Chapter 2 Lanterns in the Fog
“Cass woke to the lighthouse bell tolling at midnight, a sound no one had heard since the night her father vanished without a trace.”
You can run from a place, but you can never escape the shadow you leave behind.
Evan knew this too well. It clung to him like a damp coat, refusing to come off no matter how far he traveled.
The notebook on his lap felt heavier than it ever had before. Not a tool. Not a comfort. Just a gravestone carved with all the failures he had spent a decade trying to outpace. And now, he was back in Willow Lane. Back where the silence felt like judgment.
This train ride was supposed to be his restart. His redemption. He’d promised himself he would return triumphant, carrying a new life’s worth of songs. But all he carried were three thin bars of melody and a fatigue that had sunk deep into his bones. Every scratch of ink on the page felt cheap. Hollow. No more substantial than smoke.
Outside, rain hammered the train roof like impatient fingers drumming on a coffin lid. A rhythm with no melody. No mercy.
His father would be waiting at the station. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Jonas never made his feelings simple. He had once traded the sea for family and somehow ended up losing both. Every memory between them was wrapped in old anger and half-spoken truths. Facing him again felt harder than facing the failure of his music.
Evan snapped the notebook shut. A small, tired sound. Almost too quiet to hear over the groaning wind.
And then... something changed.
The train slowed. Not the normal gentle deceleration, but a grinding, metal-on-metal drag, like the engine was resisting something unseen. The whole carriage trembled. The scent of wet earth and sea salt seeped through the sealed windows, thick enough to taste.
He glanced toward the back of the carriage.
Cass.
He only knew her name because he’d seen it on her ticket when she boarded. She hadn’t spoken much, just sat with her shoulders squared and her gaze trained on the rain-streaked glass. There was something carved and steady about her, like the Sentinel lighthouse itself. A woman who stood because something in the world needed her to. A person who didn’t move unless the sea demanded it.
He envied that kind of certainty.
Then the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then a sickening flash...
And darkness collapsed over them.
Not ordinary dark. Not the kind that comes when a lamp is switched off. This was a crushing, suffocating void. Heavy. And physical. It pressed against his ribs, digging cold fingers between them. The same darkness that had swallowed him whole after the crash.
His breath hitched.
The world went silent except for the storm’s shriek and his own frantic heartbeat.
How do you fight shadows when you know exactly what they’re capable of stealing from you?
His fingers dug into the seat.
Don’t panic. Don’t go back there.
“Are you all right?”
Cass’s voice cut through the air like a thrown rope.
Steady. Low. Clear.
A lifeline.
“Yes.” He forced the word out evenly, even though his hands trembled. “Just a power cut. Storm’s nasty tonight.”
He fumbled blindly with his backpack, teeth clenched in frustration. He hated this, the helplessness, the trembling, the way the dark stole every ounce of control from him.
He needed light. Now.
After a breathless moment, his fingers closed around cold metal.
The lantern.
Old-fashioned. Heavy. Willow Lane’s winter storms made sure every local owned at least one.
He flipped the switch.
A soft amber glow bloomed, warm and steady, pushing the black back into the corners. For the first time since the outage, he exhaled fully.
He rose, lantern in hand, and walked carefully toward her. Shadows stretched and curled across the walls in unnatural shapes. The train shook again under a particularly violent gust, but the little circle of light stayed firm.
He reached her row and set the lantern on the seat between them. The golden glow touched her face, revealing the tension gathered around her eyes.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a small smile. “Should’ve known better than to trust the Last Train on New Year’s Eve.”
Cass’s lips curved. “You came prepared. Definitely a local. City people don’t carry storm lanterns. They trust electricity to behave.”
He lowered himself into the seat across from her. The train sat frozen in the storm, suspended in a strange, reluctant stillness.
“Evan,” he offered gently.
“Cassia,” she replied. “But everyone calls me Cass.”
Something in the way she said it feels warm, open, but careful... made him sit a little straighter.
They sat in that pocket of amber light, the world outside was chaos they couldn’t see. Time felt different here, like the storm had carved out a small room just for them.
“You’re just visiting Willow Lane,” Cass said softly. “What brings you back to the edge of the world?”
He breathed slowly. “I ran out of road.”
The truth sat between them, raw and simple.
“My band… my career… everything I built for ten years, it just… stopped. I thought maybe coming home could restart something.”
Cass stared at him for a long moment, her eyes darker in the lantern glow. “The quiet in Willow Lane isn’t the peaceful kind. It’s the kind that makes you face everything you avoided.”
Evan huffed a faint laugh. “Sounds about right.”
“The sea especially,” she added. “It has rules. The town has rules. The Midnight Tide is one of them.”
“You mentioned that before,” he said. “I don’t really understand it.”
“It’s not just a tide. It’s the tide. It rises at exactly midnight, every night. Perfect timing. No exceptions. That’s why this train has to clear the trestle before twelve or it gets cut off.”
Evan looked at the dark clock on the wall. “What time is it now?”
Cass checked her phone. The glow was a jarring blue. “Eleven-thirty.”
“So we have half an hour before the sea closes the tracks.”
Cass nodded. “And we are sitting here, alone, on the last train of the year.”
He laughed once, soft and breathy. “Sounds like we wandered into a ghost story.”
She tilted her head, studying him. The storm boomed outside, but her voice dropped to a whisper.
“There is a story,” she confessed. “About the Midnight Bell.”
He leaned closer without meaning to.
“They say two strangers who meet on the Midnight Run, strangers whose lives intersect at the exact hour the tide rises, can ring the bell at dawn on the winter solstice. And whatever they wish… it will be granted. They’re called the Midnight Lovers.”
The lantern hummed softly between them. His pulse quickened for reasons that had nothing to do with the dark.
He held her gaze.
“That’s some legend,” he murmured.
Cass hesitated. Just a second. But it was enough for something to shift in the air.
Because she wasn’t telling him everything.
There was weight behind her eyes. A secret. A warning.
Her fingers curled slightly on the armrest.
He didn’t know it yet, but this was the moment, the one that would haunt him.
The lantern flickered once, and in that split second of dimming light, Evan saw something in Cass’s eyes... fear. Not of the storm. Not of the dark. But of him.
She straightened quickly, hiding it but he’d seen it.
And nothing in her story explained why a stranger would look at him like she recognized the shadows he carried.
Cass swallowed hard, weighing the truth she wasn’t ready to speak.
Mara’s journal was back at the lighthouse.
Locked away.
Containing the part of the legend no one liked to mention, the curse woven into the bell, the warning carved into the metal, the price demanded when two broken souls tried to ring it together.
Should she tell him?
Should she admit that the legend wasn’t just a story?
Or that the last pair of Midnight Lovers… never made it to dawn?
