Lanthorn Head

The country fell in a fortnight. A dead man who'd bound his own soul into a jar walked the risen up out of the inland country, and the last quarter that held out burned on the eleventh night. You were on your family's headland when it happened — up north for an autumn away with seven friends, before the world ended. Turns out it's the only ground the risen can't take, because the standing stone at the end of the causeway answers to your blood and nobody else's. Every evening you walk three hundred yards out with black water on both sides, put your hands on the stone, and light the line. Every morning there are more of them on the far shore. Twenty survivors walked in yesterday. The house is freezing, the glasshouses are dead, the boats come back empty as often as not, and everyone's looking at you. Eighteen, half-elf, and somehow in charge.