,” the letter said, and the writer sounded more frightened by that than by harm. “Or I am being prepared.”

One paragraph described the mirror covered in the storage room, sheet tied with rope. The next paragraph described the mirror uncovered again, sheet folded neatly on the floor, as if someone wanted it to be seen.

The writer wrote, “I feel watched when I am not in the room. I feel guided when I am.”

At the bottom of the page, there was an addition in different pressure, the letters heavier, as if someone pressed down from the other side.

“You asked for help,” it read. “You asked for company.”

The writer had scrawled beneath it, “I did not.”

But the ink of that denial looked thin, like it was running out.

Chapter 8: The Invitation Hidden in Plain Ink

This letter smelled stronger of candlewax, as if the paper had been held too close to a flame. The writer’s tone shifted from confusion to something like courtroom focus, the grim determination of someone building a defense while the walls lean in.

They had contacted the mainland authority, an office that oversaw the lighthouse: supplies, wages, inspections. The writer expected suspicion, but not the kind they received.

“They think I have been drinking,” the letter said. “They think I am neglecting the light. They think I am making excuses.”

An inspector came by boat, face pinched, eyes scanning the tower like it was already guilty. The writer described trying to show the map, the altered notes, the handprint in the attic dust. The inspector listened with polite impatience, then looked past the writer’s shoulder at the covered mirror in the storage room.

“What’s that?” the inspector asked.

“Just storage,” the writer said quickly, stepping in front of the doorway.

The inspector’s gaze sharpened. “You are not to block access. Everything on site is subject to review.”

The writer felt their own mouth say, “Of course,” though their mind screamed no. They wrote, “My lips moved too easily.”

The inspector did not uncover the mirror. They did not even enter the storage room. Instead, they asked for the contract.

The writer fetched the job papers from the desk drawer, hands shaking. The inspector flipped through them, then tapped one clause with a blunt finger.

“Dependent occupant,” the inspector read aloud, as if it was routine. “Any dependent occupant residing on site must be declared.”

“I have no dependent,” the writer said. “I am alone.”

The inspector’s expression did not change, but the air in the room did. The drip seemed to pause, then resume louder.

“You signed this,” the inspector said. “If you are harboring someone, particularly a child, you will be held responsible.”

“A child?” the writer repeated, and the word tasted like metal in their mouth.

The inspector left with a warning and a promise to return. The writer watched the boat vanish into fog and felt the island fold around them again, trapping them in a shape that did not match the map.

That night, the writer re-read the contract by lantern light, hunting for anything they missed. In the margin, in their own handwriting, was a copied line, as if they had written it out for emphasis.

“Any dependent occupant may reside on site.”

The writer stared until their eyes watered. They did not remember copying it. They did not remember thinking of it.

“It reads like permission,” the writer said. “It reads like an invitation written in polite ink.”

In the storage room, the covered mirror made a soft sound, like a fingertip tapping glass. Not a knock on the front door this time. A knock from inside the sheet.

The writer did not answer out loud.

But they wrote, “I think I already did.”

Chapter 9: Fog That Shuts Like a Lid

This letter was shorter in lines but heavier in feeling, like the writer had less room inside themselves. The chronology jumped again. The first paragraph described packing a bag to leave. The second described returning, already defeated, as if time itself refused to let the attempt exist in a straight line.

“I tried to go,” the writer said. “I do not know if the island let me.”

They had dragged the small boat down to the rocky edge where the ferryman usually landed. The sea was calm, but the fog was thick enough to make the world look unfinished. The writer pushed off anyway, map in pocket, lantern held close.

For a few minutes, the water sounded normal. Then it changed, not louder, not rougher, just wrong, as if the waves were arriving a half-second late. The writer rowed toward where the mainland should be, but the fog did not thin. It thickened, pressing close, and the writer felt watched from every side.

“I could not tell if I was moving,” the writer wrote.

A shape loomed ahead, dark and tall. The writer’s heart lifted, thinking it might be the mainland cliff. Then the shape resolved into the lighthouse itself, its tower rising out of fog like a finger accusing them.

They had rowed in a circle without turning. Or the water had turned them.

Back inside, the windows of the lantern room fogged over, then cleared too fast, like eyelids snapping shut and open. The writer watched it happen again and again, each blink timed with the drip somewhere below.

The writer began to hear the drip everywhere. In the stairwell. In the walls. In their own throat when they swallowed. One drop at a time, patient, endless.

They tried to wedge a window open to let fresh air in. The fog outside pressed against the crack, then the window slammed shut on its own, not violently, just firmly, like a lid closing on a jar.

“The lighthouse does not want openings,” the writer wrote.

They sat at the desk with the map spread out and the contract beside it. They wrote a letter to the authority, careful, calm, explaining that the clause was a mistake, that there was no child, that the mirror was only storage. They sealed it, addressed it, and left it by the door, ready for the next boat.

In the morning, the sealed letter was gone. In its place was the same envelope, opened, the page inside rewritten in their handwriting.

“I confess,” it began.

The writer tore it up, hands shaking, and wrote this instead, the letter I now held.

“If I am blamed, it will not be because I did nothing. It will be because something used my hands. I will not leave. I will outlast it. I will keep the light burning even if nobody believes why.”

At the end, a single line, almost gentle.

“There is a child laughing somewhere in the tower,” the writer wrote, “and there are no children here.”

Chapter 10: Trading Places

The letter for this chapter was blotched, as if water had dripped directly onto the ink. Some words had run into each other, making them harder to read, like the page itself was trying to close.

The writer described the mirror changing slowly, the way a bruise changes color. At first, the reflection lagged a half-second behind, barely noticeable. The writer would lift a hand, and their reflection would follow a beat late, like a tired mimic.

Then it shifted. The reflection moved a half-second early, raising its hand before the writer did. The writer tested it, making sudden gestures, jerking their head, snapping fingers. The reflection anticipated, like it already knew the script.

The child in the glass began to mimic too, standing where the writer stood, copying their posture with unsettling accuracy, like practicing being them.

“It is learning my habits,” the writer wrote. “It is learning my face.”

They started waking to find the lighthouse chores done in a way they would not do them. The lantern wick trimmed too short. The logbook entries too neat, too polite. A cup washed and placed upside down, though the writer always left cups to dry upright.

They found ink on their fingers again, and once, a smear of ink on their cheek, like a child’s dirty handprint.

The writer tried tying a ribbon around their own wrist before bed, a bright strip of cloth to check in the morning. They woke with the ribbon retied into a careful bow they did not know how to make.

“I am being improved,” the writer wrote, and the sarcasm did not hide the fear.

One night, they stood before the covered mirror and spoke aloud, voice steady with effort.

“I am not your parent,” they said. “I am not your keeper. I am not responsible for you.”

The sheet bulged outward slightly, as if something behind it leaned close. A small voice, muffled by fabric and glass, answered, not loud, but clear enough.

“You said I could stay,” it said.

The writer stumbled back, hitting the wall. The drip sounded like applause.

The writer wrote that they ran to the attic, desperate to find something solid, something empty. The attic was empty. But the dust handprint was gone, wiped clean. In its place, scratched into a beam, was a crescent mark and a name.

Not the writer’s name.

A child’s name, written as if practiced many times, letters uneven but proud.

The writer wrote, “If I say it out loud, will it hear? If it hears, will it answer?”

They did not write the name again. They drew a blank line where it should be, as if even on paper it was dangerous.

At the bottom of the page, the handwriting shifted, becoming smoother.

“I can do your job,” it wrote. “I can be you.”

Chapter 11: The Missing Corner Points Home

This letter began with a sentence that sounded like someone gripping a railing in a storm.

“I found the missing corner.”

The writer described waking with the map tucked under their arm, though they had hidden it in the desk. The torn edge seemed to itch at them. They followed the drip sound down to the storage room, heart pounding with the certainty that fear had become routine.

The mirror stood covered, but the sheet was arranged too neatly, corners folded like a bed made by someone eager to please. The writer pulled the sheet off in one hard motion, refusing to hesitate.

Behind the mirror’s frame, wedged into a groove, was the missing corner of the map. The paper was damp but intact, as if kept in a place where water dripped but never soaked through.

The writer fitted it into place with shaking hands. The coastline on the completed map shifted, then settled, like a face deciding what expression to wear. A new mark appeared, a small square drawn inside the lighthouse outline, labeled with cramped letters.

“A room,” the writer wrote. “Inside the lighthouse, but not on any floor plan.”

They searched for it like someone searching their own body for a splinter. They tapped walls, listened for hollow spots, followed the drip that now sounded like it came from everywhere. Finally, behind the storage shelves, they found a panel in the plaster that did not match the rest. The crescent mark was scratched into its edge.

They pried it open. Cold air breathed out, smelling of damp earth and old candlewax. A narrow space lay beyond, too small to be a room, too deliberate to be a mistake.

Inside were signs of a child’s presence that felt timeless, neither fresh nor decayed. A small shoe, dry and clean. A wooden toy boat with no paint. A scrap of paper covered in loops and lines like someone practicing letters.

And, on a shelf, a second page of the contract.

The writer unfolded it and felt their stomach drop. The “dependent occupant” clause was there again, but this page had a signature line beneath it. The writer’s signature sat on that line, ink dark and confident.

Dated “first night.”

“I remember signing the contract in the kitchen,” the writer wrote. “I remember the pen. I remember thinking it was routine.”

They did not remember this page. They did not remember agreeing to anything beyond the job.

Then they wrote the detail that made the Circle’s air feel thinner.

“I signed it after the knock,” the writer said. “I opened the door, saw no one, came back inside, and found the paper waiting. I signed because it felt like the next step. Like my hand already knew.”

The writer understood then, not as a sudden revelation, but as a slow truth finally reaching the surface.

The mirror-dwelling thing had not intruded. It had been invited.

“It is not breaking rules,” the writer wrote. “It is collecting permission.”

In the corner of the hidden space, the drip fell from a crack in the ceiling into a metal bowl. The bowl was already full, but it never overflowed. The water vanished as it hit, as if the room drank it.

The writer backed out, panel closing behind them with a soft click that sounded like a lock choosing itself.

Chapter 12: A Survivor’s Warning, If “Survivor” Still Fits

The final letter was the hardest to read, not because the ink had run, but because the handwriting changed line by line, as if two hands took turns holding the pen. The writer fought to sound steady.

“If this reaches anyone,” it began, “then the island still allows paper to leave.”

The writer described their days narrowing. The mirror no longer needed to be uncovered to be felt. It pressed its presence through the sheet, through the wall, through the air. The writer would catch their reflection in the lantern glass and see the child’s eyes for a blink, then their own again.

“My face is becoming something I have to check,” the writer wrote.

They tried to speak their own thoughts out loud to keep them anchored. Sometimes their mouth formed different words. They would plan to say, “I will not,” and hear, “I will,” come out instead. The loss of agency was not dramatic. It was quiet, like a door that swings shut without a slam.

The writer wrote instructions with grim care, as if making a manual for the next prisoner.

“Do not answer knocks,” they wrote. “Not the front door, not the mirror, not the walls. Silence is not safety, but it is not permission.”

“Watch the animals,” they wrote. “When seabirds, cats, even insects face one point in unison, do not follow their gaze. They are not warning you. They are listening.”

“Find the map,” they wrote. “Keep it on your body, not in a drawer. If the corner is missing, look behind the mirror’s frame, but do not touch the glass. Fit the corner back only if you are ready to see what the lighthouse hides.”

“Find the hidden room before the mirror learns your full name,” they wrote, and the ink shook on the word name, as if even writing it cost something.

Then, a confession that read like someone forcing themselves to swallow truth.

“I invited it,” the writer said. “Not with my heart, but with my hand. I signed what I did not read. I let routine become consent.”

The letter ended with a practical note, almost gentle, as if the writer wanted to sound like a keeper again, not a victim.

“If the lantern ever goes out mid-sentence,” they wrote, “keep speaking anyway. Finish in darkness. It listens best when it cannot see you, because then it can imagine itself in your place.”

The last line was written in a different hand entirely, smaller, rounder.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” it said.

When I lowered the page in the Hollow Circle, the lantern flame tightened, as if it had been holding its breath through every word. The clearing was so quiet I could hear my own pulse, and beneath it, faint, that same patient sound, like water dripping into a bowl that never overflowed.

No one spoke. The silence lasted too long.

Somewhere beyond the stones, from no clear direction, came a single knock.

I passed the lantern to the next set of hands without looking up, because I did not want to see whether my reflection moved with me.