No More

The gulls had stopped coming weeks ago.

Tomas noticed that first.

They used to gather on the rail of the little signal platform, shrieking for scraps while he mended nets for the fishermen below. Now the sky above the station was an empty, colorless stretch. Even the sea seemed to hold its breath.

He kept the fire lit anyway.

The station was nothing but a timber scaffold and a brass mirror for flashing distant ships—a lonely duty passed from one tired man to the next. Tomas had taken it gladly. A quiet post. A place to think. A place far from the capital’s arguments and the soft-handed officers who spoke of glory.

From the platform he could see the curve of the coast for miles.

He saw them before anyone else did.

Black sails on the horizon. No lanterns. No flags.

He struck the mirror, flashing warning toward the southern harbor. He fed the fire until sparks tore upward in a frantic column. Down below, villagers began to run, gathering children, dragging crates toward the treeline.

The black ships did not change course.

They came straight for the shallows.

Tomas watched the first hull grind against sand. Watched armored men leap into knee-deep surf. Watched his signal flare arch beautifully into the sky—bright, desperate, useless.

No answering light came from the south.

He kept the mirror flashing until arrows thudded into the platform beneath his boots.

Later—after smoke, after screaming, after the tide rolled red and then pink and then ordinary again—he stood alone on the beach.

The station had burned clean. The southern harbor had never lit its reply. The capital, he knew, would say the winds were unfavorable, or the messenger delayed, or the reports unclear.

He found his sword half-buried where it had fallen when the platform collapsed. It was dinged from years of nothing, a blade drawn more often to cut rope than flesh.

He carried it to the edge of the water.

The sea moved in, then out, then in again, patient as ever.

From here, he could rebuild. Lash new timber. Climb again and keep watch for ships that would not come in time.

He pictured another flare streaking upward. Another village waiting for help that would never arrive.

The wind tugged at the strip of red cloth tied to his hilt—a favor from the harbor master, a symbol of shared duty.

Shared.

Tomas drove the sword into the sand until it stood upright.

He untied the red cloth and let it hang loose.

“No more,” he said—not to the sea, not to the raiders, not even to the capital—but to the lie that a single man on a splintered tower could keep the world from breaking.

He turned his back on the shoreline and walked inland, toward the smoke that still smoldered in the dunes.

The tide came and went.

The station remained empty.