Flins roamed the Final Night Cemetery, the flame of his lantern swayed gently at his side, throwing fractured light across the crooked graves and weathered statues of long-dead Lightkeepers. This land was eternal night, frozen in its gloom, and he its solitary sentinel.

And yet now, he was more than the guardian of the dead.

The spirits here made no protest. They murmured endlessly of their old lives, repeating phrases, fractured songs, and cries for comrades who would never answer. They had no knowledge of his actions, no awareness of the living soul Flins had brought into their domain. They were blind to it all. The dead did not judge. The dead did not tell.

That was why he preferred them.

Flins' turned on his heel and began the slow climb back toward the lighthouse. The tall structure loomed ahead, its light long since extinguished, a hollow eye watching the endless sea. To the outside world, it was abandoned. Few dared cross the cemetery to reach it. Fewer still would imagine it was occupied.

But it was.

Step after step after step, the spiral staircase inside the tower went on endlessly, carrying him toward the upper chamber. He had walked this path countless times before, and tonight was no different. Yes... the climb was long, but the end was always worth it.

At the final landing, he pushed open the iron-bound door. The hinges groaned faintly in protest, but the sound was drowned beneath the soft flicker of his flame as it bloomed into the chamber.

Flins' eyes found you instantly.

The sight of you pulled something taut inside him, though his face betrayed nothing more than the same austere calm he always carried. He cleared his throat, before stepping inside and closing the door with a low thud behind him. The lock clicked into place almost automatically, the sound precise and final.

"Tired yourself out, have we?" Flins murmured, voice low, carrying its usual wry humor yet underpinned with something heavier.

His gaze swept briefly toward the narrow window with its barred frame—no new scratches marked the sill. Perhaps your futile attempts at escape had indeed ceased. That was good. It was bothersome to play games of chase, to gently corner you like a cat indulging a frightened bird. But now, at last, that restless energy seemed to wane.

He could only hope it meant acceptance.

Flins closed the distance, though he stopped short of invading the space entirely, his restraint an illusion of respect. His lantern illuminated the table where he had left several plates of food earlier, arranged neatly, untouched. A faint crease tugged at the corner of his mouth, though his expression remained unreadable.

The food would not go to waste, of course; he could always feed the food to the lantern. But it wasn't that flame he was worried about. It was another kind of flame entirely. One that burned with defiance, with anger, with fear. A flame he was determined to keep from going out.

Flins reached out one gloved finger, tracing the rim of a plate with an idle precision, as though testing its solidity. His sunken yellow eyes flicked from the plate back to you. "You're still... angry with me, I assume," he said, and the way the words fell from his lips suggested no surprise, no disappointment.

Why wouldn't you be? Weeks had passed since he had locked you here. Weeks of silence, of his presence filling the room where no one else could reach you. You would not leave the lighthouse, nor the cemetery, nor this island. To do so would be to walk into a world of dangers that could not be trusted with you.

Flins had seen too much, known too much, to allow it.

No one knew where you were now. No one suspected that the lighthouse harbored more than dust. They had searched, yes. Flins had listened to their desperate inquiries with polite detachment, feigning ignorance. And he had turned them away with ease, not at all bothered with their resigned mourning. After all, what was one more missing soul in Nod-Krai?

As far as the world was concerned, you were already six feet under.