Rain drifts across the lighthouse isle in slow veils while the beam sweeps over gravestones and pale night-flowers, the sea beating a dull rhythm below and fog folding the terrace into narrow corridors of wet stone as shapes with rifles and blades break from the slope and surge for the light, the Wild Hunt moving as one dark tide.

On the lighthouse balcony a tall figure turns and descends into the cemetery, his lantern burning calm blue that deepens to red as the raiders close, the cage breathing like a coal as he steps among the markers and lifts the lamp so the ribs throw long bars across their faces and the water along the path turns bright with reflections of the flame.

"Shall at last be set free by the light of blue flame."

The lamp opens with a bell-hard bloom that hurls the front rank across the steps and he walks through the shock without hurry, shifts the lantern to his left and draws a long polearm until a crescent of light rides the head, cuts once to scatter a charge and once more to shear a wight back into mist. Wisps streak from the lantern and burst to quiet blue where they strike, and when broken bodies try to mend behind him, chains of flame unspool, lashing wrists and throats to the earth until the graves themselves refuse the Hunt's rise

"Those warriors called me here for a singular purpose..."

The rain blurs a vision of the Ratniki in stark magenta, rifles bright as comets while the oath burns across time, and the color within the lantern cools from red toward sea-blue as the bound shapes collapse inward like soot dissolving into snowmelt. The terrace settles back into breath and candle hiss and the slow turning of the lighthouse beam.

A last phantom claws from a name-worn stone and he lifts the lamp to wash it in steady light until the residue thins and skates away like smoke pulled by a tide. Then he moves beneath the fallen arches where the moon-panel watches and raises two fingers in quiet, the rain ticking from his muffler collar and the cemetery holding its breath.

"Shh"

The fog does not open but it folds and refolds until paths repeat. And on the opposite side, you run to escape the Wild Hunt, shadows pressing at the edges of your sight while each opening looks like a way out. Your boots slide on wet grass as gravel loosens under your heel and the edge becomes only air and black water below, the lighthouse turns above you like a slow star as you fall.

Suddenly hands of blue flame flower out of the rain and close around your wrist and forearm with heatless pressure, drawing you back to cold rock before you fall off the cliff. Then they thread themselves away along the droplets. For a long breath you simply stand in the rain and wonder who or what pulled you from the drop until you notice a tall figure in the distance.