Enter the Ravenheart Circle

“The Lantern at Blackwater Rise”

A micro‑story by E. L. Ravenheart

The locals say the marsh remembers every footstep.
Some nights, when the tide withdraws and the reeds lean in as if listening, you can hear them — the echoes of those who crossed Blackwater Rise and never returned.

On the night Mara ventured out, the moon was a thin, silver blade. She carried only a lantern, its flame trembling as though it feared the dark more than she did. The path ahead was a ribbon of pale mud, slick and shifting, but she walked it with the certainty of someone who had been called.

Halfway across the flats, the wind dropped. The world held its breath.

That was when she saw it.

A second lantern, far ahead — swaying gently, as if someone waited for her. Its light was wrong: too steady, too still, too golden for this place. Yet it pulsed with a strange familiarity, like a memory she had misplaced.

“Mara,” a voice murmured across the water.
Not loud. Not threatening.
Just… knowing.

She stepped forward, drawn by the glow. The mud clutched at her boots, the tide whispering its slow return. Still she moved, lantern lifted, heart hammering.

But the closer she came, the further the other light drifted — always just beyond reach, always beckoning.

Only when the cold touched her knees did she stop. The tide had risen without sound, swallowing the path behind her. The lantern ahead flickered once, twice… and vanished, as if snuffed out by an unseen hand.

The marsh exhaled.

Mara turned, but the shore was gone. Only darkness and water remained.

Her own lantern guttered, its flame shrinking to a pinprick.

And in that final moment, before the light surrendered, she understood what the villagers meant when they whispered:

The marsh remembers.
 And it calls back what it has lost.