Hollow Street was less a thoroughfare and more a forgotten crevice in the city's map a narrow alley where the gaslights always seemed to be out, and the fog clung stubbornly, muffling the sounds of the world just beyond its cobbled entrance. It was on this street, tucked beneath a leaning, slate-roofed building, that the shop of Mr. Silas, the Lantern Maker, was found.
The shop had no sign, only a single, perpetually polished window that cast a strange, ethereal glow onto the damp stones outside. Mr. Silas worked only at night. During the day, the shop was shuttered and silent, absorbing light like a cold stone. But as soon as the sun dipped, a faint, rhythmic tap-tap-tap of a hammer on brass would begin, and the soft luminescence would spill forth.
Alastair, a journalist with an unfortunate penchant for chasing forgotten local legends, found himself drawn to the light like a moth. He had heard the whispers in the city archives stories of perpetual flames, of light that cured melancholy, of a craftsman who dealt in more than mere metal and glass.
He stood before the window one cold, drizzling evening, watching Silas work. The Lantern Maker was a slender man, perhaps in his late sixties, with hands that were remarkably precise and eyes that held the depth and smoke of old fires.
The lanterns themselves were objects of exquisite, haunting beauty. Not the clunky hurricane lamps of ships, but elegant, handcrafted works of art filigreed copper, etched glass, polished wood. But it was the flame that captivated Alastair. Each one flickered with a strange glow soft, intense blue at the core, fading to an incandescent white at the edges. They were mesmerizing, silent, and felt intensely, uncannily alive.
Alastair finally gathered the courage to enter. The shop was small and smelled of ozone, oil, and something indefinably sweet, like dried lavender or old grief. Dozens of finished lanterns lined the shelves, each radiating its silent, blue-white light, bathing the room in an otherworldly luminescence that cast long, liquid shadows. Mr. Silas looked up from his work, his hammer resting on a half-finished brass cage.
He didn't seem surprised.
"You've been waiting a while, Mr. Thorne," he said, his voice quiet, like sand shifting. "The darkness outside must have finally bored you."
Alastair quickly bought a small, octagonal lantern, paying the exorbitant price without haggling. The moment he held it, he felt a strange, deep warmth emanate from the glass, a warmth that seemed to settle in his own chest.
As Silas wrapped the lantern not in paper, but in soft, protective velvet Alastair had to ask the question that had been burning in his mind.
"Why the blue flame, Mr. Silas? It's unlike anything I've ever seen. What do you fuel it with?"
Silas looked up, and for the first time, Alastair saw the deep sadness behind his smoky eyes. He offered a small, knowing smile.
"They burn longer than oil, longer than love, Mr. Thorne," Silas said, holding the completed lantern up so the blue light illuminated his weary face. "They are fueled by something far more enduring than either of those fleeting things."
He paused, his gaze fixing on Alastair with disturbing intensity.
"When I asked where the light came from, he smiled sadly: 'From those who've gone dark.'"
The cryptic answer was both terrifying and utterly compelling. Alastair pressed him for clarification, asking if he meant sorrow, or lost hope.
"Darkness, Mr. Thorne," Silas replied simply, handing over the lantern. "The deepest, coldest kind. Go now. And enjoy the light while it lasts."
The Lantern of Hollow Street became Alastair's constant companion. It sat on his desk, banishing the shadows of his small apartment. The flame never wavered, never smoked, and never seemed to diminish the small reserve of fuel in its base. It emitted a perfect, silent warmth that chased away the existential chill that had plagued Alastair for years. It was, he thought, the cure for melancholy.
Weeks blurred into a contented, illuminated haze. Alastair stopped chasing stories. He stopped calling his friends. He stopped reading. He simply sat in the light. He felt… complete. But also, strangely passive. His ambition, his drive, the very spark of restlessness that defined him, had quieted.
Then, the deterioration began.
It started with his reflection. Alastair caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror and was startled by his own pallor. His eyes were wide but dull, and his skin seemed to have lost its texture, looking almost two-dimensional. He looked less like a living person and more like a carefully posed statue.
Simultaneously, he noticed his lantern dimming.
It wasn't a sudden drop, but a subtle, creeping decline in the blue intensity. The flame was shrinking, pulling back into itself, leaving the corners of the room in deeper, hungrier shadow. He tried cleaning the glass, checking the fuel, shaking the lantern gently all to no avail.
"What's wrong with you?" he whispered to the glass one night, his own voice sounding thin and unfamiliar.
He brought his face close to the lantern, trying to diagnose the failure, when he saw it. Inside, pressed against the smoky glass, was a shape. It was faint, distorted by the thickness of the glass, but unmistakable. A face.
And not just any face. It was the detailed, anguished, luminous face of a man, pressed tight against the inner curve of the globe, looking out with an expression of profound, desperate longing.
The shock hit Alastair like a physical blow, sending him reeling back. He stared, heart hammering in his chest, certain his mind was playing tricks. He forced himself to look again. The face was still there, flickering slightly with the dying blue light.
He rubbed his eyes and then slowly, cautiously, brought his own face closer to the glass.
The man in the glass had his eyes. His nose. The faint, distinguishing scar above his left eyebrow.
It was his own face. A perfect, incandescent rendition of Alastair.
The realization was a silent, crushing avalanche.
The Lantern Maker's words echoed in the cold silence: "From those who've gone dark."
Alastair finally understood.
The lanterns did not contain fire; they contained essence. They did not burn oil; they burned life.
Every lantern burns with the soul of its buyer.
Silas wasn't selling light; he was selling the removal of darkness. He took the buyer's inner spark their ambition, their love, their pain, their drive and encased it within the perfect, perpetual flame. The buyer received peace, a quiet completion, a dull, safe, predictable contentment. But the trade-off was devastating: the lantern held the buyer's self, their very anima.
Alastair looked down at his hands, seeing the pale, bloodless skin, the slackness of his muscles. He had been emptied. The life he had been living for the last few weeks the passive acceptance, the peaceful silence was the life of a vacated vessel. His true self, his vibrancy, his soul, was trapped in the exquisite, shimmering cage of brass and glass on his desk.
He understood the strange, deep warmth he had felt upon first holding the lantern. It wasn't the heat of the flame; it was the sudden, jarring transfer of his own essence into the glass prison.
Panic seized him. He grabbed the lantern, intending to smash it, to release his trapped self. But his hands were weak. The tap-tap-tap of Silas's tiny hammer, usually muffled by the walls, now sounded unnervingly close, a rhythmic countdown.
He wrestled with the object, but the glass was impossibly thick. As he watched, the face inside, his face, pressed harder against the glass, its expression shifting from yearning to agonizing resignation.
The blue flame dimmed further, shrinking to the size of a pinprick, threatening to go out entirely.
He stumbled back from the desk, his legs rubbery. The room was cold again, the shadows multiplying. He looked up at his apartment window, now just a black mirror reflecting his vacant, frightened face. He had been purchased. He had been lit.
And when the flame goes out…
He knew the final, inevitable truth of Hollow Street. The Lantern Maker would arrive. He would gather the cold, empty shells the bodies and return to reclaim the finished product. He would take the beautiful, extinguished lantern, still holding the faint memory of a life it consumed, and add it to his shelf.
Alastair's eyes fixed on the final, tiny spark of blue light, the last remnant of his own self, wavering precariously on the brink of non-existence. He was already dark, already gone, a man sitting in the shadows of his own former flame, waiting for the Lantern Maker to come for his final piece of inventory.
He was waiting for Mr. Silas to come and add another lantern to his shelf.