The twin-engine plane shuddered as it dipped below the cloud cover, its wings slicing through air so cold it seemed to crackle. Elara Kóvak pressed her forehead against the fogged window, her breath leaving a ghostly imprint on the glass. Below, the Arctic sprawled—a monochrome wasteland of ice and shadow, broken only by the faint orange smudge of Námura's streetlights. The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom: "Welcome to the end of the world."
---
The town hadn't changed.
Elara trudged past the same weather-beaten husk of the general store, its sign (*"Námura Trading Post – Est. 1942"*) hanging by a single rusted nail. The same sodium-vapor lamps buzzed like dying insects, casting jaundiced light over snowdrifts mounded like graves. And the same eyes followed her—drawn to the outsider, the prodigal daughter returning to bury ghosts.
Not ghosts, she corrected herself. One ghost.
Her father's suicide had made the news, albeit as a footnote: "Disgraced Geophysicist Found Frozen in Research Station." The article hadn't mentioned the way his colleagues refused to identify the body. Or the single voicemail he'd left her, three days before his death: "Elara… the lights. They're not what we thought. Bring the old—" The rest dissolved into static.
---
Tavi was waiting at the docks.
Her brother stood hunched in the lee of a gutted fishing trawler, his parka frayed at the cuffs, a half-smoked cigarette trembling between his fingers. He'd aged a decade in five years—his Inupiaq mother's sharp cheekbones now gaunt, his father's Norwegian-blue eyes bloodshot and darting.
"You shouldn't have come," he said, stomping out the cigarette.
Elara hefted her duffel bag. "You're the one who called me."
"I called someone." His laugh was a dry cough. "Didn't think you'd actually…" He trailed off, squinting at the horizon where the auroras writhed—vivid green serpentines that made Elara's teeth ache. She'd studied the Northern Lights for a decade, written papers on their geomagnetic poetry. But these… these were *wrong*. Too bright. Too *hungry*.
---
Tavi's "cabin" was a shipping container retrofitted with a woodstove and a cot. Maps papered the walls, studded with red pins and frenzied annotations: "EM spikes – 3 a.m.!!"* and *"DO NOT TRUST THE CHILDREN." He tossed her a canned beer, warm as blood.
"They lied about how he died," he said.
Elara stiffened. "The coroner said hypothermia."
"Hypothermia doesn't melt a man's eyes."
The woodstove popped. Outside, the wind keened through the dock cables—a sound like a wounded animal.
"There's a researcher," Tavi whispered. "Griggs. Worked with Dad. He's been… altered. You'll see."
---
They found the fisherman at midnight.
Elara was scrubbing decades-old coffee stains from her father's desk in the abandoned research station when the shouting began. She followed Tavi to the shore, where a crowd stood silhouetted against the auroras' sickly glow.
Old Man Rasmus, the town's only full-time fisherman, was walking into the Bering Sea.
"Rasmus!" someone yelled. "The hell you doing?"
He didn't turn. The water surged around his thighs, then his waist, then his chest. His orange slicker billowed like a jellyfish.
"Stop him!" Elara lunged forward, but Tavi grabbed her arm.
"Too late."
Rasmus submerged. For a heartbeat, nothing. Then—
A cobalt radiance bloomed beneath the ice, jagged and pulsing. It outlined the fisherman's body, floating face-down, his arms splayed as if embracing something. The light throbbed in time with Elara's heartbeat. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
They pulled him out at dawn.
Tavi insisted on dragging the corpse into the research station's garage. Elara knelt beside the body, her gloves slick with meltwater. Rasmus's skin was waxy, his lips parted in a dreamy half-smile. She unzipped his sodden coveralls—and gagged.
His ribcage had been hollowed out.
Where his heart and lungs should've been, a geode-like structure pulsed—obsidian shards veined with bioluminescent blue. It emitted a low hum that made Elara's molars vibrate.
"What… is that?" she breathed.
Tavi flicked on a UV flashlight. The geode lit up like a star map, revealing intricate fractal patterns. "Dad found one of these in a caribou last month. Started carrying that damn journal everywhere. Then…" He nodded at the ceiling, where water stains spread like inkblots. The second-floor office. Where he died.
Elara stood. "I need to see his notes."
As she climbed the stairs, the UV light caught something on the wall—a child's drawing taped beside a fire extinguisher. Stick figures under a green sky, their mouths wide in screams. Above them loomed a towering shape made of light, its arms ending in hooks.
Scrawled beneath in crayon: "Namura is watching."