Amarachi
The Lantern Keepers
In the remote village of Black Hollow, the night sky was darker than ink. The villagers lived in perpetual twilight, their only source of light the lanterns they kept burning in every window and along every street. No one dared let the flames go out, for it was said that darkness brought the Watchers.
Nora had grown up with the stories. Her grandmother would tell her tales of the Watchers—shadowy beings that prowled the village when the lanterns dimmed. But like most young people, Nora didn’t believe in them.
Until the night the lanterns failed.
—
It was during the harshest winter the village had seen in decades. A fierce storm battered Black Hollow, the howling winds snuffing out lanterns faster than they could be relit. Nora, alone in her small cottage, huddled by the fireplace as the darkness crept closer.
She watched in horror as the flame in her lantern flickered and died, leaving her in near-total blackness. She reached for a match to relight it, but her hand froze when she heard it—a soft, deliberate tapping at her window.
—
The sound was faint but persistent, as if someone—or something—was outside. Nora’s pulse quickened. No one would be out in a storm like this.
“Who’s there?” she called, her voice trembling.
The tapping stopped.
A moment later, a voice whispered through the cracks in the wooden door. “Let us in.”
Nora stumbled backward, her breath hitching. The voice was neither male nor female, but something inhuman, soft and insistent.
“You can’t hide forever,” it said.
—
Desperate, Nora grabbed a lantern and fumbled with a match, her hands shaking. The moment the flame caught, the shadows in the room seemed to retreat. But outside, the tapping resumed, louder this time.
She peered out the window. The storm had abated, and the village lay eerily still. But standing in the snow was a figure cloaked in shadow, its outline barely discernible. It had no face, no features—only a presence that made her skin crawl.
Nora’s instincts screamed at her to run, but where? The village was cloaked in darkness, and the Watchers were everywhere.
—
A knock at the door made her jump. It was heavy, deliberate, and far too strong to be human.
“Let us in,” the voice repeated.
Nora clutched the lantern to her chest. “No!” she shouted.
The knocking stopped, but the figure outside began to move, gliding soundlessly toward her window. In the flickering light of her lantern, she saw more figures emerging from the shadows, their shapes distorted and wrong.
The Watchers were coming.
—
Nora’s mind raced. The stories her grandmother had told her always ended the same way: once the Watchers came, no one survived. But there had to be a way to fight them.
Her eyes fell on an old book sitting on the mantle—a journal her grandmother had left behind. She grabbed it, flipping through its pages until she found an entry about the lanterns.
“The flame is their bane,” it read. “But the lanterns must burn brighter.”
—
Nora grabbed every candle, every scrap of kindling she could find, and fed the flame in her lantern. The light grew stronger, pushing back the encroaching shadows.
The Watchers halted, their forms quivering at the edge of the light.
“Leave,” she said, her voice steady now. “You have no power here.”
The largest of the figures stepped forward, its form rippling like smoke. “Your light will fail,” it hissed. “And we will return.”
With a final burst of courage, Nora thrust the lantern toward the window. The light flared, and the Watchers let out a collective, unearthly wail before vanishing into the night.
—
By dawn, the storm had passed, and the villagers emerged to relight the extinguished lanterns. When they found Nora, she was sitting by her fireplace, the flame in her lantern still burning brightly.
From that day on, Nora became the village’s new Keeper of the Flame, ensuring the lanterns never went out again. And though the Watchers were
gone, she knew they were waiting—for the next moment of darkness.
—
End.
