Solstice's Price - Word Count 975

The Gift freely given: the price fiercely taken.

Solstice's Price

          The wind had been howling for hours, rattling the brass lanterns that lined the cliffs like a row of watchful eyes. Inside the stone tower, the light swam in the fog, a single pulse of amber that cut through the night as surely as a sword through mist. Keri Lirian stood at the lantern's base, her hands clasped around the iron railing, eyes fixed on the horizon where the sea swallowed the sky.

          Two thousand years of tides and tempests had not dulled the memory of the first solstice she had witnessed, not even when her skin had turned from the bronze of a young woman to the pale, almost translucent hue of a statue. Every fifty years the lighthouse demanded a new vessel, a new name, a new face. The old Keri faded into myth, and a new one was born of the tower's very stone, carrying the same fire within. Yet the core of the lighthouse, its secret, remained unchanged.

          The solstice was arriving. The longest night of the year fell like a curtain, and with it came a hush that settled over the cliffs. For centuries, the keeper had known the moment when the lighthouse's beacon could be coaxed to do more than guide ships; it could grant a gift that no mortal would ever expect: eternal life.

          It was a cruel mercy.

          When a soul stepped into the lantern's glow on that night, its flesh would no longer age. Cells would knit themselves whole as fast as the tide turned, wounds would seal before blood could even stain the stone, and the body would become a vessel that never withered. But the lighthouse also sealed away one vital thread of humanity--the ability to create new life. Those who accepted the gift would forever be sterile, their line ending at the moment they chose eternity.

          Now, as the solstice moon rose and painted the sea a cold, silver hue, Keri felt the weight of two millennia settled on her shoulders. She had watched empires rise and crumble, seen the language of the world change, heard the ocean sing new songs. She had seen the loneliness of an everlasting life, the ache of watching loved ones age and die while she remained unchanged. And she had also seen the folly of mortals who would take the gift without understanding its price.

          "Tonight," she whispered, her voice carrying the echo of every name she had ever borne; Keri, Mira, Aelith, Lysa--"the choice will be yours."

          From the cliff path below, a lone figure emerged, cloaked in a tattered coat, eyes wide with dread and wonder. It was Joren, a cartographer whose maps had led many ships safely past the rocks, but whose own heart had been broken by the loss of his sister to a winter storm. He had come, driven by rumors that the lighthouse held a power beyond its light, and by a desperate longing to escape the inevitable decay of his own flesh.

          He stepped into the lantern's glow, the amber light spilling over his shoulders, bathing him in a warmth that seemed to seep into his very marrow. Keri raised her arms, and the beacon surged, its beam intensifying until it turned the night sky into an embedded tapestry. The runes on the floor glowed fiercely, and the air trembled as if the world itself held its breath.

          Joren's eyes flickered, the fire within them reflecting both terror and awe. He thought of his sister, of the love that had filled his life and the thin thread of hope that had held him together after she was gone. The choice was not a simple bargain; it was a reshaping of his very identity.

          He inhaled, deep as a tide, and exhaled a breath that carried the weight of two centuries. "I have watched the sea swallow my friends. I have watched my own body crumble." He stepped forward, his feet no longer touching the stone, but hovering just above it, as if drawn by an unseen current.

          In that instant, the lighthouse answered. A surge of light shot from the beacon, wrapping around Joren like a cocoon of pure, humming energy. Its brilliance was blinding, but it did not burn; it healed. A crack on his cheek, a scar from a previous storm, closed in a breath. His heart, once a fragile drum, steadied with a rhythm that would never falter.

          When the light dimmed, Joren stood, unchanged, his eyes gleaming with a strange, timeless sheen. He was forever young, forever whole, but his hands were empty--no child would ever be cradled, no lineage to follow.

          Keri lowered her arms, the runes fading to ash. She felt a shiver ripple through her ancient bones, a sensation she had not known since the first time she had taken the gift. The lighthouse had given away its secret, and with it, a ripple spread through the world below. Stories of the Immortal Lighthouse spread like fire across the coast, drawing scholars, seekers, and the desperate. The balance of life and death, of hope and despair, shifted.

          In the weeks that followed, ships began to line up at the cliffs, not to be saved from wreckage, but to ask for the gift. Some turned away, choosing the natural arc of their lives, while others, like Joren, stepped into the light, trading the fleeting bloom of children for endless seasons. The world, once anchored by the certainty of mortality, now faced a new horizon: a society where the immortal lived among the mortal, never aging, never dying, yet forever yearning for what they could never have.

          The sea still roared, the winds still howled, and the light still burned. But now, when the solstice moon rose, the lighthouse whispered a promise: that eternity was a gift but always had its price.

Word Count: 975