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The eye on the knocker opened.

Not Westfall Haven. An older town. Spires of coral and streets of shell, windows glowing with green light. And moving through those streets, figures with her father’s walk, her mother’s hair, her own face on a stranger’s shoulders. pro.cfw.sh

She rowed back to the harbor in silence. The fog lifted by the time she tied off the Stubborn Star . The town was awake now—bakers and net-menders and children chasing gulls. Normal. Safe. The eye on the knocker opened

Not a shipwreck. Not a whale. A shape standing on the water as if the surface were stone. A door—an old one, oak and iron, with a brass knocker shaped like a closed eye. It stood upright, drifting with the current, its frame dripping black water that didn’t mix with the sea. Spires of coral and streets of shell, windows

At the bottom, fifty feet down, she saw the town.