Tales of the New Age: The Lighthouse at Thaal
Posted on Tue Jul 21st, 2026 @ 5:55am by Darth Serus
5,483 words; about a 27 minute read
Chapter:
Additional Stories
Timeline: 360 ABY
This tale takes place in 360 ABY, during the darker years of the New Galactic Dark Age. Although Coruscant and planets in the Core speak of unity and reformation, this is functionally theoretical in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, where technology stagnates and history is forgotten.
The lighthouse stood alone above Thaal.
It had been designed in a more confident age, when the trade routes through the Gordian Reach had still carried merchants, pilgrims, prospectors, and warships in sufficient numbers to justify such an installation. Its builders had fashioned it in the severe Caanan manner, wrapping the narrow central tower in black ferrocrete and dark plates of riveted metal, with great structural ribs rising along its exterior like the buttresses of some ancient cathedral. Sensor vanes projected from the lower galleries beneath pointed arches, while the communications array occupied a broad circular crown of tarnished metal and thick transparisteel. At regular intervals, the machinery within that crown cast a pale beam across the void, not truly illuminating anything, but transmitting a precise sequence of navigational data to vessels approaching the enormous mass shadow of the black hole.
There were newer and more efficient ways to do it, or so the keeper had been told. None had been installed.
The transport which delivered him remained attached to the western docking spar for less than an hour. His provisions were unloaded in six battered containers, followed by a bundle of personal effects, replacement components for the atmospheric scrubbers, and three trays of dormant seedlings which the quartermaster on Caanus had assured him were difficult to kill. The crew did not enter the station beyond the receiving chamber. They had made the journey many times and possessed no particular interest in Thaal, the lighthouse, or the solitary man who would spend the next year tending both.
The keeper watched their vessel withdraw from the docking collar, its navigation lights diminishing as it turned towards Caanus. He remained at the nearest window until the transport became indistinguishable from the stars.
"Well," he said at last, hearing his own voice carried back to him by the metal walls. "That's that, then."
The station did not answer.
The lighthouse was larger within than its exterior suggested, although much of that space was inaccessible or filled by machinery. Its corridors were narrow and angular, built around the central reactor shaft and the great spindle which turned the beacon above. Thick cables disappeared through iron-framed apertures in the walls, while old amber lamps illuminated plaques engraved with warnings in an archaic Caanan script. The living quarters occupied three rooms beneath the observation crown: a sleeping chamber, a small kitchen, and a communal room intended for a staff of six. Five of the bunks had been removed years ago, leaving pale rectangular marks against the wall where their frames had once rested.
He spent his first afternoon unpacking. Clothing went into the lockers nearest his bed. Books and recording cylinders were arranged upon the communal table. The seedlings were planted in trays beneath a bank of violet agricultural lamps in what had once been a secondary control room, their roots suspended in mineral water drawn from the station's recycling system. There were beans, broad-leafed tubers, and a particularly stubborn Caanan herb which could be dried into something resembling tea if one possessed sufficient optimism.
The keeper crouched before the trays and examined them.
"You had better be worth the space."
The seedlings remained dormant.
"Good. We understand one another."
His duties were neither complicated nor forgiving. Each morning began with an inspection of the reactor and atmospheric systems, followed by a manual comparison of Thaal's gravitational readings against the automated prediction models. He checked the navigational beacon, cleared communication traffic, recalibrated the long-range sensors, and transmitted a brief report to Caanus. Most days, there was nothing to report. The black hole remained where it had been the previous day, the lighthouse continued to orbit at a safe distance, and the great emptiness beyond the observation windows showed no concern for either of them.
Traffic was infrequent. A bulk freighter passed through the system during his second week, accepting the lighthouse's recommended approach vector without acknowledging its operator. Several days later, a small Caanan vessel emerged too close to Thaal's outer mass shadow and received three increasingly stern warnings before correcting course. The keeper watched it depart, muttering about amateur pilots, and then spent the rest of the evening wishing that its captain had remained on the frequency long enough to argue.
Once every standard month, a transport arrived from Caanus with food, mechanical parts, and recorded news. Sometimes the pilot spoke with him through the docking intercom, although never for very long. The station was considered old, uncomfortable, and vaguely unlucky. No Caanan would openly confess to fearing Thaal, but none lingered near it without reason.
The latest news cylinder contained several hours of addresses from Coruscant concerning proclamations and calls for unity and peace. Statesmen spoke of renewal, reunification, common law, and the restoration of galactic government. The keeper listened while repairing a damaged hydroponic pump, occasionally glancing towards the recording whenever the speaker received another swell of applause.
"A Third Republic," he remarked, tightening the pump housing. "You hear that?"
Water trickled from the poorly sealed pipe and ran across his knuckles.
"Yes. That was my thought."
Coruscant had proclaimed the galaxy reunited. Thaal had not noticed. Neither, so far as the keeper could determine, had anyone responsible for supplying the lighthouse with a functioning water regulator.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
FORTY-FIRST DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
The western atmospheric pump continues to leak despite replacement of the intake seal. I believe the fault is somewhere within the original pipework. There is no immediate danger.
The first bean shoots have appeared.
No vessels passed within monitored space today.
In time, the station's noises acquired meaning. The slow mechanical groan passing through the outer hull was the beacon crown rotating above him. Three rapid knocks from the northern wall meant that the heating conduits had reached their evening cycle. A faint whistle in the sleeping chamber came from an imperfect seal around one of the ventilation grilles. The keeper learned which sounds demanded attention and which merely proved that the lighthouse remained alive.
He also learned when to speak.
"Morning," he told the reactor.
"Still leaking," he informed the atmospheric pump.
"You're doing well," he said to the beans, although they were not.
Sometimes, as he climbed the spiral stairway towards the observation crown, he found himself composing entire conversations in anticipation of reaching the top. By the time he arrived, he had usually forgotten what he intended to say.
Thaal dominated every window.
It was not simply black. At its centre hung a sphere of perfect absence, an emptiness so complete that the eye seemed unable to judge its size or distance. Around it turned an immense accretion disc, white-hot along its innermost edge before spreading outwards through fierce bands of gold, red, and smouldering crimson. Dust, shattered rock, and the remnants of things drawn too close were carried within that endless rotation, while beyond it all great violet clouds curled across the system like the bruised remains of some celestial storm.
The observation crown's transparisteel had been darkened and layered against the glare, yet Thaal still coloured everything within the lighthouse. Its light crawled across the iron ribs and worn control panels in shifting shades of blood-red and purple, lengthening the keeper's shadow whenever the station turned. Even with the filters engaged, the black centre remained perfectly distinct, a round and depthless interruption amid all that violence and brilliance.
The people of Caanus had called it the False Sun long before anyone remembered why. It gave light, certainly, but not the steady warmth of a living star. Thaal shone only because matter died around it, transforming dust, stone, and ruined worlds into a radiance bright enough to be seen across the system. Its light was beautiful, but it was the beauty of consumption.
The keeper frequently stood before the central window after completing the evening calibration. At first, he watched only to confirm the sensor readings with his own eyes. Later, he watched because there was nothing else in existence which looked quite like Thaal. He discovered that if he stared long enough, the darkness at its centre seemed to move.
For several weeks, his work proceeded as he expected, a routine forming comfortably. Then, on the sixty-third night of his assignment, the receiver activated by itself.
The keeper was seated beneath the observation window with a bowl of boiled tubers balanced across his knees. A communications light flashed once upon the console, accompanied by a clipped burst of static. He lowered the bowl and waited for the lighthouse computer to identify the transmission.
No origin appeared.
The static returned, fainter than before. Somewhere within it, a voice spoke.
"...second line is gone. Repeat, the second line is gone..."
The keeper rose and crossed to the console.
"Unidentified vessel, this is Thaal Traffic Control. Your transmission is breaking apart. Repeat your designation and present coordinates."
For several seconds, there was only static.
"...pull them back. All surviving ships behind the inner line..."
"Identify yourself."
The transmission ceased.
The keeper examined the receiver, checked the automated traffic record, and ordered the lighthouse to replay the message. The system reported that no communication had been received. He searched the neighbouring bands, then the emergency channels, followed by the old Caanan military frequencies which had not officially been used for generations.
Nothing answered.
He remained at the console for some time, listening to the empty channel. His evening meal cooled behind him.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
SIXTY-THIRD DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
At 22:14 station time, I received part of what appeared to be a military transmission. The speaker referred to a broken defensive line and ordered surviving vessels to withdraw. No identification or coordinates were supplied.
The lighthouse recorded no incoming signal.
There are no vessels within monitored space.
I had been looking at Thaal for some time beforehand.
For three days after making the entry, the keeper avoided the observation crown except when his duties required him to go there. He ate in the communal room, read in his sleeping chamber, and performed the evening calibration with his eyes fixed firmly upon the instruments. Whenever Thaal entered the edge of his vision, all burning red and violet around that impossible black centre, he found some minor task demanding his attention elsewhere.
He dismantled the communications receiver twice and found nothing wrong with it. Every component responded within acceptable tolerances, the recording buffer was intact, and none of the station's clocks showed any interruption at 22:14. He transmitted a request for a replacement unit to Caanus, describing the incident as an intermittent failure without mentioning the voice. The automated reply informed him that his request had been received and would be assessed according to the present priority of the lighthouse.
"Which means never," he told the receiver as he replaced its outer casing. "I hope you're pleased with yourself."
The station's old photographs occupied the wall opposite him.
There were seven in total, each mounted beneath glass within a narrow iron frame. He had paid them little attention during his first weeks aboard. Most showed earlier lighthouse crews standing inside the observation crown or assembled formally beside the western docking collar, dressed in the severe dark uniforms once issued to Caanan navigation officers. The oldest image had faded around its edges, although the six keepers within remained clear enough. They stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the beacon mechanism, each wearing the same solemn expression, as if the photographer had interrupted them during a funeral.
The keeper regarded them while tightening the final screw upon the receiver.
"You had six people."
None of the old keepers seemed particularly sympathetic.
"Greedy."
He carried the receiver back to its place in the observation crown. When he returned for his evening meal, there were only five people in the oldest photograph.
The keeper stopped halfway through the doorway. Nothing about the image initially appeared damaged. The remaining figures still stood beneath the beacon, but their arrangement had become inexplicably uneven. Two men at the left leaned slightly towards an empty space between them, while a woman on the opposite side held one hand at shoulder height as though resting it upon someone who was no longer present. The keeper approached and lifted the frame from its hook. There was no mechanical component, no holographic projector, and no reason for the picture to have changed. It had been printed permanently upon a thin plate more than a century earlier.
He stared at the vacant space.
"There were six of you."
The five remaining keepers looked back at him.
He took the photograph into the kitchen and placed it face-down upon the table.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
SEVENTY-FIRST DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
I believe one of the historical pictures in the communal room has deteriorated. A figure which I remember being present is no longer visible.
There is no obvious chemical damage to the plate.
I may have miscounted.
The following morning, the photograph was hanging upon the wall again.
The keeper stood beneath it for some time, attempting to remember whether he had returned it after eating. He had slept badly and accepted that he might have done so without thought. The picture now contained six people, although they were not the same six he remembered. A thin man had appeared within the previously empty space, standing slightly behind the others with his face turned away from the camera.
The man wore the keeper's clothes.
"No," the keeper said quietly.
He removed every photograph from the wall and locked them inside an unused storage cabinet. Before closing it, he counted the figures in each image and wrote the Aurebesh number upon a strip of maintenance tape fixed to the frame. Six. Four. Four. Three. Five. Two. One.
He kept the cabinet key upon his person.
That afternoon, a movement warning appeared upon the security console. The lighthouse had detected someone entering the lower service corridor beside the reactor chamber. The keeper checked the station manifest, although he already knew what it would say. There were no docked vessels, no activated maintenance droids, and no other life signs aboard.
The live image from the corridor showed a solitary figure walking away from the camera.
For several seconds, the keeper simply watched. The figure possessed his height, his gait, and the slight stoop he had developed from passing through the lowest maintenance arches. It wore his dark work trousers and the heavy grey shirt he had put on that morning. Yet its hair appeared longer and threaded with grey, while its shoulders had narrowed as though the station had worn years from its body.
The figure stopped.
Slowly, it turned its head towards the camera.
The keeper stepped back from the console. The face upon the monitor was his own, older and terribly tired, with dark hollows beneath the eyes. Its mouth moved once, forming words which the security system did not record.
Then the corridor was empty.
The keeper took a lamp and descended to the reactor level with an iron maintenance bar held in both hands. He searched the corridor, the neighbouring machinery bays, the atmospheric exchange, and every access duct broad enough to contain a person. Nothing had been disturbed. No door had opened. The internal sensors continued to recognise only one living occupant.
When he returned upstairs, the security system reported that no movement warning had occurred.
The locked cabinet in the communal room stood open.
Every photograph had been returned to the wall. The strips of maintenance tape were gone.
"That's enough," the keeper said, although his voice lacked the authority he intended. "Whatever you are, that's enough."
One of the old keepers had turned his head within the picture and was now looking directly at him.
The keeper slept in the control chair that night with every light aboard the station illuminated.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
SEVENTY-SECOND DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
The security system registered movement in the lower service corridor at 16:31. I observed what appeared to be another person through the internal monitor.
I found no intruder.
I have inspected the photographs again. I no longer believe their condition can be explained by ordinary deterioration.
I will request relief when the next transport arrives.
The next transport did not arrive.
On the eighty-fourth day of his assignment, the keeper received an automated notice from Caanus explaining that worsening conditions elsewhere in the sector had disrupted routine deliveries. A shipment would be dispatched when sufficient fuel and escort capacity became available. His remaining provisions were judged adequate for another forty-seven days.
The keeper read the message twice.
"Plenty of time," he said.
The violet lamps in the garden chamber flickered. Most of the beans had begun to die.
"Don't you start."
Isolation settled more heavily upon the lighthouse after that. The keeper continued his duties because the duties provided shape to the days, but he no longer trusted the station's clocks. On three occasions, he completed the morning inspection and returned to find that only minutes had passed. Once, he entered the garden chamber shortly after waking and discovered that the plants had grown several weeks overnight, their pale leaves pressed thickly against the lamps. By evening, they were seedlings again.
The photographs changed without pattern. Sometimes the old crews vanished entirely, leaving only empty rooms and the black ferrocrete walls of the lighthouse. At other times, unfamiliar people appeared among them wearing armour, robes, or uniforms from no period the keeper recognised. He began turning the frames towards the wall, only to find them facing outwards whenever he returned.
The figure resembling him appeared more frequently upon the internal monitors. It was never visible for longer than a few seconds and never occupied the same place twice. Sometimes it looked older. Sometimes it looked scarcely different from him. On the ninety-first day, the keeper saw it standing within the observation crown while he was still climbing the spiral stairs towards it.
He stopped halfway up.
The crown above him was silent except for the steady rotation of the beacon. Red light from Thaal moved through the stairwell in slow intervals, appearing and disappearing between the iron supports.
"Are you there?" he called.
His own voice answered from above.
"Yes."
The keeper remained upon the stair.
"What do you want?"
There was no further reply.
He forced himself to continue upwards. The observation crown was empty when he entered, although the central window carried the reflected outline of a man standing behind him. The keeper did not turn. He watched the reflection instead, studying the older face and the exhausted eyes.
The other keeper raised one hand and pointed towards Thaal.
The filters across the transparisteel failed.
Brilliant red-white light poured into the observation crown, flooding the iron galleries and turning every instrument into a black silhouette. The keeper cried out and covered his eyes, but the glare vanished almost immediately. When he looked again, the figure resembling him was gone.
Two others had now taken its place.
They stood not within the chamber - but upon the other side of the glass!
The first was Human, or had once been. He was darkly clothed, his body held with a rigid economy which suggested injury rather than age. Black fine-quality robes covered his body, while a severe metal apparatus covered the lower part of his face. One eye remained coldly Human, but glowed with a dangerous fury. The other caught the red light of Thaal behind a narrow artificial lens. His dark hair was swept away from a face marked by old wounds, and every slow breath passed through the mask with a soft mechanical resonance.
Beside him stood a Nautolan woman dressed in black, slender blue shoulders and upper arms exposed. Her head-tendrils fell behind her head, and the dark armour around her possessed the sharp, ceremonial severity of something designed as much to command as to protect. One gloved hand rested close to a weapon at her side. A narrow strip of blood-red light shone across both figures, reflected from somewhere beyond the keeper's sight.
They were looking past him.
No, the keeper realised. They were looking at Thaal.
The Human lifted his head slightly. For a moment, the mechanical eye appeared to settle upon the keeper's reflection in the glass. The Nautolan turned with him.
The keeper heard the measured breathing of the Human as clearly as if the figure stood beside him.
Then, both were gone.
Thaal remained beyond the window, its vast accretion disc turning in bands of white, red, and purple. The keeper was alone again. He backed away from the glass until his shoulders struck the communications console.
"Who are you?"
The receiver clicked.
A woman's voice, distorted almost beyond recognition, spoke through the static.
"...Supreme Commander, the line is holding..."
Another voice followed, urgent and distant.
"...all armadas await the order..."
The keeper pulled the receiver's power coupling from the wall. The voices continued for several seconds after the unit went dark.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
NINETY-FIRST DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
I saw two figures outside the observation window.
One appeared to be a Human male with extensive mechanical reconstruction. The second was a Nautolan female. Neither wore equipment suitable for exposure to vacuum.
They did not behave as though they were aware of the station.
I heard breathing.
After they disappeared, the receiver produced fragments of military communications referring to a Supreme Commander and several armadas. The receiver continued operating after disconnection from the station power supply.
I do not believe these events are hallucinations.
I would prefer that they were.
The next echo came twelve days later.
The keeper had fallen asleep in the communal room while reading beneath the low amber lamps. He woke to the sound of alarms and found the lighthouse trembling around him. Crockery rattled inside the kitchen cupboards. Dust fell from the joints between the wall plates, while a deep vibration passed through the station's frame with sufficient force to set the old photographs knocking against the wall.
The gravitational monitors had exceeded their measurement limits.
He ran to the observation crown, expecting to find the lighthouse falling towards Thaal. Instead, the black hole had vanished.
A sphere filled the window.
Its scale defeated every instinct the keeper possessed for judging distance. At first, he mistook it for some impossible dark planet, but its surface was too regular, divided into continent-spanning plates and geometric seams which curved away beyond sight. Thousands of small lights glowed across the black shell, arranged in patterns too precise to be cities and too numerous to be ordinary ports. Here and there, enormous apertures punctured the surface, each large enough to have swallowed fleets.
The lighthouse sensors attempted to interpret what they saw. Distance readings changed from one moment to the next. The sphere appeared to be both before the station and many thousands of light-years away. The navigational computer identified it as Thaal, rejected its own conclusion, and began the process again.
A point of light appeared upon the sphere. Several narrow beams emerged from neighbouring apertures, converging upon a single position on the outer shell. Their brilliance intensified until the surrounding plates shone gold beneath them. For several seconds, the entire structure seemed to hold its breath.
Then it fired.
A vast lance of golden energy erupted from the convergence point and crossed the stars, so bright that the observation crown's filters darkened automatically. The lighthouse trembled around the keeper.
The image then faltered.
For a fraction of a second, the keeper still saw the dark exterior, its weapon still burning across space. Then the echo jumped.
The keeper could not have said whether the next moment followed immediately or belonged to some age long after the firing of the weapon. The sphere simply disappeared, leaving neither wreckage nor dying star behind. The observation window became black.
The keeper was thrown backwards. The lights failed, leaving only the emergency lamps burning low along the floor. He smelled scorched circuitry and something else beneath it, something damp and organic which had no place aboard the station.
A black substance had appeared upon the observation glass. It spread from the centre of the window in thin, oily veins, moving across the transparisteel against the station's gravity. The substance gathered into droplets which joined and divided with deliberate purpose. Faces emerged briefly within it, mouths opening soundlessly before sinking back into the dark surface.
The keeper crawled away as communications device aboard the lighthouse activated. A thousand voices spoke at once. Human, alien, mechanical, young, ancient, frightened, and joyous, all layered upon one another until the station itself seemed to possess a vast and crowded throat.
"Keeper."
He froze. The black substance reached the iron frame surrounding the window.
"Keeper."
Some of the voices were those of the vanished figures from the photographs. Others belonged to the military transmissions. Among them, he heard the slow mechanical breathing of the wounded Human and the older, exhausted version of his own voice.
Beneath them all, something repeated a sound like a name.
"Mnggal."
The word passed from speaker to speaker.
"Mnggal. Mnggal."
The old photographs began to change. Blackness rose around the former crews, covering their uniforms and faces until only their eyes remained. One by one, those eyes turned towards the keeper.
"We see your light."
The beacon groaned above him as it continued its rotation.
Across the observation window, the black substance shivered in time with its movement. Each sweep of the navigational signal caused the voices to grow clearer.
The keeper looked towards the master controls.
A figure stood beside them. It was the older version of himself, thinner than before and dressed in clothes stained by years of neglect. He said nothing, but one hand rested upon the emergency cutoff for the beacon.
The keeper understood. He dragged himself upright and crossed the chamber. The substance upon the window thickened, forming the outline of arms, hands, and reaching fingers. The station speakers filled with voices promising rescue, company, warmth, and an end to solitude. Some called him by names he had not heard since childhood. Others spoke with his own voice, calmly assuring him that there was nothing to fear.
The older keeper disappeared as he reached the controls.
"All right," the keeper muttered, closing both hands around the cutoff lever. "You want the light?" The voices fell silent. "Have the dark."
He pulled the lever and the beacon stopped. Its great spindle slowed above the observation crown, the ancient mechanism releasing a final descending groan through the lighthouse. For the first time since his arrival, there was no rotating light, no pulse of navigational data, and no steady vibration within the walls.
The black substance recoiled. It tore away from the edges of the window and collapsed towards its centre, carrying the faces and reaching hands with it. The voices dissolved into a burst of static. The final sound remaining was the repeated name, whispered now through a single failing speaker - then there was nothing.
Thaal returned beyond the glass, and its red accretion disc turned through the violet dark exactly as it had before, immense and indifferent. The keeper stood at the dead controls with both hands still wrapped around the cutoff lever. His reflection stared back at him from the window, pale and shaking, but recognisably his own.
For the remainder of that night, the lighthouse was quiet.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
I have disabled the navigational beacon.
The phenomenon appears to use or respond to its transmissions. I cannot explain how I know this, but I have seen the lighthouse transmitting across distances which cannot be measured by ordinary instruments. I believe some of the communications have not yet occurred.
I saw an artificial sphere constructed around a star. The outer shell discharged a beam of energy unlike anything I have previously encountered.
The vision which followed may have occurred much later. I cannot determine whether the two events were directly connected.
A black substance appeared afterwards... Alive and menacing, as if it wanted me.
I have transmitted an emergency request for immediate evacuation.
There has been no response.
By morning, the old photographs had returned to normal.
The keeper inspected each one carefully. The original crews stood within their proper places, the numbers once again matching those he had written from memory. None looked towards him. There was no blackness upon their faces, and no figure wore his clothes.
Only the oldest photograph remained altered. There were seven people standing beneath the beacon mechanism. Six faced the camera, whilst the seventh stood behind them with his back turned, staring through the observation window at Thaal.
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S PERSONAL LOG
ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINTH DAY OF ASSIGNMENT
A relief vessel docked this morning. Its captain carried formal authorisation from Caanus to terminate my assignment and seemed surprised when I declined to accompany him. I signed for the provisions, accepted the replacement components, and assured him that the lighthouse remains operational. He asked who I had been speaking to when his vessel approached. I told him that I had been talking to myself.
That was not entirely untrue.
I have heard many things since my last entry. I have listened to armies fighting across the Outer Rim, their officers ordering thousands forward for territories measured in footsteps. I have heard the voices of Dark Lords and commanders who will not be born for centuries. I have seen ronin crossing the far reaches with illuminated swords at their sides, belonging to no kingdom or order, and I have watched great fleets gather beneath banners which possess no meaning in this age. Sometimes their words arrive clearly. More often, they reach me as cries, prayers, commands, and fragments of conversations which Thaal has carried far beyond the moment in which they were spoken.
I no longer attempt to decide which events have already occurred.
Light bends around Thaal. This has always been known. What the astronomers upon Caanus have failed to understand is that other things bend with it. Voices, images, memories, and perhaps every moment witnessed beneath its shadow are drawn across the same horizon. Some disappear into it. Others return centuries before they began.
I once believed the lighthouse was failing. Later, I believed it haunted. I understand now that this is the gift of Thaal. The False Sun does not show me the future. It shows me everything which has become trapped within its gaze, without regard for the small distinction between what has been and what is still to come.
The old photographs continue to change. I no longer count the people within them. The man who followed me through the corridors does not appear as old as he once did, although this may be because I have begun to resemble him. We sometimes pass one another upon the stairs. He has never attempted to harm me.
The beacon remains active. When the black voices return, I extinguish it until they pass.
I do not wish to leave. There are too many things still to witness, and someone must remain here to tend the light.
The keeper ended the recording and placed it beside the console. Beyond the observation glass, Thaal burned in magnificent shades of red, gold, and violet, its perfect black centre unchanged by the years which had passed around it. The beacon continued its stately rotation above him, sending its pale signal across the mass shadow and into distances no instrument aboard the station could measure.
He descended to the garden chamber and inspected the evening crop. The beans had recovered long ago and now climbed in thick green coils around the old control frames, their leaves spreading beneath the violet lamps.
"Evening," the keeper said to them.
From the observation crown above, his own voice replied.
"Evening."
The keeper smiled and continued watering the plants.
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