The first time Orla Blackwood noticed something wrong with Sandy Beach was during her evening walks. The sunset painted the shoreline in copper hues, but the receding tide left strange patterns in the wet sand---symmetrical designs too perfect for natural formation.
Locals spoke of the beach with reverence tinged with fear. “The sea gives, but it also takes,” old fisherman Thaddeus would say, his weathered face tightening when Orla pressed for details. He’d been the only one willing to acknowledge the whispers that seemed to rise with the evening fog.
That Tuesday, Orla found the first of the shells---iridescent spirals with geometric patterns that seemed to shift when not directly observed. She collected seven before realizing they formed a perfect circle when arranged. The discovery coincided with reports of three missing tourists.
The town’s records revealed a pattern spanning centuries---disappearances occurring in thirty-year cycles, always preceded by unusual tide behaviors. The sea would retreat nearly a quarter mile, exposing dark, glistening stones arranged in formations similar to the shell patterns Orla had discovered.
When Orla began finding notes written in her own handwriting---notes she had no memory of writing---she knew something was wrong. They contained coordinates, tide tables, and a recurring phrase: “They rise when the stars align.”
The night of the lunar eclipse, Orla stood alone on the beach, watching as the tide withdrew farther than anyone had ever recorded. The exposed seabed revealed an ancient stone doorway embedded in the ocean floor, its surface carved with the same patterns as her shells. As the moonlight dimmed, the doorway began to open.
What emerged wasn’t water, but something that only resembled water in the way a shadow resembles the thing that casts it. It moved with purpose toward the shoreline, toward Orla, toward the sleeping town beyond. And within its dark mass, countless points of light pulsed like stars, like eyes opening after an eons-long slumber.
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day valentine's
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