Chapter 7: The treacherous Path

Chapter 7: The Treacherous Path

Sleep was a luxury the house on the cliff would not afford him. Elias lay in his bed, listening to the rhythmic creak of the floorboards as his mother made her nightly rounds, checking the salt lines, touching the iron charms on the doors. Each soft footstep was a link in the chain of her love, a chain she would use to bind him here, to keep him safe. To let him fail.

He had lied to her. The guilt was a cold, hard knot in his stomach, but it was dwarfed by the crushing weight of his new reality. His father’s journal lay on his nightstand, a silent accuser and a desperate call to action. The Hallowtide Convergence is in four days. The words were a death knell. Lying to his mother was a small sin compared to the cataclysm of inaction.

He waited until the creaking stopped, replaced by the sound of her bedroom door closing with a soft click. He gave it another hour, listening to the house settle around him, the only sounds the distant sigh of the sea and the frantic thumping of his own heart. Then, he moved.

Quietly, he dressed in dark, practical clothing. He slipped the heavy journal into a waterproof bag and shrugged on a worn backpack. Into it went a coil of sturdy rope, his brightest flashlight, and a heavy, rust-flecked iron crowbar from his father’s old toolbox. As he passed the front door, he paused. On a small hook beside the frame hung a string of small, hand-forged iron rings—one of his mother’s many wards. He hesitated for only a second before taking it, the cold metal a comfort in his palm as he slipped it into his pocket.

The back door was his only option. He eased it open, the hinges groaning in protest, a sound that seemed loud enough to wake the dead. He froze, listening, but the house remained silent. He slipped out into the cold, pre-dawn air, the salty wind whipping at his face, and began the familiar trek down the winding path toward the town.

He found a payphone—a relic from another age—near the deserted fish market. The number came to him from a dusty corner of his memory. He fed the coins into the slot, the metallic clatter echoing in the stillness. It rang four times before she picked up, her voice thick with sleep.

“H’lo?”

“Lena, it’s Elias.”

A pause. “Elias? It’s… three in the morning. What’s wrong? Is it your mom?”

“No, she’s fine. I… I need your help.” The desperation in his own voice startled him. “The sea caves. You said you knew them. I have to get to the lighthouse. Tonight.”

The silence on the other end of the line was heavy with disbelief. “Are you crazy?” she finally whispered, her voice sharp and fully awake now. “The tide’s turning. There’s a swell coming in. You’ll get swept out to sea.”

This was the obstacle he had anticipated, the wall of her unshakeable common sense. He couldn’t tell her about the Echos, the failing seal, the Warden’s Keystone. She would think he was having a breakdown, that he was lost in the same fog of grief as his mother. He had to use the only truth he could.

“It’s for my dad,” he said, the words tasting of both truth and manipulation. “There’s something in the lighthouse. Something of his. It’s important. I can’t explain it, but I have to get it before… before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” she demanded. “Elias, this sounds insane. The causeway will be clear enough at low tide in the morning if you’re that desperate.”

“I can’t use the causeway,” he said, a little too quickly. “It’s too exposed. It has to be the caves. Lena, please. Just tell me the way. The safest route. I’m going with or without your help.”

He heard her take a sharp, frustrated breath. He could picture her, standing in her darkened room, running a hand through her messy hair, her mind warring between concern and anger. He was asking her to be an accessory to his suicide.

“You’re an absolute idiot, Elias Thorne,” she said, her voice a low, furious hiss. “A stubborn, reckless idiot.” Another pause, longer this time. He was about to hang up, to accept defeat, when she spoke again, her tone changed, resigned and resolute. “Don’t move. Stay right where you are. I’ll be at the trailhead by Smuggler’s Cove in twenty minutes. And if you’re not there, I’m going to your house and waking up your mother.”

The line went dead.

It was a surprise that sent a jolt of both relief and guilt through him. He had wanted a guide, but he had intended to go alone. Now, he was dragging her into this. He was putting her in the path of a danger she couldn't even begin to imagine.

She arrived not in a car, but on a battered old mountain bike, a powerful headlamp strapped to her forehead. She wore waterproof gear and sturdy boots, and carried a small, tough-looking pack of her own. She looked capable, angry, and beautiful in the cold moonlight.

“If we die,” she said without preamble, swinging off her bike and chaining it to a fence post, “I’m going to haunt you.”

“Fair enough,” he managed.

She didn’t wait for an explanation he couldn’t give. She just turned and led the way down a nearly invisible path that branched off the main coastal trail, a path that led down, ever down, towards the roaring blackness of the sea.

The journey was a brutal assault on the senses. The path quickly devolved into a treacherous scramble over rocks slick with sea spray and algae. The air grew thick and heavy, tasting of salt and iodine. The roar of the surf was a constant, deafening thunder, the sound of each wave crashing against the cliffs like a physical blow. Lena moved with a confidence that bordered on grace, her flashlight beam dancing ahead, picking out handholds and warning of loose scree. Elias, his body tense and his mind screaming, followed her lead.

She led him to a narrow opening in the cliff face, a jagged maw that seemed to inhale the churning sea foam. “This is it,” she yelled over the din. “The Serpent’s Gullet. Stay close and watch your footing. The floor is uneven, and some of the pools are deeper than they look.”

Inside, the world shrank to the bobbing circles of their flashlights. The air was cold, claustrophobic. Water dripped from the stone ceiling, each drop echoing in the tight space. They moved through narrow passages, their shoulders brushing the rough, barnacle-encrusted walls. The scuttling of unseen things just beyond the edge of the light made the hairs on Elias’s arms stand up. He could feel it here—a deep, resonant cold that had nothing to do with the water. It was the wrongness his father had written about, a palpable sense of ancient, sleeping malice. He found himself clutching the iron rings in his pocket, their cold, hard reality a small anchor in the oppressive dark.

At one point, a rogue wave surged into the cave, a roaring wall of black water that crashed into them with brutal force. Elias was slammed against the rock wall, the air knocked from his lungs. For a terrifying second, the current tugged at his legs, trying to pull him into the abyss. Then Lena’s hand was on his arm, her grip like steel, holding him fast until the water receded with a hungry hiss.

“I told you there was a swell!” she shouted, her face pale in the beam of his light, her eyes wide with adrenaline and fear.

They pushed on, drenched and shivering, until finally, after what felt like an eternity, Lena pointed ahead. “There.”

A thin, vertical fissure of grey light cut through the darkness. They squeezed through it and emerged, gasping, onto a narrow ledge of black, volcanic rock. And there it was. Looming over them, blotting out the stars, was the base of the Black Salt Lighthouse.

It was more massive and menacing up close than he could have ever imagined. The granite blocks were slick with moisture and dark with age, rising up into the night like a tombstone. The wind howled around its base, carrying with it faint, whispering sounds that might have been the sea, or might have been something else entirely. Set into the stone was a heavy, iron-banded door, a great ring of rusted metal serving as its handle.

They had made it. They had bypassed the enemy’s watchtowers and reached the gate. But as Elias looked up at the silent, brooding prison, he knew the journey through the treacherous path was only the beginning. The most dangerous part of their mission was about to begin.